Accelerating to Go-Live: How Bluerobe Steered the Cutover for Röhm’s S/4 “STAR” Transformation

Partnering with BearingPoint to turn strategy into execution in under four months

When Röhm made the strategic decision to migrate its global ERP landscape to SAP S/4HANA as part of its “STAR” transformation, they faced a formidable challenge: align streams of interfaces, master data, business processes and cutover timing into a single orchestration that would minimise business disruption and deliver the new platform on time.That’s where Bluerobe came in—engaged by BearingPoint as the cutover management partner firm. From July through end of October 2023, we moved fast, lived in ServiceNow, and walked the wall.

The “STAR” Project

The “STAR” project was Röhm’s bold move to consolidate legacy systems, migrate to SAP S/4HANA, harmonise processes and rationalise interfaces. The business imperative was clear: one ERP backbone, fewer integrations, unified data and enhanced agility.

Our role was to design and execute the cutover strategy—how and when to shut down legacy interfaces, when to bring up the new ones, how to coordinate streams, dependencies and data integrity during freezes, and how to ensure that go-live would be smooth.

Race Against Time

We had roughly four months (July to end of October 2023) to build the cutover plan in concert with the multiple streams: IT infrastructure, business processes, data migration, interfaces, testing, readiness and hypercare. The schedule was tight; there was no time for waste.

From day one, we ramped up workshops, daily sync-ups, interface walk-throughs and wall-boards. We used physical and digital Kanban walls (“walk the wall”) so that every team — business, functional, technical — could see the dependencies, the status of tasks, the upcoming interface shut-offs or start-ups.

Building the Cutover Plan

In ServiceNow we stood up a dedicated cutover workspace. All tasks, interface-decommissioning and interface‐switch-on events, dependencies, resource assignments lived there.

Key strategy elements:

• Define interface-freeze windows: specify when old interfaces must be deactivated to avoid data drift and ensure the transition is clean.

• Define new-interface go-live windows: schedule when each new integration, BAPI, IDoc, API-based flow would switch on and hand over from old to new.

• Coordinate parallel streams—data migration, application configuration, functional readiness, business process validation—with the interface timeline.

• Plan short, controlled freeze periods and define the precise decommission point for legacy connections to fully decouple the old system.

• Communication plan: tell business stakeholders when cutover windows are, who is responsible, what downtime or freeze to expect.

  
  

Execution Phase

As we moved into September and October, the plan shifted from “build” to “execute.” Daily stand-ups pulled in all stream leads. The wall was alive: sticky cards moved, metrics tracked, risk alerts flagged.

In ServiceNow the cutover board showed real-time progress: which old interface is retired, which new one activated, what business process ready-state is.

We orchestrated the year‑end cutover window: old interfaces were shut down according to plan, data migration operations and final reconciliation were completed, then new interfaces were switched on in sequence. Monitoring started immediately. On-board hypercare support was ready for first-hour business incidents.

Outcome & Takeaways

• The cutover delivered on schedule for Röhm’s STAR go-live.

• Interface rationalisation achieved — old integrations decommissioned, new flows operating-live.

• The business moved to a unified SAP S/4HANA backbone with orchestration of means and method refined.

• For Bluerobe: a powerful demonstration of how cutover management done right is not a “nice to have” but a project-make-or-break factor.

  
  

Why This Matters

In large transformation projects, it’s often the last phase—cutover, switch-on, interface migration—that carries the greatest risk of business impact. Our collaboration with BearingPoint, with Röhm’s business teams and our systematic use of walk-the-wall discipline + ServiceNow transparency allowed us to turn risk into repeatable execution.