What comes to mind when hear­ing ​“Clean Core solu­tions?” My guess is that 90% think ​“code optimization.” 

When IBM launched the Clean Core con­ver­sa­tion with SAP almost three years ago, here’s where we start­ed: how to move away from the over-depen­dence on clas­si­cal ABAP exten­sions to the core and move towards the utopi­an vision of a cloud-native paradigm. 

How­ev­er, we quick­ly real­ized that for many of our cus­tomers the tech­ni­cal debt—ERP sys­tem con­tent that can slow down the pace of change and results in slow­er, more cost­ly change cycles, and with all the addi­tion­al regres­sion test­ing — was not just about the mil­lions of lines of code. It was also about chal­lenges in data con­sis­ten­cy, as well as the real lack of process harmonization.

We saw the impacts of this tech­ni­cal debt when using the IBM HANA Impact Assess­ment (HIA) on our cus­tomers’ SAP envi­ron­ments. This per­forms a micro-analy­sis to pro­vide the right set of rec­om­men­da­tions for the move to SAP S/4HANA. Pri­or to the Clean Core con­ver­sa­tion, the answer for cus­tomers was more than like­ly to start again with a Green­field approach. The pain of hav­ing to reme­di­ate the data, code, and process chal­lenges was seen as just too, well, painful.

Fast for­ward to today, we still run HIA, now with embed­ded Data & Process Min­ing, and we still see the same chal­lenges. How­ev­er, through our Clean Core solu­tions, work­ing with our part­ner ecosys­tems like SAP, smartShift, Syni­ti, SNP, Celo­nis, SAP Sig­navio, and more, we could address the mod­ern­iza­tion chal­lenges in code, process, and data in new ways, that ulti­mate­ly sim­pli­fy, expe­dite, and lessen the cost in the move to SAP S/4HANA. Indeed, today, the hybrid or Blue­field approach­es enabled by IBM Rapid Move have become our pre­dom­i­nant migra­tion approach.

Why Should We Care About Clean Core Solutions? 

Tak­ing a look at the 2022 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research, respon­dents report­ed [1] issues along the SAP S/4HANA jour­ney: chal­lenges with Tech Updates, Data Issues, Inte­gra­tion, and Funding. 

Fund­ing Challenges

Let’s start with the easy one: fund­ing chal­lenges. 

We have many con­ver­sa­tions with cus­tomers who have dol­lar esti­mates for the SAP S/4HANA trans­for­ma­tion — a cost in excess of afford­abil­i­ty. For some, the reac­tion is to do noth­ing — just park the prob­lem for now. For oth­ers, it’s look­ing at alter­na­tives, and for the vast major­i­ty, that’s the right advice on their options, not just the default Greenfield. 

It doesn’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to work out that if you are start­ing again, ver­sus re-using those parts of the sys­tem that still are rel­e­vant for your future oper­a­tions, then it doesn’t just cost more, it also takes more time, and con­sumes more resources from your busi­ness. Hence Blue­field approach­es using IBM Rapid Move can go a long way to address fund­ing and the war for tal­ent con­cerns today.

Tech­ni­cal Updates

Like­wise, we seem to all under­stand tech­ni­cal updates. The more non-stan­dard the sys­tem, the more chal­lenges we have to con­tin­u­ous­ly keep it cur­rent. Last year around 68% of the ASUG sur­vey par­tic­i­pants con­firmed this point [2]

Data & Inte­gra­tion Issues

But what are the data and inte­gra­tion issues? We see more cus­tomers embrac­ing more hybrid appli­ca­tion archi­tec­tures, shift­ing from ERP-cen­tric land­scapes to bal­anc­ing the pow­er of SAP with best-of-breed cloud-native solu­tions like Sales­force, Blue Yon­der, Kinax­is, and more. 

