Now that we are in 2021, SAP cus­tomers have about six years to migrate from SAP ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA before the soft­ware com­pa­ny ends sup­port of its lega­cy ERP soft­ware. While many com­pa­nies are already live on SAP S/4HANA — or well into their trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys — there are still a lot of cus­tomers who have not begun this tran­si­tion. In 2020, ASUG part­nered with DSAG to sur­vey SAP cus­tomers in North Amer­i­ca, Ger­many, Aus­tria, and Switzer­land. About 18% of ASUG mem­bers and 12% of DSAG mem­bers indi­cat­ed they are still decid­ing on whether they will adopt SAP S/4HANA, while 33% of ASUG mem­bers and 47% of DSAG mem­bers not­ed that they are plan­ning to migrate, but haven’t start­ed the process.

Imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA can have sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness impacts, but it requires a lot of effort, time, and plan­ning. Last year, ASUG host­ed an ASUG Express web­cast series: Achiev­ing Suc­cess with SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Boot Camp. Spread across six episodes, the boot camp cov­ered strat­e­gy and vision, build­ing a busi­ness case, plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion, deliv­er­ing val­ue, change man­age­ment and adop­tion, and remote exe­cu­tion. The episodes fea­tured SAP pro­fes­sion­als, SAP S/4HANA experts, and part­ners walk­ing atten­dees through best prac­tices, offer­ing advice, and shar­ing help­ful tools and resources.

“The boot camp pro­vid­ed atten­dees with key things to know and do no mat­ter where they are on their SAP S/4HANA jour­ney,” said Paul Kurchi­na, the web­casts’ host and ASUG evan­ge­list. ​“Dur­ing this six-episode series atten­dees took away the most cur­rent insights, tools, and resources.”

Under­stand the SAP S/4HANA Strategy

The boot camp kicked off with a pre­sen­ta­tion from Matthew Dono­van, direc­tor of SAP S/4HANA busi­ness mar­ket devel­op­ment, who walked atten­dees through the cur­rent strat­e­gy SAP has for SAP S/4HANA. He point­ed out that today’s busi­ness cli­mate is incred­i­bly com­pli­cat­ed and volatile. Not only are employ­ees search­ing for a ​“pur­pose­ful work­place,” but cus­tomers are also demand­ing unique expe­ri­ences, while soci­ety is expect­ing more from companies.

Because of all these fac­tors, Dono­van said that SAP cus­tomers are turn­ing to SAP S/4HANA for a few rea­sons. First, they are look­ing for a sin­gle point of truth, where all data is con­nect­ed across the entire orga­ni­za­tion. Cus­tomers are also look­ing to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while also reduc­ing risk. Final­ly, busi­ness­es want to make their oper­a­tions more flex­i­ble and respon­sive. COVID-19 has cer­tain­ly proved that these are nec­es­sary traits for busi­ness­es to stay healthy and effec­tive­ly serve cus­tomers. Dono­van said that SAP S/4HANA is suit­ed to help SAP cus­tomers achieve these oper­a­tional goals, while also tack­ling future prob­lems. ​“Com­pa­nies are get­ting tripped up because they are try­ing to solve the chal­lenges of today and tomor­row with a toolset that’s been in place for 5 to 10 years,” he said.

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Accord­ing to Dono­van, SAP is doing a litany of things to ensure that SAP S/4HANA con­tin­ues to meet the expec­ta­tions — and needs — of cus­tomers. The soft­ware com­pa­ny con­tin­ues embed­ding the ERP solu­tion with intel­li­gence across an entire busi­ness ecosys­tem. Machine learn­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties are ​“deeply embed­ded into the core process” of SAP S/4HANA, which helps cus­tomers to auto­mate and free up vital user time.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Dono­van dis­cussed the inte­grat­ed end-to-end mod­u­lar process­es in SAP S/4HANA. ​“The days of mono­lith­ic ERP are over,” he said. He empha­sized how many process­es touch a vari­ety of ​“sources and sys­tems,” neces­si­tat­ing a mod­u­lar approach to an ERP plat­form. SAP S/4HANA is an inte­grat­ed solu­tion that has clear start and end­points. Yet, Dono­van also under­lined the solution’s ​“seam­less” user expe­ri­ence. Func­tion­al­i­ties like this are made pos­si­ble by the SAP S/4HANA aligned domain mod­el, which allows data to freely flow from solu­tion to solution.

