The transition of Utkonos to the new IT architecture, which is based on SAP S/4HANA, has led to many days of problems in the work

2022: New Year's failure

The online store Utkonos, through its own team, has switched to a new IT architecture, which is based on the SAP S\4HANA platform. There were no interruptions, as a result of which access to the store was limited from January 1 to 11, 2022. On the Utkonos website, until the morning of January 11, there was an announcement that the order and delivery of products would be resumed on January 12.

Utkonos Online began to prepare for a large-scale transition to a new system back in 2019. Over the past two years, we have completely redesigned the IT landscape and rethought how our system works. The transition takes place only now, after the completion of the main architectural redesign work. The company expected challenges associated with a large-scale transition to a new architecture and the deployment of a large number of IT systems. However, the service was not stopped, but was put on pause: the shipment of orders did not stop, but was very limited, "said Maria Artamonova, Chief information officer of Utkonos Online, to TAdviser.

According to her, the temporary suspension of orders was due to the need to stabilize all IT systems of the company, to reconcile the correctness of work, to configure security systems for the careful preservation of user data.

As explained by TAdviser Maria Artamonova, from January 1, the company switched to a new architecture. Since January 4, Utkonos began to accept orders, daily increasing slots for customers.

Restrictions on accepting orders, she said, were associated with the start of the transition to a distributed structure of IT systems, which will increase the productivity of all business modules. In the future, this will allow processing more than 100 thousand orders per day.

Despite large-scale changes within, the company's website continues to work correctly and customers can place orders as usual, volumes will be fully restored in the coming days, Artamonova added.

From January 1 to 11, Utkonos limited the acceptance of orders due to the transition to the SAP S\4HANA platform. Photo - Molly.Ru

At the same time, users note that the deadline for resuming work in the application is postponed several times: first, the resumption of delivery was planned to be restored on January 4, then on January 6, then it was announced on January 8, 10 and 12.

The SAP CIS company, answering the TAdviser question, said that they only acted as a software supplier in this project, and the internal team of Utkonos is engaged in implementation and integration.

Until 2020, the migration from SAP ERP ECC 6.0 to SAP S\4HANA Utkonos was carried out with the participation of partner company TeamIdea. According to TAdviser employee TeamIdea, the project was completed in 2020, while online store services were available continuously.

According to a TAdviser source familiar with the activities of Utkonos, disagreements arose between the IT team of the online service and the TeamIdea. As a result, the Utkonos team decided to continue to do everything on their own, without attracting external specialists.

According to a TAdviser source familiar with the circumstances of the failure, the reason for disabling the service was the problem with the integration of Utkonos self-described software with the SAP platform. The interlocutor told TAdviser that the ERP platform is working, but the team cannot run microservices created inside Utkonos on it.

The company's IT team has long been trying to minimize the number of industrial solutions and switch to inhouse development as much as possible.

In 2019, Utkonos Chief information officer said in an interview with TAdviser that the company plans to transfer the bulk of the systems to self-described solutions, although it does not intend to completely abandon third-party platforms. The SAP-based ERP was planned to be saved.

This system is sustainable in terms of accounting processes. Therefore, there is no point in inventing a bicycle, "explained Artamonova

The chief information officer of a large retail chain, who asked not to be named, in a conversation with TAdviser noted that Utkonos was a pioneer. According to him, SAP implementation projects are always complex and large, so few retailers risk switching to SAP S\4HANA.

The experience of migrating to the SAP platform in retail is not only lacking in internal teams, but also in specialized integrators. The project of the Utkonos team, which started several years ago, has become a guideline for all participants in the online trading market, the TAdviser interlocutor added.

2019: Planning the transition to SAP S/4HANA by mid-2020

On November 22, 2019, Utkonos announced that as part of its IT strategy, it plans to transfer all its business processes from SAP ERP ECC 6.0 to the SAP S/4HANA digital platform by mid-2020. The implementation partner is TeamIdea.

According to the company, in the future Utkonos expects to conduct all operational activities on this platform and form a single digital space for the development, improvement and automation of processes in the future, including using the capabilities of SAP Cloud Platform (SCP).

As of November 2019, the company faces the task not only to maintain successful achievements, but also to prepare and implement all necessary changes for the further development of the business, so that it is convenient for both employees and our customers. Utkonos ONLINE operates in 24x7 mode, so reliable systems are fundamentally important for us that can effectively support the operational management of the business, its active growth, as well as allowing us to use machine learning, artificial intelligence and other innovations in working with data. told Elena Suprunova, financial director of Utkonos ONLINE