These solu­tions don’t just intro­duce dif­fer­ent data needs, but they chal­lenge the way we inte­grate, as well as neces­si­tate new fed­er­at­ed data gov­er­nance approach­es, where the mas­ter­ing of cus­tomer, mate­r­i­al, sup­pli­er and more is being out­side of SAP. SAP becomes the con­sumer, not the mas­ter data orig­i­na­tion source. 

With IBM Clean Core solu­tions, we address all the chal­lenges, address­ing fund­ing, inte­gra­tion, and tech­ni­cal innovation/​updates by focus­ing on how we resolve the tech­ni­cal debt and mod­ern­iza­tion chal­lenges in code, data, and process, whilst keep­ing some of your orig­i­nal investments.

In engi­neer­ing this more mod­ern approach to SAP trans­for­ma­tion, the role of data can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. It sup­ports trans­ac­tion­al effi­cien­cy, and pow­ers the advanced ana­lyt­ics and insights that ori­en­tate the solu­tions toward intel­li­gent sus­tain­able outcomes. 

This is why we invest in our part­ner­ships with our data ecosys­tem part­ners, e.g. Syni­ti, SNP, and in our own offer­ings, EnterpriseHub. 

It isn’t just about data migra­tion, it’s about hav­ing the right data engi­neer­ing foun­da­tion, not just for SAP, but to sup­port the extend­ed hybrid appli­ca­tion land­scape. Address­ing data qual­i­ty, not just com­plete­ness, but data accu­ra­cy, align­ing the data qual­i­ty with busi­ness insights — e.g. impact on pay­ment terms with DSO, to opti­mize Cash Flow ben­e­fits, cre­at­ing the uni­fy­ing data or Con­cep­tu­al mod­el for data that can be used to sim­pli­fy the inte­gra­tion across SAP and the new invest­ments in best-of-breed cloud-native appli­ca­tions. (I’ll dis­cuss this more in the fol­low-up arti­cle when we do a deep dive with Syni­ti on the role of Data and Clean Core.)

Process Mod­ern­iza­tion

Last­ly, from the ASUG Pulse study this year, some of the key focus areas were around Process Mod­ern­iza­tion — with about 50% look­ing at Get­ting Back to Stan­dard, 50% in using more Automa­tion, and 36% answer­ing around shift­ing from Man­u­al to Dig­i­tized Process­es. Automa­tion shouldn’t be applied in iso­la­tion of process modernization.

Today our solu­tions are shift­ing beyond the clas­si­cal adop­tion of SAP to a more expe­ri­ence-led approach, focus­ing on the user jour­ney and the future of work. This starts with our part­ner­ships with Celo­nis and SAP Sig­navio to dri­ve this deep process min­ing to estab­lish those areas of oppor­tu­ni­ty. Then we define those moments that mat­ter where the process can be sim­pli­fied and enhanced through insights to enable more pro­duc­tive and effec­tive process out­comes, improv­ing the over­all experience.

Addi­tion­al­ly, through our Evo­lu­tion Part­ner­ship with SAP, in embrac­ing the pow­er of SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), we are using process automa­tion to dri­ve process orches­tra­tion across end-to-end process work­flows. We lever­age automa­tion to make SAP sim­pler, but also use Data-Dri­ven Advanced Ana­lyt­ics and AI/ML to make SAP smarter.

In sum­ma­ry, when an enter­prise shapes its future trans­for­ma­tion, con­sid­er how to get the sys­tem future ready. Think beyond migra­tion, with a focus on mod­ern­iza­tion. Employ Clean Core as an archi­tec­tur­al phi­los­o­phy, prin­ci­ple, and set of foun­da­tion­al solu­tions that can — and con­tin­ue to — ensure the busi­ness has the right data, process, and sys­tem engi­neer­ing to become a more adap­tive, intel­li­gent, and sus­tain­able enterprise.

Allan Coul­ter is an IBM Dis­tin­guished Engi­neer and Glob­al CTO for SAP and IBM Consulting.

[1] https://​www​.asug​.com/​i​n​s​i​ghts/…

[2] Source ​”SAP Cus­tom Code and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion” Research by ASUG and Pil­lir, 2021