Underestimated S/4 Hana Conversion

On-prem and cloud

A central and current topic for most existing customers is the new system architecture. The focus is naturally on the hardware - on-prem and cloud - with the Hana database. The provision for an unplanned hybrid system architecture due to brought-in cloud solutions by the business departments often comes too late. A critical part in the hybrid approach is ensuring and verifying the necessary integration, which is a prerequisite for a successful cloud deployment. SAP has not yet fully integrated some cloud acquisitions.

One of the underestimated topics is data management. Not only is it very extensive and complex, but it also involves a lot of money in the project and in ongoing operating costs. The necessary implementation of the SAP business partner can be costly. Data archiving should also be dealt with in parallel. The General Data Protection Regulation is also a part of data management. SAP's data implication has extensive implications for the data structure and in-house developments. In addition, the new SAP Master Data Governance should be dealt with in terms of its effects.

The corporate and IT strategy is usually used as the basis and starting point for a transformation, whereby the system architecture, as mentioned above, also plays a major role. For all variants, the ERP market has changed massively in recent years. Many local vendors in the midmarket have been able to reach larger, international companies through cloud strategies and new technologies. But international US providers such as Salesforce, ServiceNow and Oracle have also found their way to Europe and broadened their portfolio. For this reason, it is appropriate to take stock of SAP's positioning in the current market environment from the wealth of information, customer discussions and project experience. To this year's
50th anniversary, SAP can still call itself the ERP world market leader. What are still the reasons for this success and where is there an urgent need for action? SAP currently thrives on the old generation of existing customers, although the younger generation of new customers is also open to competing solutions.

Under version R/2, but especially under R/3, customers' own developments were still part of SAP's strategy and played an important role in the success story. SAP provided customers with the necessary solutions as standard solutions in the form of modules. All modules were on the one hand encapsulated in themselves, and on the other hand fully integrated with each other when additional modules were used. A successful part of the strategy was also the ability to adapt the modular standard solutions through modifications as needed. In addition, the greatest benefit for the customers was being able to supplement the standard solutions with their own developments of customer-specific requirements. A great concept for the customers!

An underestimated integration topic is in-house developments. The necessary in-house developments should be converted to the new S/4 architecture in good time. In a further step, a fit-gap analysis should be carried out to determine which in-house developments can be replaced by the new S/4 applications in the standard. Finally, the technical integration of the in-house developments into the cloud solutions must also be ensured. This combination and integration also led SAP to its leading market position. In any case, all in-house developments must be checked for their technical functionality during the S/4 conversion. The reasons for this are the massive changes in the existing data sets due to simplification as well as technological changes in programming. SAP provides very good services and tools for this.

A good tip for this: You can't start early enough.