Customer

Wihuri is an internationally operating corporation with roots dating back to the early 1900s and the wholesale trade. The modern Wihuri subgroups, Wihuri Oy and Wihuri Packaging Oy, specialize in the packaging industry and logistics.

Wihuri Oy Group includes several companies, such as Metro, which serves the restaurant and hotel sector; Technical Trade, which sells and rents machinery and equipment; and Wihuri Aviation, a logistics and service company in the aviation sector.

Project Delivery

Together with Wihuri, we migrated five of their SAP systems to the SAP cloud platform. The project was executed in two phases over the course of 2025.

In the first phase, the SAP systems of Metro-Tukku, Technical Trade, and Wihuri Logistics Center were migrated to the cloud. At the same time, the Metro-Tukku ERP, the Technical Trade ERP, Central Finance, SLT, and Fiori were upgraded to new versions.

In the second phase, the Central Finance and HR systems were integrated with the Metro-Tukku and Technical Trade ERP systems through a data migration.

The cloud migration had three key objectives:

• steps toward a more modern infrastructure
• ensuring continuity for business‑critical systems
• cost predictability and savings

Skaidi was responsible for project management and for coordinating nearly 200 people involved in the migration.

Through close collaboration and clear planning, the migration was carried out smoothly and successfully for Wihuri within a tight schedule. The cooperation continues with platform maintenance.

Justifications for the SAP cloud migration

Wihuri’s SAP systems were previously hosted in their own data centers. Companies often have strategic reasons for moving away from on‑premise servers to a SAP RISE environment. A cloud migration also has practical benefits related to system modernization, as many IT vendors — including SAP — offer their latest solutions in their cloud platforms. This naturally interested Wihuri as well.

When it comes to business‑critical systems such as the order‑to‑delivery chain and financial and HR data, the most important criterion becomes the stability and continuity of the infrastructure.

Organization

The project began with Skaidi supporting the customer in the overall planning of the initiative and in preparing for the transition to a cloud environment. This included tasks such as sizing the platforms, managing archiving, and breaking down the overall workload while taking into account the required changes to integrations and auxiliary systems, as well as ensuring that testing was focused on the right areas.

The resourcing of the personnel required for the migration was carried out through staff leasing for the external specialists, and they worked under Wihuri’s supervision within the project.

The individuals in management roles operated under Wihuri’s mandate, and the SAP team had its own project governance, with SAP’s scope forming a separate sub‑project.

The Importance of Project Management and Minimizing Downtime

Wihuri’s RISE With SAP migration involved multiple business units and systems. In total, nearly 200 people took part in the project from Skaidi, Wihuri, SAP, and several other IT vendors, including Vincit.

The project was managed as a whole, with Skaidi responsible for the day‑to‑day operational leadership. We ensured that tasks were listed, prioritized, and that the project progressed according to schedule. We were also responsible for project management processes such as change management and dependency management.

One of the most critical aspects in the migration of business‑critical systems is minimizing downtime when moving from the test environment to production. This crucial phase was prepared already in the customer’s development and test environments, and the go‑live plan was continuously updated based on the findings

Skaidi has extensive experience in go‑lives and in estimating the duration of service interruptions. We leveraged this expertise to minimize downtime and to ensure that business operations were disrupted as little as possible.

Although the migration did not introduce major changes to Wihuri’s business processes, many things changed backend: the platform, the support model, and the service itself. For this reason, the planning of acceptance testing was started well in advance under the guidance of the test managers. Skaidi provided the test managers with support and a framework that enabled structured test management and progress tracking. The framework also guided the correction of defects identified during testing and the subsequent retesting. It ensured that testing stayed on schedule and that defect resolution did not slow down or halt progress.

For Wihuri, the acceptance testing was a significant effort, as it is best carried out by the people who use the systems in their daily work. This requires the business to stretch temporarily and reorganize their regular tasks.

Assessment and documentation of integrations to support the customer

It is natural to outsource the specialized expertise required for a migration to an organization that focuses on this area. While SAP carried out the actual migration, Skaidi played a key role in the preparation and post‑migration activities. Skaidi’s experts leveraged SAP’s guidelines and methodology throughout the process.

The preparation for system go‑live and the subsequent activities includes identifying dependencies, planning changes and assessing their impacts, supporting testing, implementing fixes based on test results, planning both the go‑live and rollback procedures, providing enhanced post‑go‑live support, and decommissioning legacy solutions.

In practice, this meant reviewing all systems and applications connected to the migrating systems and documenting the integrations line by line. This work requires interpretation and deep expertise from the specialist. All findings are documented and assessed in terms of how the migration affects the integrations and their functionality

The work simultaneously involved building test readiness and supporting the transition to production. At Wihuri, there were roughly 300 integrations, and for each one it was necessary to assess access rights, security requirements, who is authorized to manage them, and how that management should be carried out.

One of the keys to success was continuously updating the go‑live plan based on testing findings as the project moved from one environment to the next. This process began already when transitioning from the development environment to the test environment, and the plan was refined throughout based on the test results

Overall, the technical work required for a successful migration demanded both a deep understanding of Wihuri’s environment and top‑tier expertise in SAP systems from the specialists involved.

To support the production go‑live and the customer’s operations afterward, comprehensive documentation was created to reduce dependency on individual experts. This ensures that knowledge is transferred to the customer and other specialists, and it also facilitates any future IT audits.

The production go‑live itself was a success. Hundreds of tasks were resolved during the process, along with a few surprises, but thanks to strong preparation, proactive risk management, and the expertise of the project team, Wihuri’s RISE With SAP migration was completed on schedule without any negative impact on business operations or service quality.

RISE with SAP support after the project

After the project, the responsibility for supporting the SAP RISE platforms was transferred from the project team to Skaidi’s 24/7 support service. We continue to support Wihuri with platform monitoring, outages, and other necessary requests to SAP support, and we proactively propose improvements to the platforms. The Skaidi experts who worked on the project are also part of Skaidi’s support service, which has ensured a smooth transfer of knowledge. This has secured stable production operations and helped Wihuri avoid disruptions in their business.

Interested in RISE with SAP

You can contact us if you’d like to hear more:

Suvi Lintunen [email protected], +358503606750

Samuli Kaisanlahti [email protected], +358405772003

We are happy to share more about our experiences and provide sparring support if your organization is considering this topic.