CASE STUDY
T
he LuLu Group, based in the UAE, has
been using SAP software to support
its core business functions for over
10 years. However, due to its strong growth,
the old system needed to be replaced to
keep pace with the increasing dynamics and
complexity in modern retail business.
“Data was distributed on various systems and
we needed to consolidate the application
landscape in order to support our business
users with real-time analytics for fast
decisions, as well as streamlining our entire IT
and supply chain processes,” said Madhava
Rao, CIO, LuLu Group. “Beside cost reduction
for our IT and SAP operation, we also wanted
to be able to optimise our internal processes
and data centre operations.”
Therefore, the LuLu Group decided to gain
the business values that innovative in-
memory technology and SAP HANA offer for
such a dynamic retail giant.
In the first phase of the project, it became
an early adaptor of Business Warehouse on
HANA to improve the analytics capabilities. critical business functions,” said Rao. “It
was the natural choice to aid the on-going
development of the business.”
In phase two, the company migrated its
core SAP ERP System to Business Suite on
HANA as one of the early adopters in the
Middle East. Fujitsu Integrated System PRIMEFLEX for SAP
Landscapes with HANA provides a pre-defined,
pre-integrated and pre-tested combination
of servers, storage, network connectivity and
software from Fujitsu and specialist partners,
such as NetApp and SUSE, to ensure the
highest quality and fast time to value.
The LuLu Group was eager to exploit the
new HANA capabilities and to increase
performance for IT, so it was looking for a
trusted advisor who could deliver an end-to-
end journey to HANA.
It asked Fujitsu, a pioneering SAP HANA
partner, to help design and roll out this path
to the HANA digital core.
“Fujitsu Integrated Systems provide an
innovative, HANA ready and future-proof
SAP solution that is a stable, scalable, fast
and absolutely flexible environment for our
Powered by the FlexFrame Orchestrator
software component, it facilitates the
operation of SAP applications, SAP
databases and the SAP HANA platform
and makes it faster and more effective. It
simplifies the management of complex
SAP environments, optimises planning and
operation and change management.
Thus, the LuLu Group’s IT environment is
future-proofed for years to come.
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“The Global Fujitsu SAP Competence Center
located in Walldorf, Germany, was with
us every step of the way from design to
implementation to post-go-live support,”
said Rao.
“The entire project of the Business Suite on
HANA implementation took 15 weeks but
the migration itself was carefully planned so
there would be minimal downtime.
“We took a ‘big bang’ approach and
migrated our entire SAP ERP landscape in a
17-hour period.”
Every aspect of the LuLu Group’s SAP
business operations, including HR,
finance, logistics, transportation and
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