Provision of SAP S/4HANA® Cloud, Next-Generation ERP, to ITOCHU International Inc., a U.S. Subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (Ichiro Tsuge, President & CEO; headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, hereinafter "CTC") has provided the SAP S/4HANA® Cloud, the next-generation ERP, to ITOCHU International Inc. (Claire Chino, President & CEO; headquartered in New York, USA), a U.S. subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Yoshihisa Suzuki, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”). Going forward, it will gradually introduce the system to approximately 50 local subsidiaries operating in countries in the world.

ITOCHU's overseas local subsidiaries began to adopt the SAP ERP (ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning) as a mission-critical system in 2003. The system is currently in operation in approximately 50 locations in 24 countries in the world. ITOCHU, following the completion of initiatives for shifting the headquarters' mission-critical system to SAP S/4HANA® in 2018, has decided to shift mission-critical systems to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud in its overseas local subsidiaries, with a view to helping the overseas subsidiaries digitize their overall operation processes, enhancing functions to create innovations, and building robust platforms.

The SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a SaaS-type cloud ERP service provided by SAP. With multilingual support and compliance with the accounting standards of different countries, it features the smooth implementation of introduction processes overseas. Because it is a SaaS-based application, the user can use the service without owning assets and benefits from upgrades in their ERP systems, which is another feature.

The project was undertaken jointly by three companies, namely, ITOCHU, CISD(Asia)Co., Ltd., an overseas IT operating company of ITOCHU, and CTC. ITOCHU's overseas local subsidiaries, including ITOCHU International, decided to adopt the approach of making their ongoing operations compatible with the standard functions of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud to make sure that changes are implemented flexibly in the range of businesses that they operate.

CTC inspected the current system, and worked chiefly on reducing the development of add-ons and integrating interfaces (displays) for the introduction of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud through a range of means including offshore development. In addition, it accomplished effective data migration from the previous system by using the SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti, Cloud Edition, a SAP S/4HANA migration solution of BACKOFFICE ASSOCIATES JAPAN K.K. (headquartered in the USA)

Based on expertise accumulated through the provision of the SAP S/4HANA, CTC will contribute to further improvements in customer services by leveraging a comprehensive solution that includes pre-introduction study, system migration through the adoption of the latest technologies, peripheral system construction and operation services.