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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Examples of what the upgrade will further improve include:
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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