From On-Prem to Cloud ERP: Navigating Urgency and Complexity 

Background

A Swedish retailer faced a critical decision as their on-prem ERP system approached the end of active support. Once the system entered end-of-life status, it would no longer receive essential security updates. That posed a significant risk for a company operating in a regulated environment.

While many organisations can manage legacy systems safely behind firewalls, this retailer’s operations and customer data meant that any security incident could draw serious external scrutiny. The business needed to act quickly.

Challenge

Two main paths emerged:

1. Upgrade to the latest on-prem version, gaining a few additional years of support.
2. Make the strategic shift to a modern, cloud-based ERP.

The cloud option offered long-term sustainability but also represented a major transformation. Every existing integration, from order management and e-commerce to warehouse and store systems, needed to be adapted to modern APIs.

The project touched all key pillars of retail: Plan, Buy, Move, and Sell. This meant that almost every core process and integration was affected. Another major challenge was that the on-prem ERP had been heavily customised over time, with many deep, system-level modifications that were no longer possible in the cloud environment. These changes needed to be rethought and redesigned using modern configuration and extension capabilities instead.

Approach

Rededge provided the architectural assessment, roadmap, and risk evaluation for both options.

Our recommendation was pragmatic: the migration should be done, but only once the organisation’s transformation pipeline allowed it to be managed properly. However, given the business-critical nature of the security concerns, senior management chose to fast-track the project.

With limited resources and several major initiatives running in parallel, this decision required reworking multiple business-critical solutions including ERP, store inventory management, pricing, invoice matching, and sales audit.

With deep experience across all these areas, Rededge was able to strike the right balance and deliver a solution that supported the broader organisational transformation while strengthening the ERP foundation for the future.

Result

Despite the challenges, the migration successfully established a modern ERP foundation in the cloud. 

The company now benefits from automated quarterly updates, reduced infrastructure overhead, and a more secure and scalable platform. 

While the project was demanding, it also marked a strategic milestone, ensuring that this will likely be the last major ERP implementation for many years to come. 

Would you like to know more on how Rededge can help with any ERP journey? Contact us.