Managing one of the most extensive SAP landscapes in the manufacturing sector, a global enterprise IT services provider needed a way to reduce operational complexity, automate manual processes, and support its growing hybrid SAP environment. By implementing Avantra, the company transformed SAP operations through intelligent automation, proactive monitoring, and streamlined system management, reducing manual effort by more than 75% while accelerating S/4HANA migration initiatives.

About the Company

The enterprise IT services provider is the global technology and infrastructure provider for a large multi-national manufacturing group, a worldwide leader in fastening and assembly materials with annual revenues exceeding €20 billion. Headquartered in Künzelsau, Germany, the company operates across nine global IT hubs and supports a highly complex SAP landscape spanning more than 300 SAP systems and 500 logical partitions (LPARs). With more than 1,600 IT professionals worldwide, the organisation delivers customised and integrated technology solutions to hundreds of business units across multiple continents and plays a key role in driving digital transformation across the group.

The company manages a hybrid SAP environment running on AIX, Linux, Oracle, and SAP HANA, while maintaining a strong commitment to full operational control through its own infrastructure and data centers.

The Challenge: Managing Complexity Across a Massive SAP Landscape

The company’s SAP landscape has grown into one of the most sophisticated and demanding environments in its industry. While the company’s commitment to maintaining complete ownership of its infrastructure delivered high levels of reliability and security, it also created significant operational overhead.

One of the biggest challenges was SAP system refresh management. Each refresh required extensive manual coordination between multiple teams, often stretching across weekends and consuming more than 100 hours of engineering effort. The process was repetitive, resource-intensive, and increasingly difficult to scale as the organization prepared for S/4HANA migration and hybrid cloud expansion.

At the same time, the SAP Basis team faced growing pressure to improve operational efficiency while maintaining stability across global environments. Manual workflows limited agility and diverted highly skilled engineers away from strategic  initiatives and innovation.

The company needed a solution that would:

• Automate time-consuming SAP operations
• Improve consistency and reliability across refresh processes
• Support hybrid SAP landscapes and S/4HANA migration initiatives
• Reduce operational risk and manual intervention
• Enable proactive monitoring and faster issue resolution

The Solution: Intelligent SAP Automation with Avantra

The IT services provider selected Avantra following a successful proof of concept demonstrated at a DSAG event. The company was looking for a platform capable of delivering end-to-end automation across its SAP landscape while integrating seamlessly into existing operational processes.

Using Avantra’s out-of-the-box system refresh workflows, they implemented a structured automation framework covering preparation, execution, and post-processing activities. Embedded ABAP logic, role-based permissions, and workflow customization ensured both operational precision and security.

The Avantra Customer Success team worked closely with the IT services provider during onboarding to configure access controls, automate critical refresh tasks, and establish standardized workflows across multiple environments.

Within just 60 days, the IT services provider completed its first fully automated SAP system refresh, marking the beginning of a broader transformation in SAP operations management.

Beyond refresh automation, the company expanded Avantra’s role across its SAP environment by:

• Implementing SAP HANA monitoring for proactive system visibility
• Integrating Avantra alerts into the NetEye monitoring platform through REST APIs
• Developing custom JavaScript-based automations
• Supporting hybrid infrastructure management across on-premise and evolving cloud environments

The Impact: Faster Refreshes, Smarter SAP Operations

What began as a project to automate SAP system refreshes quickly evolved into a broader transformation in how they managed and operated their SAP environment. By replacing manual processes with intelligent automation, the company significantly improved operational efficiency, consistency, and visibility across its hybrid SAP landscape.

Automating SAP Refreshes at Scale

Automating SAP system refreshes delivered immediate operational improvements. Processes that previously required five to seven engineers and more than 100 hours of manual coordination were reduced to fewer than 25 hours of total effort.

“Before Avantra, every refresh meant long weekends and late nights. Now, everything runs in parallel, and we can start a refresh on Friday and be done by Saturday morning.” – Senior SAP Solution Architect 

By replacing manual tasks with standardized automation workflows, the IT services provider significantly reduced operational risk while freeing SAP engineers to focus on optimization and innovation rather than repetitive maintenance work.

Overall, the company reduced SAP engineering effort by more than 75%, saving approximately 40 days of manual work annually.

Accelerating S/4HANA Migration Readiness

Automated refreshes also improved the quality and speed of testing processes during S/4HANA migration initiatives.

With QA and pre-production systems consistently aligned to production data, teams were able to reproduce issues more quickly, validate fixes faster, and accelerate multi-phase migration testing without compromising stability.

“We save so much time rebuilding systems between test phases. Having up-to-date data means we can reproduce production issues instantly and validate fixes far faster.” – Senior SAP Solution Architect 

This improved consistency enabled shorter development cycles and more reliable migration validation across environments.

Extending Automation Beyond System Refreshes

Following the initial deployment, the IT services provider rapidly expanded its use of Avantra’s automation capabilities.

Using Avantra’s JavaScript-based low-code framework, the team developed custom workflows for:

• SAP HANA administration user creation
• SAP kernel upgrade automation
• Operational scripting and workflow refinement
• Experimental generative AI-assisted automation development

“It’s low code, but still code. Generative AI helps us write and debug faster. I can create automations even though I’m not a developer.”  – Senior SAP Solution Architect 

This flexibility enabled the SAP Basis team to continuously automate new operational tasks without relying heavily on external development resources.

Real-Time Visibility Across Hybrid SAP Landscapes

The IT services provider also strengthened proactive monitoring capabilities across its SAP environment by integrating Avantra’s HANA monitoring with its enterprise-wide NetEye platform using REST API integrations.

“We get informed just in time when a database feels bad and before it becomes critical.” – Senior SAP Solution Architect 

This proactive approach improved visibility across hybrid environments, strengthened reliability, and gave operations teams greater confidence in managing large-scale SAP infrastructure.

The Takeaway: Building a Future-Ready SAP Operations Model

Building on the success of automation and monitoring, the IT services provider is continuing to expand Avantra’s role across its SAP operations strategy.

The company is currently:

• Integrating Avantra with Ansible for end-to-end OS and SAP automation
• Exploring automation for SAP kernel upgrades
• Automating certificate lifecycle management
• Developing self-service operational dashboards for standardized workflows

“Our goal is to combine control and efficiency. Avantra gives us the flexibility to automate what we need, when we need it, without losing sight of how our systems run.” – Senior SAP Solution Architect 

As the company continues its S/4HANA transformation and hybrid infrastructure expansion, Avantra remains a central component of its strategy for scalable, resilient, and autonomous SAP operations.