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Nestlé has completed the first part of a major upgrade to its global digital core, designed to improve operational efficiency and accelerate its response to evolving consumer trends.

The upgrade comprises what Nestlé said is the ‘world’s largest ever’ SAP upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private edition. According to the F&B giant, this will strengthen its ability to drive growth and free up resources to invest in its global brands.

This upgrade will enable the deployment of AI at scale to achieve better insights, as well as the automation and improvement of processes across the company’s business operations. It includes embedding SAP’s AI copilot directly into the group’s core business systems to help employees access insights, automate routine tasks and make faster, more informed decisions.

Nestlé said this will help it better respond to changing consumer trends and retailer needs, while improving efficiency in areas like supply chain management, procurement, order fulfillment for retailers, and investment prioritisation.

The SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software connects core business processes – from manufacturing and sales to supply chain, finance and human resources – end-to-end in a single system, enabling streamlined operations and improved decision-making.

The move enables 50,000 Nestlé users across 112 countries in the company’s Asia, Oceania and Africa regions to benefit from the new system’s capabilities. The company said it will be able to complete the upgrade across the rest of the group within two years, a timeline it said is ‘significantly faster’ than similarly sized peers.

Anna Manz, Nestlé CFO and responsible for Integrated Business Services, said: “Driving growth through innovation is a top priority. We are transforming our business to invest more boldly in the best opportunities.”

She added: “We need to combine great consumer insights and innovation with flexibility and scale, to provide great quality products to consumers around the world when, where and how they want them. This upgrade will help us build multi-year innovation pipelines, more agile production and digital-first marketing and sales platforms for areas like cold coffee, therapeutic pet food and modern cooking aids.”