Explore Mahindra’s journey with SAP
Harnessing the power of the latest technology is a priority for the Mahindra Group. It’s been an SAP customer for 25 years, enabling the conglomerate to grow and continuously innovate. That’s why leaping into a cloud-based digital future with the RISE with SAP journey and SAP Business Technology Platform was a logical next step for the company.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Cross-industry, including automotive, high tech, and agribusiness | Mumbai, India | 260,000 employees |
increase in developer efficiency.
faster execution of back-order processing.
tree-equivalent savings in carbon emissions.
Chief Information Officer, Mahindra Group
Keeping pace with a changing business environment
Founded more than seven decades ago, Mahindra has evolved to become one of India’s largest companies. A world leader in sectors such as farming, automotive, and financing, the company is a multinational federation of over 80 legal entities in more than 20 industries. Committed to driving positive change in its communities, Mahindra runs a number of social initiatives that promote a more equal world while protecting the planet by focusing on more environmentally friendly ways to do business.
To help it fulfill its growth goals and corporate vision, an important aspect of Mahindra’s overall strategy is future-readiness. The company wanted to make sure it was prepared to thrive in a changing business environment by addressing certain emerging trends. These include the end-to-end digitalization of manufacturing value chains and the use of intelligent technologies such as AI and machine learning to support smart manufacturing. Enabling better-informed decision-making supported by predictive and cognitive analytics was another key priority. In addition, reducing time spent by IT staff on systems maintenance and enabling rapid infrastructure scaling to support business growth were key focus areas.
To this end, the company wanted to update the existing enterprise IT architecture that was based on an on-premises instance of SAP S/4HANA. Following a cloud-first strategy, Mahindra decided to migrate to a managed cloud–based solution that would help it react to changing business dynamics in a more agile way.
Head of Cloud Centre of Excellence, Mahindra Group
Pivoting to the cloud with a scale-out architecture
As an SAP customer since 1997, Mahindra was keen to follow SAP’s road map and implement a managed cloud solution from SAP. In one of the largest SAP migrations to a scale-out architecture in the Asia Pacific Japan region, the company decided to use SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition as part of its RISE with SAP journey. This involved moving more than 28,000 users of the company’s existing on-premises instance of SAP S/4HANA to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition.
In addition, the company deployed solutions based on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to help it modernize and integrate its IT environment. Using prebuilt Open Connectors and API Management, capabilities offered by SAP Integration Suite, the implementation team migrated 309 interfaces, integrating with more than 45 third-party systems. The team also automated 250 processes with the SAP Build Process Automation solution, with low-code tools enabling business users to deliver their own solutions. The implementation team also used SAP Business Application Studio to help speed up custom development projects. These solutions set the foundation for enterprise automation, helping Mahindra automate end-to-end business processes.
As part of the SAP MaxAttention program, Mahindra also benefited from project-safeguarding services and implementation guidance from SAP experts. For example, when performance testing revealed challenges, the SAP experts worked closely with the implementation team to re-architect the deployment to enable horizontal scaling of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition to optimize performance.
Enabling an agile, future-ready, and sustainable enterprise
By streamlining repetitive transactions and eliminating manual reporting, the company has helped employees become more productive. Enhanced systems and automated processes supported by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition are providing decision-makers with the information they need faster. And using SAP Build Process Automation, business users are empowered to self-serve their own automation needs, saving more than 1,000 IT workdays within nine months.
A future-ready foundation has also helped Mahindra support business growth. For example, when the launch of a new SUV saw 100,000 bookings in 30 minutes through digital channels, the sales transactions went smoothly thanks to a range of solutions running on a high-performance IT infrastructure. In addition, optimized processes in logistics and supply chain management have resulted in a reduction of 20% in back-order processing times.
With the move to a managed cloud solution resulting in time that was once spent on systems maintenance being freed up, IT personnel have more time to spend on higher-value tasks. In addition, having trained business users create their own automations using SAP Build Process Automation, the IT team can focus on more-complex development projects using SAP Business Application Studio. As a result, developers are now getting new projects up and running 35% faster.
What’s more, the migration has also helped Mahindra on its journey to achieving a sustainable enterprise that minimizes its impact on the environment. Thanks to the shift to the cloud, a total of 194 servers were released, with the resulting reduction in carbon emissions equating to the planting of 20,000 trees.
Harnessing the latest technical capabilities to face new challenges
With its new IT environment enabled by RISE with SAP and SAP BTP, Mahindra is ready to react in an agile way to meet future challenges head-on. Automatic scaling and built-in high availability and elasticity offered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition help ensure that the company can quickly adapt to changing requirements as the business grows.
The flexible tools provided by SAP BTP support the company in quickly integrating new solutions to help it adapt to changing markets. Moreover, Mahindra continues to increase automation in business processes, thanks to the low-code tools in SAP Build Process Automation being used by business users and to specialist development capabilities in SAP Business Application Studio.
Mahindra is currently expanding its SAP software footprint with the deployment of a number of other SAP solutions. It is enhancing planning capabilities by implementing the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution.
Want to know more about Mahindra?
Mahindra: Speeding up development with enterprise automation (SAP video)