Center for Enablement offering brings low-code value to existing ERP

Given the EY history with audit, tax, and business strategy, it is not surprising the company has a leading, global enterprise resource planning (ERP) competency, with expertise across numerous ERP suites including SAP and Microsoft.

Ernst & Young Services (Ireland) with its market-leading SAP practice is complemented by a Dynamics 365 and Power Platform team of more than 50 consultants. Supported by a global network of over 10,000 practitioners, the EY organization has been recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Microsoft Business Applications Services, Q1 2024. This team has found Power Platform to be particularly useful in addressing business needs for SAP customers looking for rapid ways to automate manual, on-premises processes. “SAP projects, whether on-premises or moving to the cloud with SAP HANA, are typically multi-year, multi-jurisdictional implementations,” said Brian Moroney, Partner, Head of Digital and Emerging Technologies at Ernst & Young Services (Ireland). “We found that if you have requirements for automation, integration, or analytics related to ERP systems, we can offer an accelerated time to market and increased agility by enhancing it with Power Platform. Where larger complex systems are more challenged to show short- and medium-term value, Power Platform can deliver impact very quickly.”

Kerry Group modernizes management of capital investments with Power Platform

Kerry Group, a global leader in sustainable nutrition solutions for the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical markets, was looking to replace a 20+ year-old Lotus Notes system that was being used to manage billions of euros in capital investment engineering projects globally. Kerry Group, which uses SAP as its core ERP system, sent out an RFP to multiple partners. EY Ireland proposed the creation of a Strategic Capital Information System (SCIS) using Power Platform: a model-driven Power App, Power Automate for automated workflows, Power Platform SAP Connector, and Power BI for real-time visibility into capital expenditures. “We knew that the Lotus Notes system was causing issues with producing the data they needed for the somewhat manual approval processes that were in place. Any solution we proposed needed to be agile and flexible enough to be implemented quickly, but also allow them to transform and automate those processes. Power Platform was the right answer,” said Uros Djordjevic, Business Applications Lead Partner at Ernst & Young Services (Ireland). The project also incorporated establishing a Center for Enablement (C4E), an EY advancement on the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence offering that ensured appropriate guardrails around security, data protection, licensing, and supported user adoption.

EY built and implemented the Power Platform solution in eight months, a project timeline that was 40 percent more efficient than the alternative proposals. This timeline included using the dataflows within Power Platform to migrate data from 2,000 current projects and 15 years of historical records to SCIS. Now in production, 1,000 users are accessing the SCIS daily across the globe.

“We liked the innovative approach that EY took with Power Platform,” said Louise Tierney, Global Operations Finance Director at Kerry Group. “The integration built into the design has allowed us to interface with our ERP system, eliminating email requests and manual templates. The transparency and availability of data means we can quickly and easily provide insights to our stakeholders, and the overall flexibility of the platform gives us confidence in knowing that the application can grow with us as an organization—not to mention that the general user experience is much improved.”

A strong foundation for low-code growth

Because of the success with the SCIS and C4E solutions, EY Ireland is already working with Kerry Group on further opportunities where Power Platform can help accelerate digital transformation within the company. “Kerry is looking to implement similar automation and improved visibility for its digital projects, as the digital team has seen what is available on Strategic Capital and is looking for the same efficiencies in executing its own initiatives,” said Djordjevic. “We are also discussing how Power Platform can help create visibility into sustainability-related data across the company in support of Kerry’s broader sustainability agenda.”

EY sees its work with Kerry Group as typical of the value that Power Platform can drive within an organization without having to disrupt the core, already-established ERP systems. “Our practice has seen a huge amount of progress and value created during the last 12 months,” said Moroney. “Market demand is growing and momentum is building, helping us push into new verticals like digital health and digital manufacturing, along with sustainability more broadly. We see so much potential for working with Microsoft and SAP solutions together to make a difference for our clients.”

"We found that if you have requirements for automation, integration, or analytics related to ERP systems, we can offer an accelerated time to market and increased agility by enhancing it with Power Platform."

— Brian Moroney, Partner, Head of Digital and Emerging Technologies at Ernst & Young Services (Ireland)

"We liked the innovative approach that EY took with Power Platform."

— Louise Tierney, Global Operations Finance Director at Kerry Group

EY teams speed delivery of new capabilities for SAP customers using Power Platform