Severn Trent Water taps SAP benefits as HANA begins to flow

Midlands based utility business Severn Trent Water has adopted the cloud based in-memory analytics tool SAP HANA as the latest iteration of the extensive use of SAP at the FTSE listed organisation.

Departing CIO Myron Hrycyk standardised and simplified processes at Severn Trent Water onto an SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform after he joined the organisation in 2008. Hrycyk is bringing his seven year career at Severn Trent Water to an end, one which has seen him recognised by this title, peers and industry groups as a transformational CIO.

“SAP HANA is of course a business driven decision as we wanted to analyse and report on performance data very rapidly and also radically simplify our reporting,” the Group CIO told this title at the Severn Trent Water Coventry headquarters (pictured).

“The implementation was very rapid and its has enabled us to exploit the massive amount of data we capture. We have started to gain better insight in to our business and shape business outcomes.

“I have been impressed at the skills of IBM our systems integrator. We worked very collaboratively together – a key factor in any SAP related implementation.  I’ve done a lot of SAP implementations and I generally believe that the benefits flow through many years after the initial business case timeframe and often in ways that were not even considered at the outset of the project. In 2009 and 2010 here we realised we needed to transform our operational processes and drive efficiency.  With SAP at it’s core we responded by delivering a full people, process and technology change.  We have continued to build on the platform – SAP HANA in the cloud being our latest step driving benefits not thought of seven years ago.  So the business case can be delivered and really exploited five to six years later. ERP is for life,” he added with a smile.

Hrycyk has a track record of successful ERP implementations during his CIO career, having successfully deployed SAP for logistics giants Unipart as well as world leading publishing house Oxford University Press (OUP).

The CIO still has the hunger to lead major transformations in a CIO role and for now is focusing on mentoring and putting something back into the CIO community.