Keys to Build­ing a Busi­ness Case

One of the most impor­tant phas­es of inte­grat­ing SAP S/4HANA hap­pens well before the actu­al project is even green­lit: build­ing a busi­ness case. Not only does a busi­ness case help a company’s lead­er­ship approve the project, but it also assists com­pa­nies as they assess what sort of impact a new ERP sys­tem will have, and which busi­ness process­es can be improved. In the sec­ond episode of the boot camp, Scott Koren, asso­ciate part­ner of IBM Next Gen Enter­prise Appli­ca­tions; and William Bow­ers, GVP of SAP S/4HANA GTM & Solu­tion Man­age­ment at SAP, focused on how com­pa­nies should approach build­ing their busi­ness cas­es for SAP S/4HANA.

Bow­ers laid out some keys to suc­cess atten­dees should keep in mind as they approach their busi­ness cas­es. First, he encour­aged cus­tomers to put a lot of thought and research into how SAP S/4HANA is going to help a company’s core busi­ness along with how it is rel­e­vant to a company’s over­all busi­ness strat­e­gy. He also list­ed a few key aspects of a busi­ness case that will help lead­er­ship under­stand the implementation’s impact bet­ter. For exam­ple, on the finan­cial side of the busi­ness case, atten­dees were encour­aged to include annu­al reoc­cur­ring ben­e­fits, the pay­back peri­od, and the inter­nal rate of return.

“A lot of these cal­cu­la­tions are done top-down, but the thought process of these cal­cu­la­tions can be hard to artic­u­late,” he said. ​“If you can’t artic­u­late those core nuggets of gold or incre­men­tal areas of val­ue, then it’s not some­thing you’ve internalized.”

Prepar­ing and Plan­ning for an SAP S/4HANA Project

The third episode fea­tured Jose Mar­quez, SAP S/4HANA Region­al Imple­men­ta­tion Group lead for Amer­i­c­as at SAP; Shel­don Edel­stein, SAP S/4HANA Region­al Imple­men­ta­tion Group prod­uct expert; and Van Vi, head of SAP HANA prac­tice unit and a mem­ber of the SAP S/4HANA Region­al Imple­men­ta­tion Group team member.

This ses­sion detailed actions atten­dees should take dur­ing the plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion phas­es of an SAP S/4HANA project. Most impor­tant­ly, the three experts also dis­cussed sev­er­al dif­fer­ent plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion resources avail­able to atten­dees when they reach this par­tic­u­lar phase. Vi dis­cussed impor­tant tools like the SAP Readi­ness Check 2.0 for SAP S/4HANA, which can yield cru­cial insights includ­ing how add-ons are work­ing, the siz­ing of the data­base, and infor­ma­tion on cus­tom code.

Edel­stein laid out a few ​“accel­er­a­tors” avail­able to cus­tomers, includ­ing SAP Mod­el Com­pa­ny—“a prepack­aged, ready-to-use, end-to-end ref­er­ence solu­tion for SAP S/4HANA” — and the SAP Busi­ness Sce­nario Rec­om­men­da­tion, which is a report that helps users ​“make sense of inno­va­tion con­cepts and main­te­nance services.”

Exe­cut­ing an SAP S/4HANA Project and Deliv­er­ing Value

The fourth ses­sion of the series focused on how cus­tomers can go about doing an SAP S/4HANA project and obtain­ing val­ue from the imple­men­ta­tion. Jim O’Donnell, SAP alliance solu­tion archi­tect at Red Hat walked through how the com­pa­ny can pro­vide infra­struc­ture solu­tions exper­tise dur­ing the exe­cu­tion phase. Alexan­der Ertl, senior prod­uct man­ag­er for SAP at Tri­cen­tis, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion detail­ing the val­ue of the company’s test­ing services.

This episode also fea­tured sev­er­al SAP tools avail­able to atten­dees that can help dur­ing the exe­cu­tion part of their SAP S/4HANA jour­ney. Ran­jeet Pan­ick­er, VP of SAP Ser­vices at SAP, touched on sev­er­al of these resources. Exam­ples include SAP Advanced Deploy­ment, a defined frame­work for SAP-led projects that sup­port an imple­men­ta­tion all the way to deploy­ment. Addi­tion­al­ly, he dis­cussed SAP Val­ue Assur­ance, an approach that can be used to speed up trans­for­ma­tion while reduc­ing risk. This tool gives cus­tomers access to ser­vice pack­ages and solu­tions for each phase of deployment.

Man­ag­ing the Change of an SAP S/4HANA Implementation

The fifth episode focused on ways cus­tomers can make the process of lever­ag­ing a brand-new solu­tion eas­i­er. Ker­ry Brown, VP of work­force adop­tion at SAP, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on change man­age­ment adop­tion. ​“The focus on peo­ple has real­ly changed,” she said.

