Lexmark: Modernizing technology to be in lockstep with sales data
Explore Lexmark’s journey with SAP
Lexmark, an innovative global imaging and IoT solutions leader, creates cloud-enabled technologies that help customers in more than 170 countries worldwide quickly realize business outcomes. The company’s channel data management team had a complex infrastructure for its indirect sales reporting – until it modernized with SAP Business Technology Platform and discovered a host of other advantages.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| High tech | Lexington, Kentucky | 5,000+ employees | Hornbill Labs |
visibility into indirect sales revenue attribution.
performance improvement.
to migrate to SAP software.
Director, Enterprise Business Applications, Lexmark International Inc.
Untangling a web of system analytics to get to the right answers
Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, Lexmark International Inc. serves customers in manufacturing, retail, financial services, healthcare, education, government, and more. Through a powerful combination of proven technologies and deep industry expertise, Lexmark accelerates business transformation, turning information into insights, data into decisions, and analytics into action.
The company operates with several paths to market, including an indirect sales model, where purchase attribution reporting is a key function for its channel data management (CDM) team. For a decade, Lexmark leveraged SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud on Microsoft Azure. The process itself involved a complex set of technology dependencies outside the SAP system to trace purchases to its end customer and generate reports. But with hundreds of partners, millions of transactions, multiple technologies, and data flow between enterprise applications, matching end-customer data to generate reports was a cumbersome, time-consuming process.
Lexmark needed to update its technology foundation to cut through the massive data volume and its connected systems, which would allow it to create end-consumer reports faster.
Integrating visibility and productivity on a modern platform
Because Lexmark was already using SAP solutions, it took advantage of a “lift and shift” approach to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), quickly migrating to SAP HANA Cloud. This enabled the company to optimize its existing SAP solution investment while moving to a centralized, modernized system. Partner Hornbill Labs supported Lexmark throughout the transformation, helping it accelerate the transition.
The CDM team fully owns and manages the platform, and it takes advantage of new levels of performance and speed and a better overall user experience. Order attribution reports are now generated faster on a weekly basis, and it’s much easier to manage users.
To take advantage of the capabilities of SAP BTP, Lexmark plans to replace other legacy software by deploying the SAP Document and Reporting Compliance solution and leveraging SAP Integration Suite. This integration would allow electronic communications with local tax authorities.
Harnessing new levels of visibility and cost-of-ownership advantages
Once-complex CDM sales order attribution and reports are significantly streamlined on SAP HANA Cloud, delivering a much better user experience. The CDM team now has greater access to and visibility into data, generating reports much faster.
Migrating other critical applications to SAP BTP has enabled Lexmark to optimize productivity for those apps while making the most of its SAP solution investment for the future.
SAP BTP has also reduced total cost of ownership for the company. Because it’s a managed service model, Lexmark isn’t responsible for infrastructure, backups, upgrades, or other maintenance responsibilities.
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud Manager, Lexmark International Inc.
Building on the advanced foundation of SAP BTP
With its success in migrating CDM reporting and other apps, Lexmark will continue its modernization road map with SAP solutions. The company’s converted its core business foundation from the SAP ERP application to SAP S/4HANA in 2023. This year, the company will continue to consolidate its finance function, replacing the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation application with the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution for group reporting. Lexmark hopes this will enable continuous accounting with real-time consolidation.
The company also plans to optimize its existing SAP solutions, including SAP BTP, for further cost-of-ownership reductions in the future.
Featured partner
Hornbill Labs is on a mission to accelerate the pace of AI and advanced analytics adoption for enterprises. The partner specializes in AI-enabled business processes, analytics, and planning with the SAP Analytics Cloud solution and data and analytics transformations with SAP HANA Cloud, the SAP Datasphere solution, and SAP BTP.