GEA and SAP announce strategic partnership

The two companies have a longstanding history of fruitful collaboration. The strategic partnership will elevate this relationship to a new level and realize mutual benefits for both companies.

GEA has announced plans for the consolidation of its global process and ERP system landscape with the Global BPM and Global SAP programs at its Capital Markets Day on September 26, 2019 in London. The new partnership is intended not only to implement an unprecedented form of quality assurance and architecture co-creation, but will also be a supporting pillar of GEA’s overall growth strategy. As a strategic partner, GEA will gain access to the entire portfolio of SAP products and will be particularly close to SAP’s innovation cycles.

The partnership will support GEA at further accelerating its efforts to digitize the company and its business model. The ultimate aim is to implement one global ERP system, allowing GEA to establish full transparency on company data. This is the foundation for significantly simplifying, accelerating and harmonizing the company’s business processes and thus leveraging further synergy potentials. The underlying state-of-the-art S/4HANA technology ensures optimal scalability due to cloud-based operations. Executive Sponsors of the partnership are Marcus A. Ketter and Thomas Saueressig, SAP Executive Board Member and lead SAP Product Engineering.

Marcus A. Ketter, CFO of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, is looking forward to engaging in the partnership with SAP: “By strategically partnering with SAP, we are tackling a major challenge for businesses on the path of accelerated digitalization: Dual transformation. This means harmonizing existing processes and system landscapes in the shortest possible time, while opening up new business areas through digital innovations. Together with SAP, we are creating one digital source of truth for our data and thus a decisive competitive advantage: all decision-makers worldwide always have the right data at hand and can react quickly. Simultaneously, we are collaborating with the market leader to develop best-in-class digital solutions for our core business.”

Christian Niederhagemann, CIO of GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft, adds: “Together with SAP we want to bring GEA to the next chapter by using the latest state-of-the-art technology for our enterprise. We are looking forward to adopt SAP’s leading Business Technology Platform which will enable us to build a global, future proof and powerful IT infrastructure for GEA.”

"With the SAP solutions for digital transformation, we support the GEA on its way to becoming an intelligent company. Together, we are designing a process landscape with cloud-based applications that are based on modern, digital technologies," says Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE responsible for the SAP Product Engineering division. "The switch to SAP S/4HANA means more than a technological innovation for companies. It also gives customers the opportunity to redesign their business processes to simplify procedures for customers and employees and to establish new business models.”

GEA and SAP will keep the public continuously informed about the partnership and important milestones as part of its regular communication activities.