Consulting bottlenecks for S/4 Hana from summer?

For this purpose, companies that would like to implement the S/4 system as an ERP solution in the future were asked about the status quo and plans for the transformation, the associated challenges, expectations and fears of the companies, and the requirements for SAP partners. First of all, this is good news. Advancing digitization and the desire to make processes more end-to-end and automated are driving organizations to address the topic of S/4 transformation as a high priority. The time pressure caused by the announced end of support for previous versions also plays a role here, of course.

Why could this now become a problem? As a consulting firm, we are already seeing very high demand for expert advice in the cloud environment. Our forecast is that there will be a tendency to overheat by summer 2022 at the latest. This means that companies that start late with the S/4 transformation could then lose out. This would hit midsize companies in particular, which also have fewer in-house specialists to compensate for the lack of external support. 

Desire for best practices is high

In the study "Expectations for S/4 Hana in 2022", 90 percent of the companies surveyed stated that they did not have sufficient information and support services available for implementing the transformation, for example on target and process models or total costs. A survey conducted by DSAG in the summer of 2021 points in a similar direction. The desire for a clear cost structure and best practices is correspondingly high among companies. Due to the lack of their own information base, they risk not taking important strategic decisions into account early enough.

According to the study, companies expect a transformation partner to have certified, i.e., demonstrably experienced, employees, in-depth industry expertise, innovative strength, and methodological and process competence. Without this expertise, transformation is virtually impossible. 

Many stumbling blocks

But there is another point that is underestimated in many organizations: 26 percent of the companies surveyed have not anchored the topic of change management in their planning. External support for the change process ensures that organizational change is more successful.

SAP has also recognized that in the area of S/4 there is a desire for a clear transformation path among many customers and has launched the Rise with SAP program in 2021, in which various services around the migration are bundled: from the redesign of business processes to the technical migration to the building of an intelligent enterprise. Camelot has been a Rise partner from the beginning and supports the bundling of this offering, also because it will help to cushion the consulting bottlenecks that are expected for the coming months and years. 

Path to the Intelligent Enterprise 

An S/4 transformation affects the entire company and must be approached accordingly in all its dimensions. This requires clear alignment with the corporate strategy and the involvement of all business units and stakeholders - currently still one of the greatest challenges facing companies. But only an approach that takes the organization as a whole into account can achieve the desired automation of processes, the dissolution of data silos and the performance optimization of the entire system.

Start now!

Whether such an approach will be available to all companies that want it in 2022 is to be hoped, but remains questionable. After all, if a large proportion of the companies that still have the migration ahead of them start making preparations now, it is quite possible that not all of them will still find free consulting capacity on the market. The demand is high and is constantly increasing. Therefore, my advice: it is better to find a competent partner sooner rather than later, who will then master the transformation to the Intelligent Enterprise with your company.