Through innovation, Nestlé has built its reputation as “The Good Food, Good Life” company. And now, this food marketer and manufacturer is embarking on a major digital transformation designed to accelerate growth and strengthen its competitive edge. At the center of this evolution is a modernized digital core built on next-generation SAP technology — a foundation that will help the company move faster, operate smarter, and deliver results with greater agility.

Nestlé is upgrading its digital core to increase speed, innovate smarter, and deliver results more quickly. As part of this daily digital transformation, operators use a tablet in Cacapava KitKat factory in Brazil.

This enhanced digital backbone opens the door for artificial intelligence and automation at scale. By harnessing advanced data insights and intelligent systems, Nestlé aims to elevate decision-making across its global operations, streamline complexity, and bring new levels of precision to its processes.

The shift isn’t just about technology — it’s about unlocking new possibilities for innovation. With deeper visibility into supply, demand, and operational performance, teams across the company can act with greater confidence, respond to challenges more quickly, and develop solutions that better serve customers and consumers.

Ultimately, this transformation makes Nestlé more efficient, more connected, and more capable of delivering what the world expects from one of its most trusted brands. By accelerating global product rollouts and enabling faster adaptation to evolving needs, Nestlé is positioning itself to grow sustainably — and continue shaping the future of food.

Supply Chain Digital Transformation Through AI

Nestlé has successfully completed the first part of a major upgrade of its global digital core with the world's largest-ever SAP upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private edition. This milestone in Nestlé's digital transformation strengthens the company's ability to drive growth by improving its operational efficiency and its responsiveness to evolving consumer trends. It will also free up resources to invest in Nestlé's iconic global brands.

Nestlé's upgrade to the next-generation SAP technology will enable the deployment of AI at scale to achieve better insights as well as the automation and improvement of processes across the company's business operations. It includes embedding SAP's AI copilot directly into Nestlé's core business systems to help employees access insights, automate routine tasks, and make faster, more informed decisions. This will help Nestlé better respond to changing consumer trends and retailer needs and improve efficiency in areas such as supply chain management, procurement, order fulfillment for retailers and investment prioritization.

"Driving growth through innovation is a top priority. We are transforming our business to invest more boldly in the best opportunities,” says Anna Manz, Nestlé Chief Financial Officer, who is responsible for Integrated Business Services. “We need to combine great consumer insights and innovation with flexibility and scale, to provide great quality products to consumers around the world when, where and how they want them. This upgrade will help us build multi-year innovation pipelines, more agile production and digital-first marketing and sales platforms for areas like cold coffee, therapeutic pet food and modern cooking aids."

The Scope of Digital Transformation

The move means that 50 000 Nestlé users across 112 countries in the company's Asia, Oceania and Africa region are already able to benefit from the new system's capabilities. Thanks to Nestlé's streamlined tech architecture, the company will be able to complete the upgrade across the rest of the Group within only two years, significantly faster than similarly sized peers.

"Nestlé's successful go-live of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition showcases how scale can be a strategic advantage for innovation,” says Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Customer Services & Delivery. “As one of the world's most recognizable and forward-thinking companies, with the go-live on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, the company exemplifies how cutting-edge technology empowers global brands to anticipate consumer trends, optimize operations, and deliver exceptional experiences at scale."

Technically Speaking: “Making It Happen”

Nestlé's SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software connects core business processes, from manufacturing and sales to supply chain, finance, and human resources, end-to-end in a single system, enabling streamlined operations and improved decision-making. This unmatched global ERP core and strong data foundations are the basis for Nestlé's global digital transformation.

"We are building a future-ready enterprise - one that works smarter and faster,” says Chris Wright, Head of Nestlé IT and CIO. “Having a common ERP system as our backbone is already a tremendous advantage for Nestlé. It provides a unified platform and data foundation that allows us to execute end-to-end and have visibility across our entire company and beyond. With the upgrade, we gain more flexibility, capabilities and insights that will help us roll out new products globally faster to meet the needs of our customers and consumers. And with the use of AI and automation at scale, we'll drive efficiency and effectiveness, throughout our value chain."

Examples of what the upgrade will further improve include:

• Next-generation intelligent order fulfillment for retail customers in-store and online, matching supply with demand in real time. With greater reliability and flexibility, it will ensure shoppers always find the products they want, when and how they want them.
• Real-time, data-driven decision-making for consistency across reporting and planning processes.
• Automated and standardized procurement processes in the cloud across global operations, meaning real-time spend visibility and significant cost savings.

Since 2000, Nestlé operates on a single SAP ERP business process template deployed across three geographical regions, enabling standardized processes across its businesses in 185 countries. Building on the company's 2022 transition from traditional on-premise ERP systems to the modern, cloud-based SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, the current upgrade, combined with Nestlé's global, shared data foundations, position the company with a uniquely robust digital core, ready for AI and automation at scale across its value chain. This upgrade includes the future integration of Joule, SAP's intelligent conversational AI copilot, which will be embedded directly into Nestlé's core business systems. Joule will help employees access insights more easily, automate routine tasks, and make faster, more informed decisions. This pivotal step in Nestlé's digital transformation journey is future-proofing its digital core and enabling tech-driven business innovation to unlock new value across its iconic global brands. See more information from Nestle on this article.

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