CREATON Builds on SAP S/4HANA in the Cloud

TERREAL, the French industry leader in roofing products and innovative solutions for building envelopes, acquired CREATON from the international building materials specialist Etex on January 1, 2022. The merger of TERREAL and CREATON gives them a leading position within Europe in the area of clay roof tiles. Both companies will benefit from synergy effects, access to new markets and a broader product range. “This was a merger of partners on an equal footing. TERREAL enhances our independence and capability with a state-of-the-art IT solution,” says Dr. Sebastian Dresse, Managing Director of CREATON GmbH.

Against this background, CREATON had to restructure and modernize its IT landscape to create an innovative IT department. It was designed to be a strategic partner of the business units and therefore go far beyond the traditional role the IT team had served up to that point. “The market is constantly changing, and the requirements are becoming more complex. Therefore, our entire IT landscape needs to be future-oriented and scalable while providing the necessary security,” explains Reinhard Schwabe, Head of Finance & IT at CREATON GmbH.

CREATON decided to combine three transformation projects under one roof. This one-step approach enabled the company to combine various subprojects, significantly reducing the time and costs involved in the IT project. The project team was able to manage the additional workload more effectively and achieve success more quickly.

“Before the actual transformation project started, we scanned and analyzed CREATON’s IT landscape with our platform CrystalBridge®. The result was a clean X-ray of all the SAP systems and subsystems. This significantly shortened the analysis phase,” explains Thilo Nagler, Managing Director and Vice President of Sales CEU at SNP.

SNP then carved out six of around 200 company codes from the previous system and set them up in the new SAP system along with all the business processes. The project team then migrated this system from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA while also transferring CREATON’s in-house developments, creating the new business partners and converting to the New General Ledger. The new system was set up directly in the cloud, which avoided any additional migration. For this purpose, CREATON uses the cloud infrastructure of Microsoft Azure. All of this was made possible in a single step thanks to SNP BLUEFIELDTM and CrystalBridge®.

The SAP solution in the cloud impressed us right from the start. We were able to make lower initial investments and now have predictable expenses. In addition, hyperscalers can operate IT systems more effectively and securely than we can. SAP S/4HANA Cloud runs in a stable and high-performance manner. And the feedback from our SAP users is much better today than it used to be,” says Jürgen Adä, Head of IT at CREATON Group, describing the advantages of the SAP cloud solution.

CREATON’s transformation project took a total of twelve months: The analysis and preparation took the project team three months and the implementation nine months. The downtime for the system switch only lasted two working days in total, and production continued throughout. The project was also completed on time and on budget.

Jürgen Adä sums up as follows:

Our ambitious transformation project was only possible because it was software-based. SNP’s software CrystalBridge® is the ultimate tool for data migration and transformation. In a nutshell, it turned a ‘Mission Impossible’ into a ‘Mission Control’.”

About CREATON

CREATON is one of the leading roofing brands in Europe. The company, which has been part of the TERREAL Group since 2021, has a comprehensive range of products for pitched roofs and produces and distributes clay roof tiles, concrete roof tiles and system accessories as well as a wide variety of solar solutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The company can look back on a long, successful history. Founded and based in Wertingen near Augsburg, the company has a long tradition in manufacturing high-quality products for pitched roofs that goes back over 130 years. Around 800 employees deliver individual roof solutions from the company’s seven locations in Germany. In addition, CREATON Polska operates production locations in Widziszewo and Chojnice, while CREATON SEE is active in Lenti, Hungary.
ist eine der führenden Dachmarken Europas. Das seit 2021 zur TERREAL-Gruppe gehörende Unternehmen verfügt über ein umfassendes Sortiment für das Steildach und produziert und vertreibt in ganz Zentral- und Osteuropa Tondachziegel, Betondachsteine und Systemzubehör sowie PV-Anlagen. Das Unternehmen kann auf eine lange, erfolgreiche Firmengeschichte zurückblicken. In Wertingen bei Augsburg, dem Gründungsstandort des Traditionsunternehmens, werden bereits seit über 130 Jahren hochwertige Produkte für das Steildach hergestellt. Die rund 800 Mitarbeiter machen sich für individuelle Dachlösungen stark und sind an sieben Standorten in Deutschland vertreten. Zudem betreiben CREATON Polska in Widziszewo sowie in Chojnice und CREATON SEE im ungarischen Lenti Produktionsstandorte.

About SNP

SNPSNP is a world-leading provider of software for managing complex digital transformation processes. Instead of traditional IT consulting in the ERP environment, SNP offers an automated approach using specially developed software: The Data Transformation Platform CrystalBridge® and the SNP BLUEFIELD™ approach allow companies to restructure and modernize their IT landscapes much more quickly and securely as well as migrate to new systems or cloud environments more securely. This gives customers clear qualitative advantages while at the same time reducing their time and costs.

The SNP Group has around 1,350 employees worldwide. The company is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and generated revenues of around EUR 166 million in the 2021 fiscal year. It serves multinational companies in all industries. SNP was established in 1994, went public in 2000, and has been listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since August 2014 (ISIN DE0007203705). Since 2017, the company has been trading as a European company (Societas Europaea/SE).