Seed Corp Completes S/4HANA Migration with Softess and SAP

Japanese contact lenses manufacturer Seed Corporation, has completed migrating its core SAP ERP system to RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition. According to SAP Japan, the go-live was completed on January 6, 2025, and the new system continues to operate stably. The migration project was managed by SAP Gold Partner Softess Corporation.

This migration was driven by Seed’s medium-term management plan, which aims for global growth and 50 billion yen in consolidated sales. To support this goal, upgrading Seed’s long-standing SAP ERP system to SAP S/4HANA was identified as an urgent priority.

Implementing the Migration

However, the project faced a significant logistical challenge. The system migration, which required complete downtime, could only be performed during the narrow New Year holiday window. This non-negotiable deadline required a meticulous and reliable migration strategy. Therefore, Seed required a solution that guaranteed high availability for business continuity.

Although the company considered an on-premise SAP S/4HANA build on AWS, it ultimately selected RISE with SAP. This decision was based on the comprehensive nature of the offering, which bundles infrastructure, database, and SAP application operations. With RISE, SAP Japan assumed responsibility for maintenance, security patches, and upgrades, significantly reducing the operational burden on Seed’s internal team.

Softess, which was selected for its extensive SAP implementation experience, began the project in October 2023. The team utilised the SAP Conversion method to maximise the use of existing assets. During the project, Softess engineers identified and resolved performance issues in some add-on programs and proposed an integration architecture using an intermediate server on AWS for external systems.

The project was completed on schedule, establishing a high-availability infrastructure that supports Seed’s business continuity and future growth ambitions.

What This Means for Mastering SAP Insiders

This successful migration in Japan offers critical insights for SAP-run businesses across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region:

1. Time-constrained migrations are possible. Seed’s project proves that a complex SAP S/4HANA migration can be executed within an extremely tight, non-negotiable downtime window. This is a powerful case study for APAC manufacturers and retailers who face similar zero downtime constraints during peak seasons or other major holidays. Moreover, the case highlights that success hinges on meticulous planning, a proven conversion method, and an experienced partner.
2. RISE with SAP is a strategic choice for reducing operational burden. Seed actively considered a standard hyperscaler build but chose RISE with SAP instead. This highlights a strategic shift where businesses are prioritising service and availability over managing infrastructure themselves. For APAC companies balancing rapid growth with limited in-house Basis teams, offloading maintenance, security, and upgrades to SAP is a compelling strategy for ensuring business continuity.
3. Plan for add-on remediation, even in a conversion project. Seed’s migration project confirmed that even a like-for-like conversion impacts custom code. The company’s team identified performance drops in add-on programs after the initial move. For the heavily customised SAP environments common across APAC, this is a critical warning. Budgeting time and resources for post-migration code optimisation and performance tuning is essential for a stable go-live.