All for One: 30 years in Poland and the DNA code still the same

The beginnings were modest. In the mid-1990s, the Business Consulting Center (BCC), a consulting company specializing in SAP implementations, was founded.

It sounds proud, but the truth is that these are a few ambitious university graduates who, in a modest two rooms rented in a tenement house in Poznań’s Wilda district, are taking the first steps in implementing the then version of the ERP system from SAP.

At exactly the same time SAP Polska was founded, and soon the young BCC signed its first partnership agreement with the company. There were no more experienced SAP specialists in the country at the time, so the Poznań team participates in the first SAP Polska works, supporting localization of the system to Polish conditions, or taking part in pioneer projects for clients.

In 1997, consultants – of which there are more and more – undergo an intensive training program and, in parallel, conduct the first comprehensive and independently implemented SAP implementation. With time, the number of customers is also increasing – at the dawn of the new century, there are already more than 50!

Legends still circulate around the company about how things worked back then. SAP uploaded straight from floppy disks (later CDs), internet via modem, the first laptops the size of today’s carry-on luggage on low-cost airlines, and SAP training for users who just yesterday got their first ever computer.

A brief overview of our first clients shows how quickly we have gained the trust of the business and experience in truly complex projects.

We supported the first SAP R/3 implementations, which ended with a successful productive start, for Polfa Poznan (later known as Glaxo) and Amica Wronki. Our consultants also worked on projects for giants of the Polish market, including KGHM Polska Miedź, Volkswagen Polska, and two oil & gas companies: Petrochemia Płock and Centrala Produktów Naftowych (CPN), which in 1999 merged into the most recognizable Polish brand: Orlen.

Our history also includes another oil company, Aral, which was developing its fuel station network in Poland in the 1990s and needed a system for a Polish company. The project for Aral was our first SAP rollout from a corporate template to Poland. Today we have more than 300 similar projects to our credit for multinationals.

It is worth mentioning that from today’s perspective, 1995 was quite a successful year for Polish business. The first stores of the Biedronka chain were opened (in Poznań!), the Eurocash cash & carry wholesaler chain was established, and the Polkomtel cell phone network (today Play). Virtual Poland was also launched. And only one of these companies is not our client.

Just after its 10th birthday, the company already employs more than 100 people and works for 100 clients. With such potential, it’s time to expand beyond Poland’s borders. This ambition has a solid foundation – we gained our first experience working for clients in the Czech Republic and Slovenia. In 2005, we completed the first large contract involving simultaneous SAP implementation in several countries (Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia) for the French concern Antalis. There was also a whiff of the exotic when our consultants carried out an SAP implementation in Indonesia, exploring this fascinating country after hours.

Announced in 2011, the BCC +international strategy in its successive variants and iterations is still being implemented today, and revenues from services performed for foreign clients account for more than 40% of our cake.

In 2017. “Foreign" came to us and we joined the SNP company. Since 2021, we have been part of the All for One Group – a leading SAP partner in Central Europe.

The pillar of our offer is the implementation and development of the SAP integrated system: first it was the R/3 version (today only the oldest SAP people remember it), then SAP ERP (ECC), and since 2015 – S/4HANA. Plus, of course, the next iterations of the HR and payroll system (from SAP HR to SuccessFactors), and then consistently more solutions from SAP’s growing portfolio.

However, it quickly became clear that the launch of the system does not end our cooperation with the client. On the contrary, companies’ demand for user support, both business and technical, is constantly growing. We are responding to this by launching SAP administration and application service – that is, SAP user support. Over time, this part of the business has professionalized, and today the comprehensive SAP Managed Services offering is one of our important competitive advantages in the SAP market, providing almost half of the company’s revenue from the Polish market.

The rising cost of maintaining the hardware layer and the increasing emphasis on cyber security have customers looking for reliable partners to outsource this layer of system maintenance as well. Our answer is hosting in our own data center in Złotniki near Poznań. We signed our first hosting contract in 2004, and in 2013 we opened a second data center. Today, private cloud services for SAP (because that’s what good old hosting is now called) at All for One are used by Żabka Polska and Eurocash, among others.

Large and demanding customers expect customized, tailor-made solutions – whether within or outside the SAP environment. First, specialized teams of developers are created in the organization, and in 2014 BCC Software Factory – a specialized competence center providing business software development services – is spun off. In time, it becomes the foundation of our Enterprise Software House, creating customized solutions using various technologies, including, of course, AI.

Bartlomiej Buszczak, with the company since 1996, from 2005 to 2007 CEO, and from 2008 to 2024 CEO:
I started my adventure with BCC, and later SNP and All for One, right after college, as a SAP consultant on renovation management. Over time, I came to take the helm of the organization. I spent 28 wonderful years of my life in the company.

