The individual path to S/4

According to a PAC study, around 40 percent of companies are strategically addressing the topic of SAP from the cloud and have already implemented or worked out their SAP cloud strategy, are developing it or are planning it for the future.

But the survey also shows that many companies are uncertain about the scope of the migration and are reluctant to take the first step.

They lack convincing business cases for the final decision and fear the costs of software acquisition. In addition, there are concerns about whether the new solution is actually mature enough to be used in their own company.

But all these reservations recede into the background when CEOs look at the possibilities of SAP S/4 Hana: real-time business thanks to Big Data evaluations in real time.

Practical significance of real-time in operation

The key advantage of the real-time principle is, above all, being able to make better decisions: By accessing real-time data analytics, CEOs gain a competitive advantage over anyone who steers their company based on legacy data.

Because instead of relying on values from the past or using aggregates from OLAP systems, the in-memory database provides detailed information in seconds, providing a solid basis for strategic decisions.

Every transaction, every single booking, every process step - everything is recorded, processed and included in the decision-making process extremely quickly.

And in addition to increasing quality, costs are also falling: A Forrester study shows an average savings potential of 37 percent in IT operations, while at the same time increasing performance in system maintenance and development projects.

This is also documented by early adopters, who report 86 percent faster real-time data analysis and 65 percent faster month-end close.

Mexican food manufacturer Grupo Schettino decided to migrate for precisely these reasons: There, aging processes and IT systems were causing confusion and rising costs.

A manually controlled production process and business decisions based on hypothetical data are just two examples of inefficient processes in need of modernization.

To move toward a real-time digital enterprise and put budgets back to good use, the business migrated to S/4 Hana with support from T-Systems.

After all, real-time is not just a nice-sounding trendy term - it's an opportunity to generate real added value for your own business and to make direct use of technical progress in practical business processes.

Some decision-makers are putting off migration, but they shouldn't wait much longer. Even though it is possible to use the current SAP Business Suite until 2025, before support expires: For innovation drivers, waiting is the wrong strategy if they want to remain at the forefront in the future.

After all, those who initiate migration today and seize the opportunity to be among the first can secure a competitive advantage.

Just as the Mexican food manufacturer Grupo Schettino has done, for example. He can quickly find his personal place in the emerging business ecosystem and establish himself as a digital leader.

Thinking beyond one's own core business, networking efficiently with partners, facing the competition strongly and developing successfully in an agile environment - these are the goals of a modern real-time company.

With the real-time possibilities of S/4 Hana, it is possible to digitize one's own value creation seamlessly, to make processes more dynamic and to create all the prerequisites for a successful future in digitization.

This means maximum flexibility in times of dynamic markets: innovation projects can be driven forward efficiently and in a targeted manner, analyses become more reliable thanks to the most up-to-date data, and the performance of the systems reacts agilely with the required resources depending on the load.

Under these conditions, companies are able to dynamically adapt their own business model to the constantly changing environment - if necessary, new business ideas can be tried out, retained or easily stopped again depending on the initial test results.

The entire organization with its processes, products and services can thus become agile and position itself for the future.

Successful migration: step by step

Once the decision has been made in favor of SAP S/4 Hana, the next step is the practical implementation of the transformation. To avoid losing sight of the big picture, companies need maximum transparency.

T-Systems has developed a six-step concept for the migration, the Jump Start:

First:

In the first step, a kick-off call serves to extensively discuss all process steps and the entire program in order to ideally prepare all participants.

Second:

In a first workshop, the project is started by defining expectations and goals for the team and familiarizing the customer with the technology.

Third:

The second workshop serves to define relevant processes, suitable use cases and pain points. The project group then defines a proof of concept (PoC) and the company learns what information it still has to provide.

Fourth:

These building blocks are used to create an action plan, on the basis of which the PoC is established in stage four.

Fifth:

Step five is the test phase: Now the customer is allowed to put the concept through its paces with his own real business data.

Sixth:

In the final, sixth step, the results of the test are analyzed in detail in the review workshop and a feedback round clarifies the last open questions.

Once all the details have been clarified, the company receives a concrete offer for its own migration and a proposal for the next steps.

Then the path to SAP S/4 Hana follows piece by piece: The current SAP landscape is subjected to a detailed assessment, data is consolidated and processes harmonized, and the current database is migrated to Hana.

This is followed by the optimization of business processes, the installation of real-time reporting and the launch of the Fiori apps.

The individual transformation roadmap is ideally developed specifically for the company in question, as was done for Grupo Schettino:

In this case, SAP best practices served as a template for standardizing and optimizing business processes, which were then integrated into an overall landscape.

The process was accompanied by experienced experts in order to keep the risk as low as possible during the transformation and beyond, and to relieve the company's internal resources as much as possible.

Secure cloud as a solid basis for the future

The path to SAP S/4 Hana inevitably leads to the cloud. But the analysts at PAC still see reservations among around 80 percent of decision-makers with regard to data and legal security.

These concerns must be overcome in order to make the company's own processes and structures more innovative. This can be achieved with secure German platforms in which data protection and security are guaranteed.

SAP-certified hardware provides a solid basis for innovation projects, workshops and the dynamic adjustment of resources during peaks in demand. With S/4 from T-Systems' private cloud, for example, companies benefit from up to 99.95 percent availability and full disaster recovery.

From the public cloud, they can also flexibly test the new possibilities of real-time analysis with maximum transparency: systems that are not used permanently can be completely switched off on weekends and holidays, which means that no costs are incurred for these times.

On the next working day, operations are simply resumed where they were interrupted, and corresponding expenses are only incurred for the services actually used.

And this is based on state-of-the-art server technology: Intel Xeon E7 processors, 18 cores per CPU and currently up to 1 TB virtual machines. This can be easily integrated into any multi-cloud environment thanks to the open OpenStack architecture.

Those who do not want to keep the entire infrastructure under their own responsibility in a self-managed service can relax and use a managed service that relieves their own resources and frees them up for core tasks.

Each at his own pace, each in his own way

The path to S/4 Hana is as individual as the company that takes it. Because every company is at a different point in the process of digital transformation. Before the journey begins, it is worth gaining initial practical experience and trying out the new possibilities.

For the migration itself, experienced partners such as T-Systems offer the right solution for every need: Small projects for step-by-step development are just as possible as a comprehensive transformation project towards a digital real-time enterprise.

The more diverse the partner's portfolio, the more relaxed the CEO can confidently hand over comprehensive tasks and receive the right support from a single source.

In any case, the focus should be on competent end-to-end consulting that accompanies the respective company through the migration process at an individually appropriate pace.

In Grupo Schettino's case, this approach reduced transformation risk to a minimum and the group has since benefited from cost savings, real-time analytics, and an easy-to-use, forward-looking total solution.