The Stern-Wywiol Group shows how it works: a traditional, regionally anchored company becomes a technological pioneer. Thanks to entrepreneurial continuity, innovative strength and a consistently implemented SAP cloud ERP and two-tier strategy, a real successful model has been launched. And thus global structures, different business areas and a high speed of innovation are efficiently linked together – best practice for medium-sized companies.

The Stern-Wywiol Group, headquartered in Hamburg, employs almost 2,000 people worldwide. It has been developing and producing ingredients and functional solutions for food, animal nutrition, cosmetics and oleochemistry for over four decades. Its growth is based on continuous investments in research and development as well as the consistent expansion of its international presence. The group has become one of the top global players in the market for ingredients and functional additives for food and pet food. The group now produces in nine countries on 3 continents and controls an international network of production locations. It is supplemented by ten Stern Technology Centers worldwide, which closely link development and application with production. This international positioning in particular makes it clear how important uniform processes, reliable data and a common system are for collaboration between locations.

From Hamburg into the world: Stern-Wywiol Group introduces SAP worldwide

In order to be able to maintain and further expand the in-house production skills and capacities at the usual high level in the long term, the Stern-Wywiol Group, as one of the first medium-sized companies in the world, has implemented a two-tier strategy in the SAP ERP environment: and very successfully. This was also urgently necessary because, in addition to the challenges of the food and feed industry, the Stern-Wywiol Group, like many other medium-sized companies, had to struggle with an outdated and therefore no longer maintainable ERP system.

Sven Dudzik, Director of Digital Transformation, explains exactly how this worked out: “Our IT landscape with the Navision system had reached the end of its life due to the age of the software, but also because of our company growth and international positioning. Upgrades were impossible, stability was no longer guaranteed, legal requirements could no longer be met. The decision to go with SAP was easy for us at some point, because it was the best way to meet our IT and industry requirements as well as the two-tier approach.”

Why the Stern-Wywiol Group relies on SAP Cloud and Two-Tier

In 2020, together with the cloud ERP and industry experts from Innovabee, the company started the group-wide introduction of what was then SAP S/4HANA Cloud – the predecessor product to RISE with SAP and today SAP Cloud ERP Private. The first subsidiary to go live was Sternchemie in 2022. “One of our main concerns was and is that we always have the same information in the group of companies and can therefore work together on a uniform basis,” says Sven Dudzik. “At the same time, our smaller national companies need solutions that make economic sense and can be flexibly adapted to local business practices and legal requirements. That's why we rely on a two-tier strategy with private cloud in the core group and scalable public cloud in smaller units.”

Tailor-made SAP use for every company level

The idea behind the two-tier approach was cloud early adopter Innovabee. What was particularly convincing for the Stern-Wywiol Group was that the subsidiaries and smaller locations in particular could be integrated quickly and with maximum efficiency into the SAP world of the corporate headquarters. For this purpose, an existing ERP system (Tier 1), which is usually used at group level, is combined with a secondary SAP system (Tier 2).

And while the German headquarters with its national subsidiaries and the central core system are optimally equipped with a high level of process breadth and depth thanks to RISE with SAP, it was ideal for smaller business areas such as those in Malaysia and Singapore with 200 employees in production, sales and purchasing to use a separate and localized SAP public cloud solution and its best practice standards: for maximum agility and scalability.

More agile on the market: Regional peculiarities require regional solutions

“Our foreign locations and national subsidiaries are often characterized by a special dynamic and a life of their own when it comes to IT and general conditions. What works well in Ahrensburg may look completely different in Singapore, for example the topics of taxes, reporting standards or language localization. The two-tier approach in the cloud ERP environment was the best answer to this,” summarizes Sven Dudzik. “And the feedback from our colleagues in Asia proves us right: They were able to start in Asia quickly and with their own local partner, without having to wait for the ‘mother ship' Germany. Today, thanks to the innovative cloud ERP solution, our employees can react quickly to local market conditions or new legal requirements and adapt the business processes accordingly, which, among other things, shortens the time to market and increases our competitiveness.”

SAP Cloud ERP: Nine months from the idea to go-live

The implementation started in March 2023, and the public cloud system went live in Malaysia and Singapore with four company codes on January 1, 2024. The SAP Activate methodology was also used, which supports users in their cloud ERP implementations with best practices, proven implementation methods and tools. Another special feature of the project was Innovabee's collaboration with local partners such as Delaware, who also received the results from the Digital Discovery Assessment (DDA) in Germany. Mexico is currently being connected as the next international location. The project management is carried out from Hamburg, the local implementation is carried out by a local partner.

Go-live according to plan – smoothly into the cloud

The next big milestone took place on July 1, 2025: Exactly at the turn of the first half of the year, the SAP Cloud ERP Private went live in Hamburg, Ahrensburg, Wittenburg and at the logistics service provider Lübbesse. Sven Dudzik explains why the start went like a picture book and why everyone remembers it fondly: “On day 1 we were able to order, produce, store and retrieve and write invoices – that was great.”

First improvements with SAP Cloud ERP

The optimized processes are already evident in many areas of everyday work. This means that warehouse processes run more smoothly and are less prone to errors: pallet spaces no longer have to be counted by hand. This is just one of the many advantages that the employees of the Stern-Wywiol Group benefit from today. Over 700 users now use the new ERP across modules. “We see every day from many small things, but also from more complex end-to-end process chains, that our processes are improving and we can save significant time and costs,” says Sven Dudzik. “This also affects our entire production area, such as the interaction of machine data from SAP MES into the SAP ERP system or the production feedback for the production orders that go from the machine via MES to the SAP system and ultimately appear in controlling. We expect further potential in the forecast-to-fulfill environment, and the newly introduced planning tool from SAP S/4HANA Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) also supports us in this To take detailed planning and time- and resource-optimized sequence planning to the next level.”

Which promising AI use cases have already been identified?

But it is also a fact: the system must and is constantly being sharpened, because setting up the entire company organization End2End takes time – Sven Dudzik also knows this: “One learning is the subject of master data, which can also be quite painful. Because the master data is not correct, if it is incorrect or incomplete, the process is not correct. We are now in phase 2 after the go-live and are making adjustments where necessary.”

The Stern-Wywiol Group and Innovabee also see a need or great benefit when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). Accordingly, the first use cases are currently being identified that combine AI and benefits: for example in the area of ​​best-before date (best-before date) handling, in accounting in terms of invoice approval and processing or even audit processing in quality management (QM) offer promising potential.

Cultural change takes time – and trust

The cultural change will also take time: “The cultural change should not be underestimated, but here too we notice every day that our employees are getting to know and appreciate the new system and its many advantages better and better,” concludes Sven Dudzik and emphasizes: “The collaboration and interaction at the working level with Innovabee was very good from the start and also an extremely cooperative story at the management level.” CEO Torsten Wywiol sums up the fact that the service provider and the corporate group have long since become more than a classic project constellation: “With Innovabee we have such a partnership-based and trusting relationship that company boundaries are hardly noticeable in everyday project life – we act as a team.”

This article first appeared on Innovabee.