Datavapte helps Riverside Natural Foods optimize SAP RISE and reinforce Security for sustainable scale

Riverside Natural Foods is a family-owned, values-driven company with a powerful purpose: to inspire a healthier and more compassionate world where access to good food is a reality for all. This commitment is deeply ingrained in their “triple bottom line” philosophy, prioritizing People, Profit, and Planet in all their strategic endeavors. With ambitious growth aspirations, Riverside Natural Foods leverages SAP as a core technology platform to drive efficiency and innovation. 

As Riverside Natural Foods embarked on its growth journey, the company recognized critical gaps in its internal SAP expertise, particularly in the areas of Basis and Security. While they possessed strong functional SAP knowledge, the lack of in-house specialists in these technical domains presented significant challenges: 

• Inefficient Management of SAP RISE: Riverside was already on SAP RISE but lacked the internal expertise to fully leverage the reports and recommendations provided by SAP for system maintenance and updates. This resulted in potentially higher external costs for overseeing these crucial tasks. 

• Vulnerability in SAP Security: As the company had grown organically since its initial SAP implementation, user access rights had accumulated over time, leading to a less-than-ideal security posture. A key initiative to overhaul their SAP security standing, aligning it with their “clean core” strategy by creating and assigning roles based on actual responsibilities, was hampered by the lack of specialized security knowledge. 

• Reliance on External Consultants: The need for Basis and Security expertise necessitated the engagement of external partners, which the VP of Business Transformation and Technology sought to optimize by finding a more integrated and cost-effective solution. 

The impact of these challenges was twofold: increased operational costs due to reliance on external support and potential risks associated with an outdated and overly permissive SAP security environment. 

Datavapte’s SAP expert conducted an in-depth assessment of Riverside’s SAP RISE environment, analyzing SAP’s reports and recommendations to develop a strategy that enabled internal management of system updates, patches, and maintenance. Simultaneously, the consultant led a comprehensive SAP security overhaul by identifying access-related risks and implementing a streamlined, role-based authorization model aligned with Riverside’s “clean core” strategy.  

This collaboration focused on two key areas: 

• SAP Basis Support: Datavapte’s expertise enabled Riverside to internalize the oversight of their SAP RISE environment. This included understanding and acting upon SAP’s reports and recommendations for system updates, patches, and overall maintenance, reducing their reliance on costly external contracts. 

• SAP Security Overhaul: Datavapte played a crucial role in the comprehensive overhaul of Riverside’s SAP security. This involved a thorough understanding of SAP security principles, collaborating with the internal team to define appropriate roles based on business needs, and ensuring the accurate and efficient implementation of these roles across the organization. 

The successful implementation of SAP, with the support of Datavapte, yielded significant benefits for Kemira: