PepsiCo scales transformation with WalkMe for SAP S/4HANA: scalable support, smarter insights, and greater adoption

As part of its global transformation initiative, PepsiCo unified operations under a single, standardized business template with SAP S/4HANA. The PepsiCo Global Template (PGT) program spanned markets around the world, harmonizing core business processes, data, and technology to create a consistent foundation for how the business operates globally.

The overall program was one of the largest change initiatives in the company’s history. Its success depended not only on system implementation, but also on sustained user adoption at scale, proactive mitigation of operational disruption, and measurable business value. To support these outcomes, the PGT team introduced WalkMe for S/4HANA to guide users through critical workflows, automate high-impact decisions, and surface insights into where users struggled or deviated from standard processes.

What began as a go-live support mechanism quickly evolved into a day-to-day enablement layer embedded in the flow of work. WalkMe reduced reliance on hypercare by deflecting support tickets, minimizing user errors through auto-selection of key fields such as truck type and payment options, and enforcing clean data entry through real-time validation rules. These interventions not only improved the user experience but also increased data accuracy and compliance across markets.

By using WalkMe insights to target the moments that mattered most — such as emergency work orders, planned orders, and sales order execution — the team delivered measurable time savings per user and reduced rework across core processes. Collectively, these improvements contributed to an estimated 117,000 hours saved in employee time through faster task completion, fewer errors, and reduced support escalations.

Today, WalkMe is a core component of the PGT digital adoption strategy, combining data-driven insights with targeted guidance to scale effectively, empower employees, and strengthen execution across the business.

With the Global Template program, PepsiCo set out to align markets on a shared foundation for how the business runs. The South Africa deployment presented an opportunity to apply lessons learned from earlier phases, strengthen execution during hypercare, and build a repeatable adoption model that could scale across future rollouts.

The team aimed to equip approximately 3,000 employees not just during training, but after go-live — when users needed to complete transactions independently, accurately, and under real operational pressure. Key goals included reducing dependency on static documentation, lowering the burden on super users, and minimizing hypercare tickets by resolving issues directly in the system at the point of need.

By introducing WalkMe for S/4HANA, the PGT team shifted from one-size-fits-all training to role-based, contextual guidance delivered in real time. WalkMe analytics provided visibility into how processes were executed, where users hesitated, and where errors or omissions occurred. These insights enabled the team to reduce variation, improve compliance with critical steps such as completion of the incompletion log, and systematically improve execution quality in South Africa — while informing strategies for subsequent S/4HANA migrations.

To enable consistent execution across regions, the PGT team embedded digital adoption into a user-centric deployment strategy. Following go-live, WalkMe analytics were used to monitor user behaviour across key workflows and identify friction points driving errors, rework, or support requests. This visibility allowed the team to intervene quickly with targeted guidance, automation, or validation rules — often within hours.

For the initial rollout, solutions were prioritized based on immediate operational impact. “The solutions we deployed with WalkMe were immediately effective when we went live and became a major accelerator during hypercare,” says Rajeev Mohan, Global Training Lead. As a result, the team saw a reduction in hypercare support tickets as users were guided to the right decisions without needing to raise issues.

As the business transitioned into steady-state operations, WalkMe continued to play a critical role in improving accuracy and efficiency. In one example, a direct store delivery workflow included a payment option that introduced inconsistencies in transaction handling. The team used WalkMe to hide the incorrect option and guide users to the right choice, eliminating user error at source. “That issue was resolved in a matter of hours,” Rajeev says. “People were amazed we could solve real business issues so quickly.”

In another case, selecting transportation types during deliveries involved multiple steps and was prone to variation. WalkMe automation was used to auto-select the correct truck type based on delivery quantity, removing decision-making from the user and ensuring consistent execution. This not only reduced errors but also delivered lasting time savings by streamlining the workflow.

Real-time validation rules reinforced clean inputs across critical processes, improving data accuracy and downstream reporting quality. WalkMe also supported compliance with business-critical steps that were not system-mandatory but operationally essential — such as ensuring completion of incompletion logs in order management. Prompting these actions in the flow of work significantly increased completion rates and reduced follow-up effort.

Segmentation enabled the team to tailor guidance by role and region, ensuring users only saw what was relevant to them. This reduced cognitive load, minimized confusion, and improved overall task completion times — particularly for high-pressure activities like emergency work orders and planned orders.

WalkMe analytics underpinned continuous improvement. By comparing user paths within processes such as sales order creation, the team identified where guidance could be optimized, where steps could be simplified, and where automation delivered the greatest return. What started as a go-live support tool became a scalable execution layer supporting adoption, accuracy, and efficiency across PepsiCo’s global platform.

PepsiCo’s digital adoption strategy has become a critical driver of business transformation, enabling teams to work more efficiently while adhering to standardized global processes. By reducing user errors, improving data accuracy, and accelerating task completion, the PGT team has strengthened operational consistency and execution quality across markets.

The ability to intervene quickly has reduced demand on support and development teams, lowered hypercare volumes, and accelerated time to value. “In cases where the business comes to us with a specific problem, we’ve been able to deliver solutions quickly providing temporary and long-term fixes — making us more agile in our support model,” says Dympna Connolly, Director Change Management. “That really makes a difference in day-to-day operations.”

With more than 80 analytics funnels in place, the team now brings unprecedented visibility into how S/4HANA is used in South Africa. WalkMe Flow Analytics and behaviour insights allow the PGT team to pinpoint where performance drops, where compliance weakens, and where additional guidance or automation can deliver further gains. This precision has also improved retraining effectiveness, ensuring support is targeted to the users and steps that need it most.

Today, the PGT team informs decisions beyond enablement, contributing to broader goals around standardization, efficiency, and long-term value creation. As adoption of the Global Template expands, WalkMe is helping shape how PepsiCo operates at scale — not just supporting change but sustaining it.