Greenfield SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud in Five Months

Learn how a full-service technology integration and management firm partnered with Nihilent to bring data from many sources into one place. Fast, interactive Power BI dashboards, tailored to each stakeholder, now give the firm's teams clearer insight and faster decisions.

Service

Enterprise Digital Transformation / ERP & Cloud Advisory / GROW with SAP

Vertical

Chemicals & Fertilizers / Manufacturing

Region

Australia & India

Tech Stack

SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud (GROW with SAP), SAP PM, SAP BTP, SAP Market Rate Management (MRM) with Refinitiv, SAP Multibank Connectivity

Greenfield SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud in Five Months

Client Overview

The client is building a low emission ammonia and urea plant in Australia, set to be among the largest urea manufacturing facilities in the country. The plant has a large operational footprint and an extensive equipment base that requires planned maintenance. Ammonia is produced in house, with urea distributed to international markets. The enterprise spans seven legal entities across Australia and India and was designed from the ground up for efficiency, reliability, and integrated operations at scale.

Business Challenges

Building a global manufacturing enterprise from scratch called for a digital core ready on day one, alongside the new plant, with no room for technical debt.

A New ERP for a New Plant

Finance, HR, and supply chain processes had to be built from scratch across two countries and be right the first time.

Compliance Across Seven Entities

Operations in Australia and India had to meet two sets of regulatory, tax, and reporting requirements from go live.

A Volatile Commodities Market

Fertilizer pricing moves with global commodity indices, and decisions based on stale data put daily margins at risk.

Asset Reliability from Day One

A large, equipment intensive plant needed planned maintenance and reliability tracking in place from the start of operations.

Fragmented Banking Connections

Multiple point to point bank integrations would limit real time cash visibility and payment tracking.

Future Upgrades Without Disruption

Custom code would create technical debt and put every future SAP quarterly update at risk.

How Nihilent Addressed This

Nihilent deployed a cross functional SAP team to design and deliver a greenfield SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud implementation built for the chemicals and fertilizers industry.

Industry Ready Configuration

Applied SAP best practices for fertilizer logistics, byproduct costing, and production planning instead of custom code

Real Time Market Rate Management

Automated live commodity rate imports into financial workflows using SAP MRM with Refinitiv

Simplified Treasury with Multibank Connectivity

Replaced multiple point to point bank integrations with a single interface for live cash visibility

Plant Maintenance from Day One

Implemented SAP PM for proactive maintenance scheduling and asset reliability tracking

Clean Core Extensions on SAP BTP

Built side by side extensions on SAP BTP, isolating customizations from upgrade risk

One Integrated Platform Across Entities

Brought six Australian entities and one Indian entity live on a single digital core

Key Results & Outcomes

5 Months

to a full greenfield go live

7

legal entities integrated across Australia and India

6

modules live, from Finance and Procurement to Plant Maintenance and Quality

100%

clean core architecture maintained

Real Time

commodity market rates embedded in financial workflows

Live

cash visibility through a single banking integration layer

Key Takeaway / Conclusion

The client was not migrating away from a legacy system. It built a new ERP platform in step with its new plant, with SAP best practices as the baseline. With live production and cost visibility, a scalable SAP BTP extension framework ready for AI, analytics, and automation, and Nihilent Application Management Services in place after go live, the business now runs on a digital core built to scale. For Australia's manufacturing sector, a greenfield plant of this size going live on an integrated digital core in five months is a defining moment.

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