Syniti’s Data First strategy drives Bridgestone transformation project

Syniti is highlighting its partnership with Bridgestone EMEA, the regional strategic business unit of Bridgestone Corporation, a global leader in premium tyres and sustainable mobility solutions. The partnership aimed to deliver one of the largest transformation projects in Bridgestone’s history — its migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The company’s goal was to remove siloes across the organisation by consolidating business processes across its SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) system into one SAP S/4HANA Cloud instance allowing the company to improve operational efficiency, data accuracy and set the stage for future growth, automation, and innovation in the tyre and mobility sectors.

The project, spanning 26 European countries, was launched as previous attempts with a Big Bang go-live faced challenges. With just nine months until their planned 2024 go-live, Bridgestone turned to Syniti to support a successful launch. The project was not without its challenges; the compressed timeline meant multiple data loads had to be fit into a shortened time frame. Outdated systems brought data quality and integration issues, resulting in Bridgestone’s business experiencing continuous modifications during the migration process – requiring flexibility and precision from the Syniti project team. Despite these challenges, Bridgestone achieved a 100% master data load, significantly enhancing their data accuracy, and achieved a 0.001% variance in inventory reconciliation — a critical component of their financial audits.

Syniti’s Data First approach delivered significant results, including a 90% improvement in migrated master data accuracy. This accurate and reliable data became the cornerstone of Bridgestone’s new business processes, allowing the company to more fully realise the benefits of its SAP S/4HANA Cloud investment. By consolidating Bridgestone’s processes and improving data quality, the company is now better positioned to automate and innovate within the tyre and mobility sector. This partnership allowed Bridgestone to more fully realise its business transformation goals by aligning to common standards that enhance efficiency across multiple business processes and increase scalability across its operations.

Bart Kerkhofs, CIO and Vice President of IT at Bridgestone EMEA, stated: "Our company is speeding up its transformation to be even more customer oriented, agile, efficient, data driven, sustainable and future-proof. This necessitates a comprehensive approach that encompasses all facets of our operations including upscaling our digital capabilities to elevate the overall stakeholder experience. Syniti was critical in helping us improve our approach to manage the data for our ambitious transformation effort. The Syniti team has proven they can do the hard things; their credibility was already established, and we knew we could trust their Data First approach to achieve excellent results.”

Kevin Campbell, CEO, Syniti, said: “We are proud to have played a key role in Bridgestone EMEA's digital transformation. Our team's dedication to delivering high-quality data and seamless migration was central to the success of this ambitious project and underscores our commitment to handling the hardest work in data for the world’s largest companies like Bridgestone. This collaboration highlights the power of trusted partnerships and the transformative impact of Syniti’s software, methodology, and our skilled team of professionals — led by our Data First approach.”