Real-Time SAP Insight, Zero Downtime: Shutterfly’s Journey to SAP RISE Operational Excellence

Shutterfly, one of the leading e-commerce companies for personalized products and custom design, was preparing for a major transition from its HEC private cloud environment to SAP RISE. Supporting multiple international brands and operating at peak seasonal scale, Shutterfly needed a way to manage its complex SAP operations while reducing incident response times and enabling global teams to work more independently.

They chose Avantra - the intelligent observability and automation platform purpose-built for SAP landscapes.

The Challenge: Managing Complexity at Global Scale

Shutterfly’s SAP Basis team was facing significant operational challenges:

• A sprawling, global SAP environment supporting Consumer, Lifetouch, and Business Solutions divisions
• Seasonal scale requirements increasing operational strain during peak periods
• Thousands of performance-related support tickets annually, often with slow resolution times
• Limited visibility and root cause isolation using legacy tools like SAP Solution Manager and CAST
• High dependency on Basis support for basic system health checks

As the business moved toward SAP RISE, it became clear that they needed a centralized monitoring and automation platform that could provide real-time observability, streamline toolsets, and empower business units across their global footprint.

The Solution: SAP Observability and Automation in One Platform

With Avantra, Shutterfly transformed its SAP operations:

• Embedded dashboards in SharePoint, enabling self-service status checks by teams in Australia, Israel, the UK, and other locations
• Integration with SAP BTP and CPI systems for visibility into hybrid services critical to customer-facing workflows
• Automated monitoring of S/4HANA, BTP apps, and seasonal peak loads
• Proactive alerting on failed Intermediate Documents (IDocs) sent directly to procurement and finance teams for faster resolution without Basis intervention
• Unified toolchain replacing multiple legacy monitoring solutions, reducing complexity and cost

A highlight came when a persistent performance issue after moving to SAP RISE, unresolved for weeks by SAP support, was identified and resolved using Avantra’s deep monitoring. Shutterfly’s detailed root cause analysis not only solved their issue but also enabled SAP to apply the fix for other RISE customers.

The Impact: From Firefighting to Strategic Innovation

Avantra helped Shutterfly shift from reactive firefighting to proactive, intelligent SAP operations:

• Reduced ticket volume from thousands annually to a manageable level
• Cut critical issue resolution times from 7 days to under 1 hour
• Decommissioned legacy tools (Solution Manager, CAST) to lower operational overhead
• Monitored 189+ BTP instances with integrated real-time performance dashboards company-wide

By freeing up Basis resources, the IT team could focus on continuous innovation and delivering better business outcomes.

The Takeaway: Enabling Scalable, Future-Ready SAP Operations

What started as a move to modernize SAP monitoring became a transformation of Shutterfly’s entire SAP operations strategy. With Avantra’s native and custom checks, embedded dashboards, and intelligent alerting, Shutterfly not only improved day-to-day performance but also positioned itself for long-term agility in the SAP RISE environment.

At a Glance

Challenges

• Complex, global SAP landscape with seasonal scale requirements
• Thousands of performance-related support tickets annually
• Delayed issue resolution and limited visibility with legacy tools
• High dependency on Basis support

Benefits with Avantra

• Real-time SAP observability and alerting
• Self-service diagnostics for global teams
• Faster resolution of critical issues (from 7 days to < 1 hour)
• Simplified operations and reduced costs by decommissioning legacy tools