Coordinated cutover of five interdependent SAP, integration and digital programmes
Services Provided
Cross-programme Cutover Manager
Business Challenge
Business context: The client was replacing its core SAP landscape as part of a group-wide standardisation: finance, logistics and asset management moving to S/4HANA and EAM, customer billing moving to a new HANA-based platform – all landing on the same year-end.
Delivery challenge: Five programmes with separate teams, plans and governance had to go live within one ~45-day window, sharing one productive system, one migration sequence and dozens of interfaces – with no integrated cutover view across them.
Risks & constraints: A legally fixed go-live date that could not move; for the billing platform no rollback and no go/no-go fallback; staged system freezes affecting more than a hundred business processes; and interface readiness still open four months before go-live.
Why external support: The organisation needed a neutral, cross-programme cutover lead who could see across programme boundaries, hold owners to dates and give leadership a single, evidence-based readiness picture.
Profexec Contribution
Cross-programme cutover leadership: Took ownership of the overarching cutover across all five programmes and built one integrated cutover timeline from the individual programme plans.
Dependency & interface control: Set up a shared dependency register linking go-live prerequisites (system, interface and middleware dates) across programmes, and escalated blocked items with named owners.
Business impact & continuity: Consolidated the process-level impact assessment of the system freezes – which processes stop, which need a workaround, which are critical – and aligned business continuity plans with the business owners.
Governance & reporting: Designed the cutover governance and reporting cadence – weekly sponsor reporting, moving to daily reporting through the cutover, and denser checkpoints around the technical peaks.
Single source of truth: Delivered a cutover command-centre dashboard (timeline, dependencies, impact map, readiness heatmap, decision log, document catalogue) generated from one data source.
Change management coordination: Aligned internal communication and end-user training across the programmes with the central change management function.
Results & Business Impact
One integrated cutover plan: Five separate programme plans consolidated into a single cross-programme timeline with one shared milestone set and the critical technical peaks identified.
Business impact made visible: 100+ business processes classified by cutover impact and criticality, giving business owners a clear basis for workarounds and continuity plans.
Risks surfaced early: Hidden cross-programme risks raised months ahead of go-live – including scope leakage between programmes, unconfirmed interface dates and blocked integration items – each with an owner and escalation path.
Better decision quality: Cross-checking programme sources exposed inconsistent dates and figures before they reached leadership, so decisions were made on reconciled data.
Governance in place: Decision log, scope baseline and escalation rules established; reporting cadence agreed with the programme sponsors.
Go-live outcome: [To be completed after go-live – e.g. go-live dates met, downtime vs. plan, hypercare incidents, business continuity maintained.]
