Managed SAP migration for the COOP grocery retail chain

COOP Centrum družstvo is the largest purely Czech purchasing center in the Czech Republic, providing long-term centralized procurement and related services for an extensive network of cooperative stores and retail formats nationwide. The center facilitates an annual purchasing volume of approximately 10 billion CZK, and the entire ecosystem encompasses thousands of retail outlets and hundreds of suppliers with a vast product range. While the center operates with a relatively compact team, this places high demands on the stability, performance, and reliability of information systems, which must support daily retail operations and complex integration links without interruption.

COOP Centrum faced a critical milestone concerning its core information system. The looming end of support for the SAP ECC platform presented a significant technological and operational risk that could no longer be ignored. At the same time, this was not an environment where the system could simply be shut down and restarted. Retail operations were running around the clock, were deeply integrated with external systems, and relied on processes and user habits established over many years.

Consequently, the project's objective was not merely a technical migration to a new version, but rather the establishment of a long-term sustainable and stable platform that would ensure business continuity while enabling future growth. COOP sought a partner who could not only design the appropriate transformation roadmap but also take responsibility for its management, risk mitigation, and the safeguarding of day-to-day operations. This is where the expertise of Aricoma specialists proved essential, bringing deep SAP knowledge and experience from similarly critical transformations to the project.

Aricoma specialists first mapped the existing environment and the customer's target needs in detail through a comprehensive GAP analysis. This revealed technological dependencies as well as procedural and integration links that had to be maintained during the transformation. Based on these findings, a new solution was proposed. The transition from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA was carried out using the Bluefield method—a managed transformation of the existing system that allowed for platform modernization without significant disruptions to users' daily work.

A key challenge of the project was aligning the technical transformation with uninterrupted retail operations. Aricoma therefore assumed the role of lead architect and coordinator of the entire solution, from data and environment preparation through testing management to the controlled go-live in production. Great emphasis was placed on integration stability and meticulous planning of individual steps to ensure the transition was as seamless as possible for end users. The result was a transformation that did not represent an overnight revolution, but rather a deliberate shift to a modern platform upon which COOP can build for the long term.