It was a time of tremendous change – in business, technology and the company itself, which my team and I created from scratch. We developed competencies, offerings and structure, adapting to the rhythm of change around us. We seized opportunities in periods of prosperity, and came out of crises with a defensive hand. Together we built the brand of Poland’s largest SAP implementation company, and then we entered the international structures of All for One.

And yet, for three decades, we have preserved the spirit of the company and the values that have guided us from the beginning: conducting a reliable, honest business, offering services and products of the highest quality based on knowledge and experience, a partnership approach to customers that allows us to build relationships based on trust.

I am proud of what we have built together – and how the company continues to grow.

On my 30th birthday – already as an outside observer – I wish that the next years will be a time of new successes and bold projects. That All for One continues to be a company where people want to work and to which clients entrust their most important projects.

We were born as a service company, but we are also gradually becoming a more serious software developer.

It started with the creation of proprietary add-ons to SAP, complementing its standard. Such as EasyPOS (integration of SAP with fiscal cash register) or E-Declarations for sending PIT directly from SAP. In 2016, the first wave of government regulations related to the reporting of the Single Control File started, to which we responded with a solution prepared at a frenetic pace. This has become our hallmark – we follow the announced changes in legislation and respond to them with solutions that adapt SAP to the new reporting requirements. Within the required timeframe.

Such products complementing SAP functionalities as All for One JPK and All for One KSeF have proven to be a great success. Their creation is a product of the reporting requirements imposed on companies and our commitment to our customers – that we will be a proactive SAP partner for them, providing solutions that allow them to run their business in compliance with current regulations. SAP’s Single Control File is operational in more than 250 companies. We have implemented KSeF at more than 160 customers – these numbers speak for themselves.

In addition to universal products, useful for any company, we also create industry-specific solutions – for example, for pharmaceuticals, companies covered by the deforestation directive or the bail system.

At the same time, we also created process digitization platforms that can work together in any systems environment.

BeeOffice today complements the systems of more than 100 of our customers with employee self-service features, making employees’ lives easier, saving them time and company money. Delegations, vacations, company fleet and much more – all digitized, automated and paperless.

As in Rockawork – an ECM-class system that “handles" the workflow of invoices, contracts, HR documents and others that require an approval path and archiving.

SAP is and continues to be the pillar of our offering, but – as is the case with many of our customers – it is increasingly encapsulated by complementary services and systems, or completely unrelated to SAP, from the broader area of IT management.

Time has never run slow in IT, but recent years have seen a marked acceleration of the technology race. The drive to save time, resources, money with increasing business complexity is intensifying the drive to automate processes further and further. This is reflected in projects where we use Robotic Project Automation technologies that allow us to create bots – virtual and efficient employees for our clients. A large portion of the bots and chatbots that come out of our hands use artificial intelligence.

The dark side of the development of new technologies and the increasing use of IT in business is the risks associated with cyber threats. The development of information security services – from securing the hardware layer to comprehensive management systems that comply with global standards – is our response to these risks.

Michal Kunze, CEO of All for One Poland, emphasizes: “The round anniversary is an opportunity to reminisce and summarize. It prompts comparisons of how the business world and its integral part – IT systems and infrastructure – looked in the past and how they look today. I don’t mean the progress of technology, which is natural and obvious in our industry. Rather, I’m thinking of the new challenges these changes have brought to business.

The first is cyber security and data protection, which is currently one of the most pressing topics involving not only IT managers, but also business. Every week we can hit news stories about organizations whose operations have been disrupted by cyber attacks. Unfortunately, there is no indication that this trend will change.

The second challenge is to reign in the complex architecture of systems. At first glance, IT is becoming simpler: we are moving more and more systems “to the cloud" and don’t have to deal with some aspects of their operation, even ERP can already be used in a SaaS model. However, these systems are linked by an increasingly dense network of interfaces – with other applications within our company (e.g. CRM, HCM, MES), with business partner systems, with B2C solutions (e.g. ecommerce, loyalty programs) and B2G (the next versions of JPK, e-invoicing).

The ubiquity of standards such as Web Services or REST APIs and high-speed data transmission has meant that systems integration is no longer really a technological challenge. What remains are conceptual challenges: agreeing on the format of messages, accurately interpreting business categories, and standardizing data coding. Even within a single group of companies, we may still encounter different master data identifiers between divisions.

SAP recently reverted to the term Business Suite for its portfolio of applications to emphasize their consistent nature. There are also new tools emerging that make it easier to integrate and plan system architecture. For example, SAP Business Accelerator Hub (api.sap.com) or SAP Architecture Center and applications such as LeanIX. However, each time it is necessary to combine the technical sphere with in-depth knowledge of the business solutions we are integrating. That’s why the involvement of process owners, experienced consultants and the project manager – is crucial to the success of these projects."