Accord­ing to Brown a sig­nif­i­cant aspect of this change aris­es from the shift­ing dynam­ics in the work­force, where baby boomers are retir­ing while mil­len­ni­als are becom­ing the dom­i­nant force. Tech­nol­o­gy — and the way we use it — is also shift­ing. ​“We are all chang­ing our expec­ta­tion of what [tech­nol­o­gy] can do for us and with us,” Brown said.

Brown then host­ed a ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion with Dan Brake, SAP North Amer­i­ca busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion ser­vices lead man­ag­er, about how he is see­ing SAP cus­tomers shift their approach­es to change. ​“It’s less about imple­ment­ing change stan­dards and more about flip­ping things on their axis and make sure your change stan­dards are about reach­ing out to peo­ple,” he said. ​“In this world, we find our­selves now it’s easy to feel iso­lat­ed and not feel you have the sup­port you need.”

One of the main things Brown is see­ing is client inter­ac­tions focused on work­ing ses­sions, where cus­tomers learn how to use and lever­age a solu­tion. He not­ed that cus­tomers can ​“dri­ve” a solu­tion them­selves, while receiv­ing sup­port and giv­ing feedback.

Exe­cut­ing SAP S/4HANA Projects Remotely

The sixth and final episode of the boot camp was a reflec­tion on the cur­rent moment. Because of COVID-19, com­pa­nies have been forced to imple­ment SAP S/4HANA com­plete­ly remote­ly, some­thing that rarely hap­pened before this year. This type of exe­cu­tion cer­tain­ly com­pli­cates mat­ters. Alan New­ton, VP of deliv­ery retail and fash­ion indus­try COE at SAP; Alex Nearey, project man­ag­er of retail and fash­ion Indus­try COE at SAP; and Cathy Cock­rell senior project man­ag­er of retail and fash­ion indus­try COE at SAP gave pre­sen­ta­tions focused on how cus­tomers can com­plete a remote project in the giv­en cli­mate. ​“This is a new real­i­ty,” New­ton said.

He detailed some key ele­ments of a suc­cess­ful off­site SAP S/4HANA deliv­ery, includ­ing cre­at­ing a whole remote work­ing play­book based on the SAP Acti­vate method­ol­o­gy and empha­siz­ing per­son­al con­nec­tion. New­ton rec­om­mend­ed cus­tomers insti­tute dai­ly standup meet­ings dur­ing these projects, along with reg­u­lar­ly shar­ing of progress against sched­uled deliv­er­ables and installing a vir­tu­al project room for vital discussions.

Nearey walked atten­dees through a case study of a large ath­let­ic fash­ion and footwear com­pa­ny that went through a recent remote trans­for­ma­tion. The project includ­ed three go-lives planned for Feb­ru­ary, March, and May 2021. This is a part­ner-led project that began ramp­ing up in May 2018. Some of the strug­gles the team encoun­tered includ­ed con­fer­enc­ing for large meet­ings, onboard­ing new team mem­bers in a ful­ly remote envi­ron­ment, and get­ting the required tools and tech­nol­o­gy for such a large remote team. Nearey sug­gest­ed that cus­tomers work­ing on sim­i­lar projects set up reg­u­lar one-on-one ses­sions with cus­tomer coun­ter­parts, update email sig­na­tures to include phone num­bers, inform leads and cus­tomer coun­ter­parts of any dou­ble-book­ing of meet­ings, and — most impor­tant­ly — mut­ing micro­phones dur­ing large video meet­ings. He attrib­uted a lot of this project’s suc­cess to a well-defined com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, clear process of own­er­ship, flex­i­ble gov­er­nance, and suc­cess­ful­ly lever­ag­ing video.

Next Steps

While SAP cus­tomers have more than six years to migrate to SAP S/4HANA, now is the per­fect time to start that process. This boot camp was the per­fect crash course for SAP cus­tomers think­ing of kick­ing off their SAP S/4HANA journey.

“Still there are tens of thou­sands of SAP cus­tomers that have not yet start­ed their SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion,” Kurchi­na said. ​“Now has nev­er been a bet­ter time to jump into a six-episode SAP S/4HANA boot camp to bet­ter help ensure greater suc­cess and deliv­er more val­ue while con­duct­ing these exhaus­tive projects.”

Although the boot camp series stops after imple­men­ta­tion, the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues with the lat­est ASUG Express web­casts, which fea­tured two episodes on Liv­ing the SAP S/4HANA Life – Thrive After Go-Live. Both are avail­able on-demand.

Want to con­tin­ue the SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sa­tion? Make sure to attend the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence. Across four weeks in March, these ses­sions will help atten­dees be suc­cess­ful in every part of their SAP S/4HANA jour­ney, with each week focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent phase of the imple­men­ta­tion process.