SAP S/4HANA A catalyst in RISE & Growth of UK Businesses
Publish Date: June 10, 2024With SAP announcing the deadline for all their SAP ECC customers to move to SAP S/4HANA by 2027, there is a significant buzz in the world of SAP. A recent UKISUG survey shows that 65% of organizations are already gearing up for their SAP S/4HANA journey.
Most customers are taking this deadline seriously, and rightly so, because partner/resource bandwidth could be a significant roadblock if everyone times their transformation towards the same time. Exploring & understanding the options ahead is a logical exercise for organizations who want to stay ahead of the curve.
Why Move to SAP S/4HANA?
Besides the looming deadline, what are the benefits of SAP S/4HANA?
Besides the looming deadline, what are the benefits of SAP S/4HANA?
SAP S/4HANA is a comprehensive suite that seamlessly integrates business processes. With SAP S/4HANA, Organizations can adopt the Clean Core Approach, which allows businesses to be –
- Superior at performance – With a clean core approach, heavy customizations are avoided, thereby improving system performance and supporting increasing loads & transaction volumes. Also, the system upgrades would be smoother as the core is relatively cleaner.
- Flexible & Agile – By leveraging the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), businesses can build extensions that can be leveraged without changing the core system.
- Security Compliant – With SAP handling the cloud infrastructure, timely application of security patches & updates will free the business and IT from regulatory & non-compliance risks & keep the systems secure.
- Cost Effective – By doing away with the costs incurred for Annual Maintenance & upgrades, the total cost of ownership reduces significantly in the long run.
With the above benefits brought by RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, businesses can focus on innovation to keep up with the competition and let SAP do the heavy lifting in running the system smoothly.
Best Practices for Adoption
With Why being answered, the next big question is What – What’s the right solution?
Cloud-based offerings from SAP, like S/4HANA, are attractive and offer flexibility, scalability, and robust support for digital transformation, but we all know one size won’t fit all. I have listed a few best practices for choosing the right solution for the organization.
- Digital Discovery Assessment: I recommend carefully evaluating your business needs, integrations, and long-term goals before choosing a cloud-based SAP solution. SAP offers a Digital Discovery Assessment that maps out the business processes and aligns them with the features that SAP S4HANA solutions provide. By the end of the DDA exercise, one would get clarity on the high-level processes that can be scoped in, the integrations to be considered, and the high-level fitment of the product to your needs can be understood.
- Right Implementation Partner: Look for a partner instead of a supplier. While ticking the boxes on the technology & domain expertise, it’s imperative to partner with someone who understands the vision & objectives of the organization and offers flexibility.
- Change Management: Whether green field implementation, brownfield, or bluefield, it’s a process transformation as much as a technology transformation. Align your SAP implementation with your business strategy. Create a comprehensive change management plan to help employees and leaders adapt to the new system. It’s difficult to adopt “out of the box” totally, given the amount of change management required, but the Clean Core approach has to be a top-down approach.
- Training and Support: With Clean Core, the need for ongoing support is significantly reduced; however, a comprehensive training approach will ensure that the users & employees are equipped with the necessary skills to explore the SAP S/4HANA solution and get maximum benefits from the cloud solution.
YASH: Your Partner in SAP Success
With all the planning still in place, there will be curve balls, and you will need someone who has “been there, done that” to keep the transformation journey on track and momentum intact. That’s where we, YASH, come in.
YASH is a leading SAP player globally with an 8500-strong workforce. With 100s of successful S4HANA transformation projects to our credit, including several in the UK, we bring advisory, technology, functional, and vertical domain expertise to ensure your Digital transformation journey is seamless and successful while ensuring you derive business value.
To learn more about how SAP and YASH can improve your business processes and increase efficiency, contact YASH at rahul.gangu@yash.com
