SAPinsider Technology Executive Forum Issue 1 2021

technology as an enabler; now we need to focus on what does the organization need to look like as we prepare to deploy and support this new technology. For example, we’re considering creating different centers of expertise for supply chain, planning, finance, etc. Ingevity has historically operated a very tradi- tional organizational model with business systems and analysts who brokered the functional require- ments and the technical requirements between the business and the technical guys doing the work. That’s the model we're in today, but I don't believe that will be the model that we end up with when we go to SAP S/4HANA. We’ve built so much knowledge and capability within the project team and ultimately, within the business; we don't want to lose that. Q. Will you take a different approach to outsourcing once the transformation is complete? Probably not. We're heavily outsourced today. My IT team is fairly small and we rely on a number of strategic partners in that space on the business side. I don't see a lot of change happening in the way we go to market with partners but it is part of an active discussion right now. Q. What does success look like to you considering everything Ingevity is aiming to accomplish in 2021? I think there will be a huge sense of pride and accomplishment, because as I mentioned earlier, to do this in a 100% remote manner has really been a challenge, but the team has been up for it and has maintained good dialogue, communication, and a regular cadence of touch points to help people understand what's expected. We’re doing a pilot go-live in October, and then we start the final deployments in early 2022; we aim to be fully deployed by April 1, 2022 as the current target. It will definitely be a sigh of relief, but then we’ll have to ready ourselves for what comes next. April is not the finish line. It’s really just the starting point for what our future looks like in this space. Q. What are your thoughts on the RISE with SAP announcement and will it impact your transformation roadmap? It's interesting because my takeaway from what I've seen and listened to and spoken about with others is that RISE with SAP appears to be more targeted towards folks who have not yet committed to the SAP S/4HANA journey, and they’re trying to make it easier for companies to get to the cloud with SAP S/4HANA driving the business by bundling all of those pieces together. Ingevity has already moved to the cloud leveraging Microsoft Azure and we did it ourselves and some- what manually prior to this offering. And we got there, and it works, but I really see the end result as much the same. I'm in a model where I'm not going through SAP for everything. They're not managing my cloud hosting partner, which I actually prefer because I’m going to SAP to make sure that my system and the applications and the functionality are working correctly. I'm going to my partner to manage my Microsoft relationship for infrastructure as a service. But that said, I do like what they've done, because it really should help and make it easier for others to start their journey. SAPinsiderOnline.com 40