The Situation

A live SAP transformation, a planned legacy transition, and an unexpected EDI gap

A global industrial manufacturer running BPCS v6.x across operations in the United States, Europe, and Canada was executing a multi-site SAP S/4HANA implementation. 

As part of that transformation, internal BPCS subject matter experts and legacy resources were deliberately transitioned onto the SAP program — a planned move to focus the organization’s best people on the future platform. 

The legacy BPCS environment, however, remained essential to day-to-day operations across all three regions and still needed active support throughout the transition period.

The additional complexity was the knowledge gap that accompanied the transition. Several third-party support providers also transitioned out of the arrangement around the same time, and formal knowledge transfer had been limited. 

What remained was a heavily customized BPCS v6.x environment spanning Financials, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and EDI, with institutional knowledge now concentrated in people focused on the SAP program and a support backlog that had been building as a result. 

One element was unplanned: a key EDI resource left the organization unexpectedly, creating a gap in a function that would become central to the SAP transformation itself.

The Challenge

When VIRTUTEM was engaged, the support landscape required immediate attention:

• 150+ open support tickets
• Approximately 130 new tickets entering the queue each month
• Average backlog age exceeding 80 days

The organization needed a partner who could absorb the BPCS support responsibility, learn the environment thoroughly, and do it without placing any additional burden on a transformation program that could not afford distraction.

The Solution

How VIRTUTEM onboarded: three months to shadow, five months to lead

VIRTUTEM did not assume support responsibility on day one. 

The first three months were structured discovery: working through available documentation, shadowing the client’s remaining staff, and observing live tickets to understand the specific customizations, business logic, and workflows built into this environment over decades. 

No production changes were made until the team had a clear understanding of what they were supporting.

By month three, VIRTUTEM was handling tickets independently. 

By month five, the team was the primary support resource across the environment. 

That timeline — structured shadowing, independent support, and primary ownership in five months — reflects a deliberate onboarding model designed to protect the client from the risk of a support provider learning at the client’s expense.

Onboarding into an environment with limited documentation is never without friction. 

There were incidents along the way — issues that surfaced because the documentation that should have explained a process simply did not exist. 

When they occurred, VIRTUTEM’s response was consistent: open communication with the client, full focus on getting the fix right, and expedited resolution. No issue was hidden or minimized. That transparency, as much as the technical capability, is what built the foundation for the trust that followed.

Beyond ticket resolution, the engagement surfaced several IBM i job stream issues that had been causing delays at period-end close. 

These were undocumented processes — manual steps that had accumulated over time and were creating disruption during the most operationally sensitive moments of the financial calendar. VIRTUTEM identified, documented, and resolved each one, removing the manual intervention and restoring reliable period-end processing. 

That work was not in the original scope. It was the natural outcome of a team that paid close enough attention to find problems the client did not know it had.

The engagement ramped geographically as trust developed. VIRTUTEM began with US operations, then added Europe and Canada, and ultimately assumed EDI ownership when a key EDI resource transitioned out of the organization. 

At peak, a team of six specialists provided:

• Global 24×5 support with 24×7 on-call coverage across all three regions
• Functional coverage across Financials, Distribution, Manufacturing, and EDI
• Technical application support and BPCS issue resolution
• Structured knowledge capture and environment documentation
• Active participation in the concurrent SAP S/4HANA transformation program

The engagement operates on a two-level governance structure that has been in place since the beginning. 

At the operational level, VIRTUTEM meets weekly with the client’s IT team and business users to review open tickets, address emerging issues, and ensure the support team remains closely aligned with day-to-day business needs. 

At the strategic level, VIRTUTEM meets monthly with senior executives to surface any issues requiring leadership attention and to ensure engagement remains calibrated to the client’s evolving business priorities. 

That combination — weekly operational cadence, monthly executive alignment — is what keeps a long-term managed services engagement from drifting into a transactional relationship.

The Results

Backlog eliminated, operations uninterrupted

Within months of engagement, the support landscape was transformed:

Open ticket backlog: 150+ reduced to approximately 30

Monthly ticket volume: approximately 130 reduced to approximately 40

Average backlog age: 80+ days reduced to under 30 days

More importantly, business operations across all three regions continued without interruption throughout the transition. 

The SAP transformation program maintained its timeline. The client’s internal teams remained focused on the go-live rather than managing a legacy support crisis alongside it.

From Support Provider to Transformation Partner: Bridging BPCS and SAP on EDI

When a key EDI resource left the organization during the engagement, VIRTUTEM assumed ownership of the BPCS EDI environment and became the client’s primary resource for the BPCS side of the EDI transition — working alongside the client’s SAP implementation team rather than replacing it. 

VIRTUTEM’s role was to ensure that the legacy BPCS EDI environment remained stable and that the transition of EDI trading partner relationships from BPCS to SAP was supported from the BPCS side throughout.

VIRTUTEM’s EDI responsibilities across the transition included:

• Supporting EDI migration from the BPCS side, working alongside the SAP implementation team
• BPCS EDI configuration, mapping support, and trading partner coordination
• Integration testing and validation between BPCS and the incoming SAP environment
• Business process validation from the BPCS application perspective
• Support through mock cutovers and production cutover activities
• Data validation and issue resolution on the BPCS side
• Post-go-live support as each site transitioned off BPCS

EDI transactions continued without interruption through each site’s go-live and production cutover. Trading partner relationships were maintained. No customer shipments were disrupted by the platform transition.

As the SAP program progressed and the client built internal EDI capability to align more closely with their business users, VIRTUTEM transitioned from primary BPCS EDI owner to a collaborative model — supporting the client’s own EDI staff rather than replacing them. 

The engagement flexed with the client’s needs: stepping in when capacity was absent, stepping back when internal capability was ready.

As each SAP site went live, overall engagement naturally right-sized. The team that had expanded to six specialists at peak scaled back as the client’s own SAP-enabled capacity came online. VIRTUTEM continues to support the remaining BPCS environment as the phased SAP rollout progresses.

What This Engagement Demonstrates

This engagement is a direct answer to the question every executive asks before committing to a managed services provider: What happens when things go wrong at the worst possible time?

A global industrial manufacturer deliberately transitioned its BPCS team onto a live SAP implementation across three geographies — the right strategic decision, but one that created a support gap at exactly the moment the backlog needed attention. 

An unplanned transition of a key EDI resource added a second gap in a critical function. 

The knowledge was largely undocumented, and the transformation could not slow down. VIRTUTEM absorbed the BPCS support responsibility through structured onboarding, expanded geographically as trust developed, assumed ownership of BPCS EDI, and worked alongside the SAP team through each site go-live, resolved undocumented period-end job stream issues, and then right-sized as the client’s own capacity recovered. 

The engagement continues today.

The engagement demonstrates four things specifically:

• VIRTUTEM can onboard into an undocumented environment under pressure without disrupting production
• VIRTUTEM’s EDI capability is production-grade — sufficient to own BPCS EDI and support a global migration to SAP through go-live
• VIRTUTEM scales with the engagement in both directions — growing when the scope expands, right-sizing when the client’s own capacity recovers
• The relationship continues — VIRTUTEM remains the managed services partner for this client today

If your organization is facing a similar situation — a retirement, a knowledge gap, a concurrent transformation, or a support backlog that is growing faster than it is being resolved — this is the kind of engagement VIRTUTEM is built for. 

Request a complimentary ERP Environment Assessment at virtutem.com/contact-us to understand what that would look like for your environment.