Case Study: Vodafone achieves faster month-end close, higher automation and real-time insights with SAP HANA

How One Telecommunications Company Achieved Significant Cost Efficiencies by Transforming Its Back-Office and Support Operations

Vodafone, a global telecommunications leader serving more than 362 million customers, faced a pressing back-office challenge: its legacy single-instance SAP ECC system had become slow, heavily customized, and unable to deliver real-time analytics or efficient processes. The company built a benefits-driven, KPI-focused business case—targeting employee experience, automation and standardization—to align middle management and justify a large-scale modernization that would free staff from routine tasks and enable faster, data-driven decisions.

Vodafone migrated from Oracle to SAP HANA and then converted its SAP ECC instance to SAP S/4HANA with SAP Fiori, supported by Accenture and SAP, and integrated cloud solutions (SAP Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Fieldglass). The 18-month rollout across 22 countries delivered increased automation and standardization, retired custom code, improved user experience, measurable cost savings, and a scalable platform for further ML/AI-driven efficiencies—now serving nearly 12,000 professional users and about 93,000 employees on the new Fiori launchpad.

Vodafone

Holger Grewe

Head of Corporate Transformation