Like so many businesses, global audio electronics company HARMAN has the 2027 deadline for SAP S/4HANA migration looming large. But with 20 years of SAP codes, programs, executions, and customizations – not all documented – sorting the essential from the superfluous was a major headache. Until, that is, the team tethered its S/4 transformation to purpose-built Celonis solutions, bringing clarity, process governance, and cross-team understanding.
Context: Driving data-driven transformations
An independent subsidiary of Samsung, HARMAN is a global audio electronics business, employing 34,000 people in 65 countries across iconic brands such as JBL, Harman Kardon, and AKG. The company has embarked on its Transformation to S/4HANA program to achieve ambitious plans for growth, profitability, and efficiency. This is a strategic transformation including a drive toward a more data-driven culture, innovation, and business synergies.
Key to its success are two major initiatives spearheaded by Leslie Goldstone, HARMAN’s Director of Process Mining, working in conjunction with Celonis. The first centers on process optimization, with Goldstone’s team partnering with HARMAN’s global process governance office to drive efficiency by analyzing, simplifying, and standardizing the company’s processes. The other major pillar under her remit is facilitating a smooth, efficient, and airtight transformation from SAP ECC to S/4HANA.
A year into a targeted four-year transformation, HARMAN is looking to have completed the ERP suite migration by early 2027. The Celonis Process Intelligence platform is playing a key supporting role in this transformation journey, as Goldstone confirms: “For our S/4HANA approach we're doing a fit-to-standard and we're really looking at our customizations… using Celonis solutions in Order Management, Accounts Receivable, Procurement, Accounts Payable, Production Planning, Inventory Management, Warehouse Management, and Quality Management.”
“Celonis is going to be in all the different phases of our S/4HANA program.”
Leslie Goldstone, Director of Process Mining, HARMAN
Challenge: Deciding what to bring over to S/4 and what to leave behind
HARMAN’s SAP environment has been around for more than 20 years, over which time the company has created a lot of bespoke customizations within the legacy ERP suite. Analyzing all the codes, programs, executions, and document types in ECC was a significant challenge with the clock ticking on the 2027 S/4 migration deadline. Goldstone and the process mining team have to capture the essential components of the ‘as is’ processes and ensure that they are covered (and enhanced) when migrated over to the new SAP system.
This would be a difficult task even if every single one of these process components and customizations was fully defined and documented. But that’s rarely the case for any business of any size. HARMAN knew that many of its processes weren’t fully documented – some being manual, or having undergone multiple evolutions, or developed in departmental silos and not captured centrally.
Without this documentation and full process visibility, ensuring a successful, comprehensive S/4HANA transformation was at risk.
Solution: To-be, or not to-be? No longer a question.
Goldstone and her team used Celonis to help plug gaps in process documentation. HARMAN can now augment as-is insights from SME interviews and existing documentation with all the different process flows coming out of SAP and into Celonis. These consolidated insights deliver a far tighter understanding of the current way of working to accelerate and more accurately craft future processes.
Crucially, however, HARMAN can leverage Celonis to add business process meaning and context to all the customizations in ECC. That is, HARMAN is now able to see where each is being used in the process, who is using them, and at what frequency. “We’re getting [Celonis] set up so that it can really help the GPOs (Global Process Owners) see their as-is process and make decisions for the to-be process,” says Goldstone. In fact, thanks to Celonis, HARMAN has discovered that 34% of its SAP custom T-codes are used infrequently (and so may not need to be carried across to S/4) without business impact.
HARMAN is using the Celonis System Transformation Readiness App to visualize and capture end-to-end processes across Order-to-Cash, Source-to-Pay, Plan-to-Produce, Inventory-to-Deliver, and Deliver-to-Replace. Delivering not only process visibility, but also the ability to gain further understanding by interrogating SAP data, the app turned out to be a game changer for HARMAN.
The process mining team can now go through every process flow with the GPOs, analyze and compare with BPMLs (Business Process Master Lists), along with L-3 and L-4 processes. Each element, action, and process customization is analyzed for SAP usage location and workflow interactivity.
These insights provide the bedrock of data-driven as-is and optimized to-be processes – and therefore a successful S/4HANA transformation.
Vision: Designing and delivering the S/4 future together
Ensuring relevant stakeholders help define the future S/4 processes is vital to a successful migration. As subject matter experts, their operational knowledge helps prevent any crucial customizations getting left behind.
Which is why HARMAN is busily training these teams up so they’re comfortable using the Celonis platform to make data-informed evaluations. In this way, they can help the Global Process Owners during the company’s upcoming ‘design sessions’ in which the GPOs will decide on the configuration of the desirable to-be processes.
Once the proposed to-be state for S/4 has been agreed, HARMAN will then use Celonis conformance checking to help identify any gaps from the existing ECC model, and assess their significance. This analysis reduces the risk that the S/4HANA process will not meet HARMAN’s needs. It will also inform the change management team, assisting them in preparing training materials to promote a smooth transition to S/4HANA across the business.
The final piece of this phase will be to connect Celonis to HARMAN’s S/4 test instance, using the platform to track and measure the impact of the transition to the to-be processes. Goldstone and the GPOs will be able to determine whether the new processes are performing as expected and meeting KPIs.
The close collaboration between HARMAN and Celonis maximizes a positive outcome from the S/4HANA transformation, makes teams part of the process, and minimizes the risk of any unpleasant surprises at go-live.
“Celonis is great at breaking silos, bringing all those teams together – having them see not just their piece, but the end-to-end picture.”
Leslie Goldstone, Director of Process Mining, HARMAN
