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Six Key Factors to Make Your SAP S/4 Hana Business Transformation Roadmap a Success

The demand for innovative solutions to tackle ever-evolving challenges and support smart processes and new business models in the era of digitalization is rising. To become more resilient and adaptive, 11,500 customers worldwide are leveraging SAP S/4 Hana.
Rene Leppich, Arvato Systems
August 4, 2020
[shutterstock.com: 1711890649, Robert Goudappel]
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The implementation of SAP S/4 Hana is not an isolated IT project. It triggers a comprehensive business transformation process, making it necessary to rethink and adapt corporate goals. This is not a journey that companies should take lightly—they need a comprehensive business transformation roadmap. Six key factors decide if a roadmap leads to success or sets a company up for failure.

Business Alignment

Companies need to realize that aligning strategic business goals is a fundamental requirement for sustainable transformation. Only then do they really know which processes and functionalities they require from the new software. Without knowing where you are and where you want to go, even the best next-gen ERP system will not be able to effectively support your business.

Onboarding

However, business alignment also means that everyone involved—from C-level executives to interns—needs to be on board. Companies need to talk to all affected employees and, taking their job level and prior know-how into account, acquaint them with the new technology. Effective change management is key for successful software implementations and business processes optimization.

Competence

Internal acceptance and necessary know-how are essential to bridge the gap between IT and business. A competent consultancy and system integration partner is able to facilitate and orchestrate this process. Together, company and partner need to develop a structured transformation plan to make subsequent implementations or migrations as seamless as possible.

The six success factors of a business transformation roadmap


Evaluation

For a successful roadmap, it is essential that companies thoroughly evaluate all of their business processes to see which of them really are mission critical, which have more of a supporting function, and which can be optimized (within reason). For example, retrofitting systems to comply with standard best practices can also achieve higher levels of automation and process optimization.

Comprehensiveness

For thorough evaluation, considering the process landscape in its entirety is indispensable. Individual departments like finance, procurement, sales and marketing need comprehensive analysis of their processes to know how to improve and optimize them with the new technology.

Prototyping

Before companies actively start tackling the implementation, it is recommendable to have kind of a test run. This ensures that everyone involved works towards and subsequently benefits from business transformation. A prototype guarantees transparency of changes on a technological and organizational level. By using a prototype, companies can furthermore gain experience and consider what they learned in the actual implementation. This minimizes risk in business transformation efforts.

Conclusion

Business transformation closes the gap between where companies are right now and where they want to be by optimizing the use of software and technology. To be successful, companies need a comprehensive roadmap that considers every area of business and is aligned with strategic corporate goals. Companies can find more detailed information on this in the white paper "From vision to reality - the S/4 Business Transformation Roadmap" from Arvato Systems, which is available at arva.to/s4-btr for download free of charge.

https://e3mag.com/partners/arvato-systems-gmbh/
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Rene Leppich, Arvato Systems

Rene Leppich is Manager SAP Enterprise Transformation at Arvato Systems.


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Working on the SAP basis is crucial for successful S/4 conversion. 

This gives the Competence Center strategic importance for existing SAP customers. Regardless of the S/4 Hana operating model, topics such as Automation, Monitoring, Security, Application Lifecycle Management and Data Management the basis for S/4 operations.

For the second time, E3 magazine is organizing a summit for the SAP community in Salzburg to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of S/4 Hana groundwork.

Venue

FourSide Hotel Salzburg,
Trademark Collection by Wyndham
Am Messezentrum 2, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
+43-66-24355460

Event date

Wednesday, June 10, and
Thursday, June 11, 2026

Early Bird Ticket

Regular ticket

EUR 390 excl. VAT
available until 1.10.2025
EUR 590 excl. VAT

Venue

Hotel Hilton Heidelberg
Kurfürstenanlage 1
D-69115 Heidelberg

Event date

Wednesday, April 22 and
Thursday, April 23, 2026

Tickets

Regular ticket
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Subscribers to the E3 magazine
reduced with promocode STAbo26
EUR 390 excl. VAT
Students*
reduced with promocode STStud26.
Please send proof of studies by e-mail to office@b4bmedia.net.
EUR 290 excl. VAT
*The first 10 tickets are free of charge for students. Try your luck! 🍀
The event is organized by the E3 magazine of the publishing house B4Bmedia.net AG. The presentations will be accompanied by an exhibition of selected SAP partners. The ticket price includes attendance at all presentations of the Steampunk and BTP Summit 2026, a visit to the exhibition area, participation in the evening event and catering during the official program. The lecture program and the list of exhibitors and sponsors (SAP partners) will be published on this website in due course.