World’s largest pulp manufacturer streamlined SAP S/4HANA integration for better outcomes

Cloud-based enterprise resource planning solutions are transforming and enhancing business operations. Yet despite the organisational benefits, businesses are slow to modernise IT, citing challenges in integrating legacy systems due to change management and user adoption issues. They also need to overcome complexities in data migration and customisation, on top of high related upfront costs—all while facing increased data and user demands. 

Understanding the scalability and security of RISE with SAP deployments on Microsoft’s cloud, Wipro, SAP, and Microsoft entered a strategic alliance to enhance the speed and effectiveness of RISE with SAP migrations. The collaboration enabled Wipro, recently recognised in the 2024 Gartner® Competitive Landscape: SAP S/4HANA Application Service Providers report, to offer clients a strategic roadmap and best practices to fully harness the potential of RISE with SAP.  

Its vision? To enhance digital operations, overall efficiency, and improved customer experiences. 

Modernising manufacturing: the Domtar story 

Over the years, the manufacturing industry has seen multiple changes in its growth patterns. For Domtar, the world’s largest pulp manufacturer with over 14,000 employees across 60 locations in North America, this signifies the need to transform to remain agile in an evolving market. Domtar Corporation understood that competitive market efficiency is a key differentiator that helps it to thrive.  

But modernising its operations is a complex undertaking, especially when it underwent a complicated acquisition of three companies. Its first goal is to centralise HR functions, through a modern and cohesive human management system to deliver business value in a more structured manner, but this is hampered by the number of legacy systems adopted during the merger, which made it difficult to transition from a non-supported on-premises model to a cloud one.  

Domtar’s HRIS needed to set a clear roadmap to streamline its internal processes and the number of systems. As a start, the company needed to ensure that data migration for its payroll projects to the cloud is secure, seamless, and transparent. 

Enabling smoother payrolls with a successful RISE with SAP migration 

As one of Domtar Corporation’s long-serving partners, Wipro facilitated the company’s first SAP S/4HANA integration, risk-proofing its HR functions by bringing its payroll systems to the cloud—all of it well in time and on budget. The alliance between Wipro, SAP and Microsoft was a shot in the arm for Domtar to significantly improve the speed and effectiveness of RISE with SAP migrations on the Microsoft Cloud. 

A big part of the successful SAP transformation is attributed to Wipro’s eSymphony, a platform that integrates the digital transformation process—from discovery and assessment to design and orchestration—in one place. eSymphony was customised to meet Domtar’s internal delivery processes, which helped it to implement a strong foundation to access a fully supported system. 

With the new SAP S/4HANA system, all of Domtar’s updates are now maintained by SAP. Extractions performed on payroll have become much faster than ever before. Today, Domtar has access to a fully supported system. Working with the customer’s internal team, Wipro offered expertise, collaboration, insights, and judgments that were crucial to achieve its migration goals.  

Learn more about Domtar’s transformation here or read more about Wipro, SAP and Microsoft collaboration here.