DACHSER Migrates HCM to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Using RISE with SAP

The Germany-based logistics company DACHSER has set itself an ambitious goal: to become the world’s most digitally integrated logistics service provider by 2030, seamlessly aligning its resources, experience, and modern digital operational capabilities with the needs of its customers, employees, and partners.

Following eight months of close collaboration with SAP, DACHSER has reached a major milestone on this journey: the successful migration of human capital management (HCM) to SAP S/4HANA via RISE with SAP.

Nearly a century has passed since Thomas Dachser founded the company in 1930 with a single truck, transporting cheese from the Allgäu region to the Rhineland and returning with steel. Yet, logistics and warehousing remain the core business of the transport logistics company, which is headquartered in the town of Kempten in south-west Germany. “Our core business is what we call our road business, meaning everything transported by road, across both dry goods and food segments,” says Herbert Egner, head of the IT Products Finance/HR division at DACHSER, who has nearly 40 years of experience in software development at the company.

Currently, DACHSER operates globally with approximately 427 company-owned branches across 43 countries. Out of its roughly 37,500 employees worldwide, 19,000 are based in Germany. Total revenue in 2025 reached €8.3 billion. “On one hand, we are a deeply tradition-conscious family business, now managed by the third and fourth generations. On the other hand, we place a massive emphasis on innovation—and not just at the executive level,” Egner notes. “Every single employee should have the opportunity to contribute here.”

In terms of digitization, the company is currently replacing a multitude of small, manual processes with IT-based solutions. Following DACHSER’s licensing of the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) in 2024, employees can now leverage its low-code tools to build apps for their own workflows. For instance, instead of using physical clipboards and paper checklists to document damage to transport vehicles, DACHSER inspectors now use low-code applications to capture that information digitally.

SAP BTP and the SAP Integration Suite also played a vital role in helping DACHSER move HCM to the cloud—which, alongside the license conversion to SAP S/4HANA, marks one of DACHSER’s most significant IT upgrades in recent years. “While we are a long-standing SAP customer, we are certainly not your typical SAP user,” Egner explains. “For transport and warehouse management, we still rely on our proprietary systems, which we began developing back in the 1980s. At the time, SAP did not yet offer the specific system depth we required for our logistics processes.”

Finance software from SAP has been in use at DACHSER since 2009, with journal entries transferred from the company’s internal systems to SAP via an interface. In October 2024, the finance solution was migrated from an on-premise environment under SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) and SAP HANA to the Microsoft Azure cloud. As part of RISE with SAP, DACHSER then successfully migrated its HCM payroll and time management modules for its 19,000 employees in Germany to the cloud in June 2026. This intensive eight-month collaboration between SAP and DACHSER successfully established a cornerstone of the company’s global HCM transformation.

“For HCM, we chose RISE with SAP. However, when we decided to move to the cloud three years ago, it wasn’t yet mature enough to meet our specific needs,” Egner says. “Once our three-year contract with Azure expires, RISE with SAP could become a viable model for our finance environment as well.”

The go-live was flawless: the very first payroll run for all employees in Germany in July 2026 went off without a hitch, and all payments were distributed on time. The system then entered a four-week hypercare phase, during which the project team closely monitored ongoing operations before regular support took over in August. With this step, DACHSER has established the necessary future-proof SAP architecture for its HR operations. This opens up new possibilities for the company, allowing it to focus heavily on implementing new features within the SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite.

SAP S/4HANA transformation

“When we say we want to be the world’s most digitally integrated logistics service provider by 2030, this applies not only to digitizing our processes but also to integrating our acquisitions, which bring their own SAP systems with them,” Egner says. “Under our ‘SAP First’ strategy, we roll out finance and HCM in these countries before deploying our proprietary transport and warehouse management systems.” This approach was recently executed in Italy and is currently planned for several acquired companies in the Iberia region.

DACHSER’s goal is to integrate the SAP licenses of acquired companies into a global enterprise agreement with SAP, regardless of the country in which the systems are running. In the future, this will be handled via a semi-automated workflow. “When it comes to licensing in particular, it is crucial for us to have a unified agreement moving forward on how to manage these assets, ensuring that neither side faces these administrative overheads anymore,” Egner explains.

In connection with the license conversion from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, both companies sat down once again to realign on their future path to mutual success. “Here at DACHSER, we are noticing a new openness from SAP, as well as a deeper understanding of us as a customer,” says Egner. “This has been received very positively on our end. People are working on both sides, and we want to shape this partnership in a way that allows both parties to benefit based on mutual respect.”