• Publishing
• Retail

The need

Gyldendal ASA is a unique group: three major companies, all with separate SAP ECC systems and different industry solutions. ARK Bokhandel runs SAP ECC with IS-Retail. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag runs SAP ECC with IS-Media. Forlagssentralen runs SAP ECC. Each core serves its own operational reality — retail, publishing, and centralised book distribution and logistics.

These cores cannot stop. Books move every day, seasonal peaks like back-to-school and Christmas hit hard, and the operational tolerance for downtime is effectively zero. Yet the group still needs to innovate — connecting the three companies, delivering modern customer experiences, automating processes, and giving customers, partners, and employees the tools they expect from a digital publisher and retailer.

The challenge: how do you innovate around three SAP ECC cores — without disrupting any of them?

Our solution

Since 2014, S5 has treated Gyldendal’s three SAP ECC cores as the foundation: clean, stable, untouched. We build modern innovation around them — never through them. Five layers of work across more than a decade, all delivered alongside the existing systems.

1. Integration — connecting the three cores since 2014

S5’s integration work began in 2014 with SAP ↔ Microsoft CRM integration and Neptune apps for sales orders and subscriptions. Today’s generation runs on SAP BTP Integration Suite — connecting SAP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Bibsys across Material/Product master data, Customer records, and Sales Orders. The integration layer spans ARK Bokhandel, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, and Forlagssentralen — letting the three ECC cores operate as one group without merging into one system.

2. Ecommerce — ARK Webshop 3.0 on a headless stack

ARK Bokhandel needed a modern customer-facing webshop that the IS-Retail ECC core could power, but not host. S5 delivered the SAP-side integration layer on BTP — connecting ARK’s SAP ECC to a new headless commerce stack and ensuring real-time order, inventory, and product data flow into the customer experience. The frontend and headless commerce platform were delivered by TRY; S5 owned the SAP-side integration that makes the two worlds talk.

3. UX — modern interfaces on top of legacy cores

SAP ECC interfaces alone don’t meet today’s business user expectations. S5 has built — and continues to deliver — modern UX on top of the three cores: first through Neptune DXP apps for sales orders, subscriptions, and operations, and now on SAP BTP and Fiori as the SAP-standard direction. The UX layer modernises continuously; the ECC cores remain untouched.

4. Portals — for customers, partners, and employees

Each ECC core sits behind portals that S5 has designed and built — giving Gyldendal’s customers self-service access, partners structured workflows, and employees the tools they need to do their work. The portal layer lets the group present one digital face across the three companies, without the cores ever exposing themselves directly to the outside world.

5. Process Automation — across the group

Order flows, master data synchronisation, and cross-company workflows: S5 has automated the processes that span the three ECC cores, using BTP and integration tooling as the orchestration layer. Process automation lives outside the cores, but ties them together operationally — across publishing, distribution, and retail.

6. Delivery Model — Norwegian leadership, S5 Labs Poland

Every workstream is led by a senior Norwegian S5 consultant, with development execution from S5 Labs in Wrocław, Poland. This is AI-shoring, not offshoring: domain ownership and customer accountability stay onshore; cost-efficient engineering capacity is nearshore. Delivery is iterative, documented, and structured around Gyldendal’s preference for communication clarity and predictable estimates.

Technologies:

• Neptune DX
• SAP BTP
• SAP ECC
• SAP Fiori
• SAP Integration Suite

Results

• Three SAP ECC cores stable, untouched, 10+ years — Operational across publishing, distribution, and retail through every seasonal peak; S5 has delivered every modernisation around the cores, never through them.
• Integration layer live across the group — SAP ↔ D365 CRM ↔ Bibsys flows for Material, Customer, and Sales Order data on SAP BTP Integration Suite — connecting ARK, GNF, and Forlagssentralen without merging them.
• SAP-to-commerce integration live for ARK Webshop 3.0 — S5 delivered the BTP integration backbone connecting SAP ECC IS-Retail to ARK’s headless commerce stack (built by TRY), enabling real-time data flow into the new customer experience.
• Innovation around the core, never through it — Modern UX, portals, and process automation delivered alongside the three ECC cores. Customers, partners, and employees get the experiences they expect; the cores stay clean.