Heizen

Acme Industrial Systems

Industrial components manufacturing · 11 countries · 2 plants

Discovery conversationThursday 20 August 2026, 15:00 IST· 45 minutes

Preparation · synthesis layer

Know what matters before the conversation.

Nothing here is new. It is the overview, research, gaps and stakeholder context from the other areas, ordered for technical consultant → CTO. Change either and it re-orders.

Sources read

10

Updated 14 August 2026

Signals extracted

7

Each with a confidence and a quote

Open unknowns

6

Every one has a question attached

On the agenda

0

45 minutes in the room

Readiness: enough public evidence to open the conversation, not enough to price anything.

Your role at Heizen

You are in the room to establish what can actually be built on their systems and their data, and by when.

Meeting with

Priya Raghavan · Chief Technology Officer

Common pairings

Everything below is labelled by what kind of knowledge it is. Filter to see only one kind.

What matters

All research

Ranked for this conversation, not for the account. Facts are stated directly by a source; signals are our reading of them.

SIGNAL91% confidence

ERP modernisation is live and mid-flight

They are mid-migration from ECC to S/4HANA across all eleven entities, and master-data harmonisation is written into the scope. Anything that touches transactional data has to sit around that programme, not across it.

ranked for CTO
SIGNALalready working83% confidence

Warehouse execution is already modernised

Manhattan Active WMS is live across both Indian plants. Warehouse execution is not the weak layer here, and treating it as one would read as not having done the reading.

ranked for CTO
SIGNAL88% confidence

Regional planning runs on spreadsheets outside the system

Regional demand plans are submitted as Excel files and reconciled by hand against the central S&OP plan. On the evidence available, the workbook — not the ERP — is the system of record for regional planning.

ranked for CTO
SIGNAL94% confidence

The planning cycle is lengthening as regions are added

The CFO said on the record that the cycle has lengthened with each added region and that inventory is carrying the cost. The problem is already acknowledged internally, and already framed in money.

ranked for CTO

Who you are meeting, and what they may care about

All stakeholders

Preparation guidance, not a profile. Their three priorities are what re-order every other section here, so this section is never filtered.

Priya Raghavan

Chief Technology Officer

In role since 2023 · Came from enterprise architecture at a listed engineering group.

What they own
the S/4HANA programme and the integration estate across all eleven country entities
What they are measured on
cutover dates, system availability, and the cost of the migration programme
Where they are likely to push back
anything that adds a system or a data dependency before the cutover lands

Read as preparation, not as certainty. It is drawn from Priya Raghavan — Chief Technology Officer and SAP S/4HANA Integration Lead, and their actual priorities are theirs to state.

What they are likely to care about — and what changes because of it

  1. 1

    Architecture

    How the estate fits together, and what a new component would have to sit beside.

  2. 2

    Integration

    What talks to what today, and what would have to be built to make anything new participate.

  3. 3

    Scalability

    Whether what works at the current size still works at the next one.

These three priorities are what re-order everything on this page. You are meeting them as technical consultant, so where their priorities and your lens overlap is where the conversation has the most room.

Questions worth asking

All 17 questions

The top of the ranked list. Open any of them for who to ask, what it tests, and what evidence would close it.

Hypotheses to test

All gaps

What we believe and have not confirmed, with the evidence it rests on and the question that would settle it. None of this is a client problem yet.

HYPOTHESISfrom a market pattern — unconfirmed herecritical if true58% confidence

Master data may not be harmonised ahead of the cutover

What we think may be happening — not what they have told us

The migration scope names master-data harmonisation across eleven entities. If regional material and vendor masters have diverged since the regions were stood up, the cutover date is exposed — and so is anything built on that data afterwards.

What normal looks like

Harmonisation named explicitly in a job scope usually means it is known to be a problem, not that it is finished.

Evidence we are reading it from

  • —ERP modernisation is live and mid-flight
  • —Regional expansion has outpaced the operating model

What we do not know

  • UNKNOWNWhich entity's material and vendor master is treated as authoritative today
  • UNKNOWNWhether a data-quality baseline has ever been measured

The question that would settle it

Which entity's material and vendor master is treated as authoritative today, and who signs off a change to it?

Seen beforeKestrel Logistics · S/4HANA master-data harmonisation across 11 entities

HYPOTHESISfrom their evidence and a market patternhigh if true64% confidence

Regional operating processes may be fragmented

What we think may be happening — not what they have told us

Regional teams may be coordinating operational decisions through people and spreadsheets rather than through a shared process. If so, each region added costs more to run than the one before it.

What normal looks like

Manufacturers that pass roughly eight operating countries usually either standardise the regional planning process or accept a permanent coordination tax. Acme is at eleven.

Evidence we are reading it from

  • —Regional expansion has outpaced the operating model
  • —Regional planning runs on spreadsheets outside the system
  • —The planning cycle is lengthening as regions are added

What we do not know

  • UNKNOWNHow regional teams settle it when their plan and the central plan disagree
  • UNKNOWNWhether any region has already built its own local tooling

The question that would settle it

How do the regional teams settle it when their plan and the central plan disagree?

Seen beforeNorthfield Foods · Multi-region demand planning coordination

Relevant Heizen experience

All engagements

Shown because a hypothesis above matches work we have already measured — not as a portfolio.

Kestrel Logistics

Logistics · 2025

S/4HANA master-data harmonisation across 11 entities

Brought up byMaster data may not be harmonised ahead of the cutover

Why this experience is relevant here

Identical entity count, and an identical harmonisation clause in the programme scope. The work there was almost entirely establishing which master was authoritative before anything could be merged — which is precisely the unknown sitting under this hypothesis.

What was measured there

  • —340k material records deduplicated to 190k
  • —Authoritative master agreed across 11 entities in 9 weeks
  • —Cutover held its original date
OPPORTUNITY

Pre-cutover master-data baseline

Sits inside a programme they are already funding, which is usually the cheapest way in.

Proven on Kestrel Logistics

Northfield Foods

Food manufacturing · 2025

Multi-region demand planning coordination

Brought up byRegional operating processes may be fragmented

Why this experience is relevant here

The same shape: nine countries planning locally in workbooks, and a central S&OP that could not see any of it until the monthly review. The coordination cost showed up as cycle time, exactly as it appears to here.

What was measured there

  • —Planning cycle 14 days → 6 days, held over two quarters
  • —220 manual hours per cycle → 40
  • —Regional plans written back to the central plan on a fixed daily interface
OPPORTUNITY

Regional planning coordination layer

A thin layer over the existing plan submissions rather than a replacement for them, so it can be built before an ERP cutover rather than after.

Proven on Northfield Foods

Meeting agenda

The output of the preparation — what you decided is worth the time in the room, and why.

Nothing on the agenda yet

Add questions from any section above, or from Research, Stakeholders and Gaps. The agenda travels with the project.

Go to questions

Why you are in the room: The CFO named a lengthening planning cycle on the Q1 call while the company is mid-migration to S/4HANA. Both problems land on the same regional planning process, and neither has been sized publicly. This is a discovery conversation, not a pitch.

Prepared for Technical Consultant meeting CTO. 0 questions on the agenda.