Background 

With annual revenues approaching £100 billion, Nestlé is already the world’s largest food and beverage company and a global powerhouse. But companies don’t get to that position by resting on their laurels, and in 2022, Nestlé decided it needed to modernise the backbone of its business to properly capitalise on the benefits of modern technologies like AI. This meant updating its on premise ERP to a new cloud-based system – SAP S/4 Hana Private Cloud.  

This shift aims to create a single source of truth across its operations – 280k staff in 185 countries - unlocking faster, data-driven decision-making, and embedding AI into core business processes to fuel efficiency and accelerate innovation. 

Challenge 

The first phase of this migration was no small feat: 50,000 employees across 112 countries needed to adapt to a system that looked and felt completely different. With a 50-hour cutover window, there was no room for error. Nestlé needed to derisk go-live, ensuring users could navigate the new environment immediately to avoid frustration, productivity loss, and a flood of support tickets. 

Solution 

Nestlé created a comprehensive Learning and Development strategy to familiarise people with the new ways of working ahead to cutover and provide contextual support once the new system was live.  

Nestlé’s WalkMe Centre of Excellence was a key component of this strategy, and joined forces with long-term partner, Charlton House to activate the plan. The teams worked closely together to implement WalkMe across 87 processes in 13 key areas. They also created complimentary training materials for Nestlé’s in-house training hub, Leap, to enable pre-go-live training that would support the transition.  

WalkMe implementation  

The new ERP came with some major changes to the underlying data. This meant that, while the business processes were the same, the field names used in the new system were completely different, potentially creating confusion and frustration. WalkMe popups avoided this by allowing users to ‘show changes’ on specific apps and specific pages – this highlighted fields that were different, and leveraged tooltips to provide legacy equivalents, helping employees orient themselves quickly. Transaction codes also changed with the new system which was predicted to be a key friction point. When old transaction codes were searched, WalkMe shout outs informed the users of the error, and a walk through was activated to find and autofill the corresponding transaction code and other required details - saving considerable time and frustration.  

Other critical workflows like time recording were also simplified with tailored guidance, while display setting issues were proactively flagged and fixed through walkthroughs. All content was optional, giving users the flexibility to engage when needed and switch it off once confident. 

Leap training materials 

To prepare for go-live, the team also developed a range of materials such as  WalkMe navigation tours, and guidance on accessing and translating materials, ensuring employees felt ready before the switch. They also used WalkMe to create a live cutover countdown timer directly in the training hub, creating both visibility and urgency.  

Results 

Analytics clearly showed the effectiveness of the content in derisking go live. Sixty four percent of users actively engaged with the guidance at the beginning, with a steady decline over time as people became more familiar with the new system. This avoided thousands of support tickets and returned nearly 5,000 productive hours to the business - an inferred financial value of over $100K. 

With phase one successfully under its belt, Nestlé is now poised to continue its global rollout through 2026–27, driving innovation and efficiency across the enterprise.