Modernizing SAP analytics at scale through automated CDS transformation

We helped the City of Tacoma modernize their analytics through a large-scale SAP S/4HANA transformation using an AI-enabled automation engine

Published: 8 October 2026

Last updated: 9 October 2026

Overview
The Challenge
The Objective
The Solution
The Impact

Overview

The City of Tacoma, a full-service public sector organization serving nearly 220,000 residents, partnered with HCLTech to undertake a large-scale SAP S/4HANA transformation. The initiative focused on modernizing mission-critical analytics that support essential civic functions, including public safety, utilities and community development, in a complex, high-volume operational environment.

At the core of this transformation was the need to enable faster, more reliable analytics across a system processing approximately 30 million transactions daily. By introducing an AI-enabled, automation-led approach to analytics migration, the program accelerated modernization timelines, improved data consistency and strengthened the foundation for more responsive, insight-driven public service delivery.

The Challenge

As the City of Tacoma advanced their SAP S/4HANA transformation, they encountered a set of interrelated technical and operational pressures that extended beyond system modernization. The need to transition from legacy architectures while maintaining uninterrupted, high-quality public service delivery introduced significant complexity across its analytics landscape.

Core challenges included:

The large-scale remediation of over 150 legacy HANA Calculation Views within a constrained transformation timeline
The need to align all analytics artifacts with S/4HANA “Clean Core” principles, creating additional complexity in ensuring consistency and long-term sustainability
Balancing transformation efforts with resource constraints posed a significant challenge, with risks of increased costs, extended timelines and impact on citizen service delivery

The Objective

To support a seamless transition to SAP S/4HANA, the City of Tacoma defined clear objectives. The initiative aimed to replace legacy components and adopt a more efficient, future-ready approach to analytics development and consumption.

Key objectives included:

Enable a clean-core, S/4HANA-aligned analytics architecture that supports long-term scalability and upgrade readiness
Ensure consistent, high-fidelity analytics outputs while maintaining alignment with business logic and operational requirements
Establish a scalable, repeatable framework to support future analytics modernization with reliable and predictable delivery timelines

Beyond immediate migration goals, the initiative aimed to create a foundation for continuous analytics evolution, enabling the client to move toward validation, optimization and ongoing innovation within a governed environment.

The Solution

To address the challenges faced by the City of Tacoma, HCLTech introduced an AI-enabled automation approach to accelerate and standardize analytics remediation.

AI-enabled automation: Deployment of an AI-powered conversion tool to automate the generation of ABAP CDS Views, significantly reducing manual development effort.
Streamlined process workflow: Developers uploaded SAP-generated XML outputs from legacy HANA Calculation Views, enabling the AI engine to interpret metadata and generate S/4HANA-compliant CDS code in a single step.
Technical integration: The solution leveraged SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), SAP AI Core and Azure OpenAI to power the generative conversion logic within a scalable enterprise architecture.
Intelligent mapping: Built-in awareness of S/4HANA data model changes allowed the tool to automatically replace obsolete tables and fields, ensuring alignment with clean-core principles and improving overall accuracy.

The Impact

30% to 50% reduction in manual development effort, allowing teams to pivot from repetitive coding to high-value validation and customer focus activities

30% to 50% reduction in manual development effort, allowing teams to pivot from repetitive coding to high-value validation and customer focus activities

>20% faster time-to-analytics, which meaningfully accelerated the migration timeline
Over 70% conversion automation rate achieved, ensuring high semantic and functional fidelity while minimizing data issues in mission-critical dashboards
Established a scalable and repeatable framework to support future SAP S/4HANA and analytics modernization initiatives

Established a scalable and repeatable framework to support future SAP S/4HANA and analytics modernization initiatives

Reduced dependency on specialized SAP modeling expertise, supporting broader knowledge transfer and sustainable operations

Reduced dependency on specialized SAP modeling expertise, supporting broader knowledge transfer and sustainable operations

Beyond the Numbers

The impact of this transformation is most visible in the stability of Tacoma’s essential services. This shift ensured that technology serves as an essential tool for community well-being. Culturally, the project has moved the IT team toward a strategic innovator role. The City has gained the institutional confidence to better meet its customers' diverse needs.

Hear From Our Client

From planning through execution, HCLTech has been a trusted partner, demonstrating exceptional commitment to our success throughout our S/4HANA migration and, in particular, the analytics data migration."