Lack of agility in companies: Taking the truck to the racetrack

SAP extension via low code

Dutch IT consultant and software development specialist NovioQ has found a recipe for enabling customers to drive their software truck like a sports car: through customized SAP enhancements via low-code.

"In almost every company, we find some loophole through which we can directly access the production environment and gain complete control over the system", reports Roy van de Kerkhof, CTO of NovioQ. "On the other hand, even the smallest changes to the SAP production system often have to pass through dozens of security gates before they can go live. This example shows the double standard that companies not infrequently apply in terms of the rigor of protection and control. In addition to negative security implications, agility often suffers as a result."

However, agility is a crucial factor that can make the difference between success and failure in today's competitive environment. Innovations must be brought to market before the competition catches up. To do this, internal systems must operate with the highest possible efficiency and be precisely tailored to the company's individual processes - to promote what makes the company unique. Such special features often make adjustments to the system standard unavoidable in practice. Both the development of new required functions and the rapid rectification of existing problems thus demand as much flexibility from the IT system as from the company itself. "In practice, however, it usually looks quite different"explains van de Kerkhof.

"SAP enjoys an outstanding position in many companies, and rightly so. In terms of performance and reliability, the software from Walldorf is outstanding. But in practice, companies often drive it like a truck, constantly at 80 km/h, instead of fast and agile like a sports car. In our experience, it is not uncommon in the market for up to nine months to pass before changes in the SAP system go live. First of all, the SAP experts responsible have to have free capacity. Then the data must be developed in SAP, and finally the adaptation must be tested. However, especially in the case of errors or changes that are important at short notice, employees need faster help."

Agile at the waterfall

Accordingly, the impetus for change usually comes from the company departments themselves. However, since development in many companies still takes place in the waterfall model, it is often difficult to implement agile processes across the board. And even when a company is working agilely, it is not uncommon for SAP changes to continue to be internally tied to procedures such as ticketing. In NovioQ's experience, scrumming is also almost never used in SAP practice. It is therefore necessary to find a way to move to a hybrid way of working. This could be, for example, to implement the required enhancements outside of SAP - for example, with the help of low-code - in an agile, fast and simple manner and then connect them to SAP. In this way, innovative new features are outsourced to a parallel development track, while SAP itself remains the proven, powerful core of the business processes.

The advantage of low-code technology is that it enables development processes to be based on visual modeling. Christoph Volkmer, RVP of the low-code specialist OutSystems, a NovioQ partner, describes this as follows: "Functions and processes of the planned application are compiled visually in the development environment - virtually according to the drag-and-drop principle. This eliminates the need to write software code manually. This significantly speeds up the development process and greatly simplifies the maintenance of the resulting applications."

Accordingly, a low-code platform can be used to create custom-fit mobile or web applications that fully integrate with SAP. They can be developed or edited within the framework of agile sprints. The basis for this, for example in OutSystems, is formed by numerous standard and user-defined SAP functions based on the so-called "BAPI" interfaces from SAP, which users can access in the platform. For example, NovioQ was able to develop a solution for a well-known international customer's international financial service center in just ten weeks. This solution connects the separate SAP systems of all branches in different countries, thus ensuring consistent, automated processes and, among other things, reducing the average time for a posting in the general ledger from weeks to hours. 

Prove instead of claim

For many companies, however, relying on low-code for rapid customization of SAP is not a matter of course. Management and employees need to be convinced of the technology - ideally by developing the first applications that benefit the company and demonstrate speed and practicality. "One of our customers wanted to provide resellers with a sales application"recalls the NovioQ CTO. "With the OutSystems platform, we were able to create a corresponding application to extend SAP in just six weeks - and with less than two developers. The solution is fully integrated with SAP, has access to all orders and can initiate deliveries or check stock levels. Word of this success spread all the way to management, securing the necessary backing for further projects."

Another argument in favor of the external individualization of SAP via low code is the fact that companies can thus also create an optimal starting position for taking the step into the S/4HANA future. By separating existing individualizations from the SAP standard and replacing them with the help of low code, it is possible to return to a clean standard version of SAP that can then be transferred to the S/4HANA world. "One of our Belgian customers is following such a 'clean core' strategy to migrate to HANA", reports van de Kerkhof. "To do this, we built, among other things, a custom vendor portal in low-code, where vendors can generate order confirmations, confirm delivery dates and prices, and send shipping notifications. Such a solution can also be purchased on the market, but the cost of developing it in-house using low-code was only a fraction of an annual license."

In addition to the financial benefits, this also results in a product that precisely meets the customer's requirements and may not need to be extensively customized after implementation. "We know companies that spend several hundred thousand euros a year on a solution of which they use just ten percent," confirms Christoph Volkmer. "Creating a custom-fit solution with low-code yourself can definitely pay off. At the same time, companies invest in the future with a low-code development platform: Because while I can only use an invoice workflow solution for its dedicated purpose, I can create many other solutions for the most diverse areas of application with a development platform that has been licensed once."

Sports car instead of truck

According to van de Kerkhof, however, it is important to view the modernization process as a holistic project so that agility gained is not undone at other process stages. For example, many companies have a policy that OData must be used to communicate with SAP. This is also possible in OutSystems, but the solution also offers an RFC connector with which corresponding functions can be realized much faster. 

A good compromise here can be to start with the fast RFC variant and then replace it with the desired OData variant as soon as the process is running stably. In this way, nothing stands in the way of the fastest possible time-to-market, while at the same time existing requirements are met. "In such cases, we advise our customers to be healthy pragmatists"van de Kerkhof emphasizes in conclusion. "Because that's exactly how companies create the agility to no longer just drive their SAP like an enduring truck, but like a nimble sports car."