STEF Transitions to SAP S/4HANA ERP in Collaboration with TeamWork

It took 13 months to migrate STEF’s SAP ECC ERP to SAP S/4HANA. This was a unique project—both in the way tasks were shared between TeamWork and STEF’s teams, and in the exceptional volume of data migrated.

STEF is the European leader in food logistics. The company manages storage, transportation, and packaging of all types of food products under controlled temperatures. With a strong European logistics network made up of 305 platforms and warehouses, and a fleet of over 4,000 refrigerated vehicles, STEF achieved €4.8 billion in revenue in 2024. The group employs nearly 25,000 people, including 16,000 in France alone.

The Existing ERP and the Reasons for the Migration

Since 1999, STEF has used SAP ECC6 as its core ERP system, with a wide functional scope.
“As with many companies, SAP’s announcement of the end of support for ECC in 2030 was the primary trigger for considering a migration to SAP S/4HANA,” explains Cyril Lagnier, Director of the Support Function IT Division at STEF.

A scoping study was carried out in 2022 by TeamWork, which led to the decision to perform a brownfield conversion, maintaining the existing functional scope. STEF chose to begin the project in October 2023 to benefit from the new version of the HCM (Human Capital Management) module available with SAP S/4HANA 2023. This version also offers two additional years of maintenance compared to the previous release.

“We were very satisfied with TeamWork’s performance during the scoping study. That’s one of the reasons we decided to continue with them as the implementation partner for the migration project.”

Cyril Lagnier, Director of the Support Function IT Division, STEF Group

Unprecedented Data Volume and Project Organization

Brownfield projects are primarily technical migrations, which can be secured by SAP’s “10 Steps to S/4HANA” methodology and accelerators provided by TeamWork. A well-established approach—here challenged by the scale of the data migration. STEF’s central ERP contains 26 years of historical data for over 2,500 entities, of which over 400 are still active.

“Despite excellent data quality, the conversion was complex. The first SAP Consistency Check run was nerve-wracking, revealing nearly 35 million reported errors,”
shares Olivier Dehestru, Director of SAP Operations at TeamWork France.
“When converting business partners, SAP’s standard tool failed to handle the 500,000 records. SAP quickly provided a fix, but this illustrates the truly exceptional size of STEF’s ERP.”

Typically, a brownfield migration requires limited business-side involvement. But not at STEF. The 400 active companies in the ERP meant involving a significant number of business stakeholders throughout the project.

Another specific aspect was the division of responsibilities between STEF and TeamWork. Thanks to its internal SAP expertise, STEF’s Support Function IT Division chose to handle the HR scope of the project—including payroll for over 14,000 employees—and several custom developments.

“One of TeamWork’s first tasks was to help us understand the 10 Steps to S/4HANA methodology and to train us on SAP’s migration tools, particularly the custom object migration cockpit.”

Cyril Lagnier, Director of the Support Function IT Division, STEF Group

A Long and Complex Project

Work started in October 2023, with the go-live taking place in November 2024. It was a long and intense project, which included:

• A like-for-like migration from SAP ECC to S/4HANA
• Migration of HR data to the SAP HCM for S/4HANA module
• Integration with other SAP solutions such as SuccessFactors, BW, BFC
• Synchronization with a concurrent SAP Ariba project
• A complete overhaul of roles and authorizations for 1,300 ERP users
• As well as the traditional communication and change management tasks.

“The migration weekend—from Friday, November 15 to Monday, November 18—was a reflection of the prior 13 months: full of challenges and unforeseen issues, but ultimately a success.
We started with a 9-hour delay on Friday, forcing us to reduce our buffer time. In the end, we finished the migration on Sunday evening, just 2 hours behind schedule. On Monday morning, we were able to run key workflows with business teams as planned, and opened the system to 1,300 users by 1:30 PM.
Three days later, our first test came with processing payroll and part of the 13th-month salaries.”

The mission was accomplished, though the post-go-live period was at times challenging—with issues such as data validation, role stabilization, and performance tuning.

“Despite the project’s complexity, I’m very satisfied with the integrator’s work and the relationship we had with their teams. Some consultants were incredibly committed!”

Cyril Lagnier, Director of the Support Function IT Division, STEF Group

TeamWork shares that sentiment: “The STEF teams were highly competent. At their request, we delegated part of the work to them—a decision we don’t regret. Their dedication was instrumental in the project’s success,”
says Olivier Dehestru.

After three months of post-go-live efforts, the solution is now nearly fully stabilized. This gives STEF the opportunity to focus on other initiatives—like finalizing its expense report solution, which has yet to meet expectations. The teams are also looking ahead to 2026 for the migration of one of their two remaining SAP ECC environments.“We plan to handle that project with more autonomy, but we will definitely count on TeamWork’s support,” concludes Cyril Lagnier.