A Global Mining Supplier Keeps File Exchange Stable Through a Global Payroll Replacement With Files.com

A global supplier to the mining, quarrying, construction, and oil and gas industries operates across multiple countries.

For years, Files.com has connected the company’s SAP estate with its payroll providers, invoicing networks, and vendors. When a new global payroll system went live in January 2025, that exchange layer stayed in place. A payroll transformation spanning multiple countries generated new file transfer paths, not a new file transfer project.

A business with that reach runs on enterprise systems, and by 2017 the company’s business systems ran in Microsoft Azure, with SAP cloud middleware as the integration layer. But the counterparties those systems depend on live outside that estate. Paying employees in multiple countries through an outsourced payroll provider, exchanging e-invoices, feeding HR platforms, and receiving sensitive documents from vendors all comes down to files. Every one of those files has to cross the boundary between the company’s SAP estate and companies it does not control.

Every External Exchange Pointed Back at Infrastructure the Company Had Just Stopped Running

The Azure move was made to get the company out of the business of running infrastructure. Yet every file that had to reach a payroll provider or arrive from a vendor pointed back toward exactly that: a self-hosted SFTP server the company would have to build, secure, patch, and keep highly available. The alternative was worse. Without an automated exchange point, file handling falls to people working inside the SAP interfaces, one payroll run and one invoice batch at a time. A separate requirement for a highly available file share sat alongside, threatening a second piece of infrastructure for the same team.

The harder part was what the exchange point had to be, because SAP middleware does not talk to a generic cloud file share. The company’s SAP adapters needed an SFTP endpoint they could poll for inbound files and push to for outbound ones, authenticating with SSH keys from SAP’s clouds. The company required certificates issued under its own domain, so counterparties would exchange files with it rather than with a third-party address. It needed dedicated IP addresses that firewalls on both sides could scope to, and a separate non-production instance where integration changes could be regression-tested before they touched live payroll data. And the data itself was regulated: payroll and finance files crossing borders, European customer data that had to be GDPR-compliant by May 2018, and vendor uploads that only selected business operators should ever see.

The company needed enterprise managed file transfer capability without operating managed file transfer infrastructure. It selected Files.com to be that layer.

One Hub Between the SAP Estate and Every Counterparty

Files.com became the single point where the company’s internal systems and the outside world exchange files: SAP on one side, payroll providers, invoicing networks, and vendors on the other.

The company’s SAP HCI, CPI, and PO interfaces used their native transfer pattern, polling Files.com folders for inbound files and pushing outbound files over SFTP with SSH key authentication. To the middleware, Files.com is simply the SFTP endpoint it was built to talk to.

The routing lives on the platform rather than in the interfaces. Global payroll files sort into per-country folders and move on to recipients in multiple countries. Payroll bank files travel to and from the company’s outsourced payroll provider. E-invoicing traffic through the Pagero network and SAP SuccessFactors feeds ride the same paths. External vendors upload sensitive material into controlled folders that only selected business operators can see, and Files.com applies GPG encryption automatically at the folder level where a flow calls for it.

The company established separate non-production and production sites for regression testing and live data, each with its own dedicated IP address and a company-branded domain secured by a custom SSL certificate. Multi-region storage placement keeps European customers’ data where GDPR expects it, backed by a signed data processing addendum, with compliance in place ahead of the May 2018 deadline. The highly available file share the company needed was consolidated onto the same site, so one platform does the work that would otherwise have taken two systems.

A New Global Payroll System Went Live Without a New Exchange Layer

In late 2024, the company began onboarding a new global payroll system, country by country. It went live in January 2025, with API integration phased in behind it. Every new file path between the company and its outsourced payroll provider landed on folders and connections that already existed.

No Manual Handling, No Servers, and a Clean Vendor Security Assessment

With Files.com in place as the hub, the company avoided self-hosted servers and manual handling through a repeatable exchange pattern that has now run for nearly a decade.

• Manual file handling is gone from the SAP interfaces. Integration flows poll on daily and cron schedules and pick up files automatically in both directions.
• Global payroll distribution runs as folder routing. Files land, sort into per-country folders, and reach recipients in multiple countries with nobody forwarding anything.
• The platform passes the company’s own governance. Files.com cleared the vendor cyber security risk assessment the company runs against NIST-CSF for key vendors handling its data, and GDPR compliance for European customer data was established ahead of the regulation’s deadline.
• New counterparties join the exchange, not a project queue. Onboarding an external vendor onto the site is part of establishing the working relationship, and the 2025 payroll rollout added its country flows the same way.

The Layer That Does Not Change When the Systems Around It Do

In nearly ten years, plenty has changed on both sides of the exchange. The middleware evolved from SAP HCI to CPI and PO. The global payroll system was replaced outright. New vendors came aboard as the business grew, and the volume moving through the site has grown steadily year over year. Through all of it, nobody at the company has built or patched a transfer server, and the SAP interfaces have not required manual file handling. An interface polls its Files.com folder, a counterparty connects to theirs, and the platform carries the rest.

A cloud-hosted SAP estate does not need self-hosted SFTP infrastructure to run governed B2B exchange. It needs an endpoint the middleware can treat as its own, and Files.com has been that endpoint for the company for years.