Late last month, SAP announced the launch of GROW with SAP, a new bun­dled offer­ing aimed at help­ing mid­size cus­tomers adopt cloud ERP. 

Com­bin­ing SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, with indus­try best prac­tices and embed­ded AI and automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties, GROW with SAP facil­i­tates SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) inte­gra­tion while enabling mid­size cus­tomers to define their own apps and process­es in a cloud-native way. GROW with SAP empha­sizes the speed, pre­dictabil­i­ty, and con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion most rel­e­vant to fast-grow­ing com­pa­nies’ busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy needs. 

To help ASUG mem­bers make sense of the announce­ment, we recent­ly sat down with Mau­ra Hameroff, SVP of ERP Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing at SAP, to ask a few ques­tions about GROW and how it fits with­in the SAP suite of solutions. 

Ques­tion: What can you tell ASUG mem­bers about GROW with SAP and the ratio­nale behind this new offering?

Answer: SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, is our cloud-native solu­tion. And we have a very spe­cif­ic tar­get for that solu­tion in the mid­mar­ket space, espe­cial­ly for cus­tomers either start­ing their jour­ney into ERP and cloud or com­ing from start­ing points of solu­tions that don’t fit their needs today — who are in that mid­mar­ket space amid grow­ing and expand­ing their busi­ness. Those com­pa­nies are not heav­i­ly IT-led com­pa­nies, for the most part. Some of them, on the upper end, have a lot more, but they need solu­tions that fit their mod­el, that are cloud-native and agile, so they can get up and run­ning and start tak­ing advan­tage of the solu­tion quick­ly. They don’t need to rely on a lot of inter­nal exper­tise or lengthy process­es to get up and run­ning. These cus­tomers were the key dri­vers for us to cre­ate GROW with SAP. Now, GROW is an offer­ing that was built around SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, which adds tools, method­olo­gies, and ser­vices to help cus­tomers get up and run­ning with­in four to eight weeks. That’s the basic scope; that’s what we’ve added around the tool, and we can build from there, either direct­ly or through the help of partners. 

The GROW offer­ing includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, as well as SAP BTP, our plat­form for cus­tomers to build exten­si­bil­i­ty. And we have a set of tools that start all the way from help­ing cus­tomers dis­cov­er what the right scopes are for them to get up and run­ning to pro­vid­ing mod­els based on best prac­tices for their indus­try and then con­nect­ing into our Cloud Appli­ca­tion Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment (CALM) appli­ca­tion that helps them actu­al­ly deploy. In the mid­dle of that, we have the acti­va­tion ser­vices that make that pos­si­ble. That time­frame I men­tioned, the four to eight weeks, is the result of using those tools and method­olo­gies, as well as the best prac­tices. So, in a nut­shell, that is why we’ve cre­at­ed GROW and why GROW helps cus­tomers real­ize that process of using fast and cloud-native appli­ca­tions, get­ting up and run­ning, then grow­ing their busi­ness, no pun intended.

Q. One chal­lenge spe­cif­ic to the mid­mar­ket is scal­ing orga­ni­za­tions quick­ly and effec­tive­ly. What con­ver­sa­tions have you had with mid­mar­ket cus­tomers around their cloud trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys, and how would you eval­u­ate the progress of that mid­mar­ket sec­tor in embrac­ing cloud-native solu­tions overall?

A. Except for some more cloud-resis­tant coun­tries, where there are a lot of restric­tions or high­ly reg­u­lat­ed indus­tries, we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly see­ing resis­tance to the cloud. Those com­pa­nies are actu­al­ly more like­ly to look at cloud-first because they don’t have a lot of lega­cy sys­tems. They’re look­ing at cloud-first in terms of mod­ern­iz­ing their busi­ness­es. As busi­ness­es grow, they become real­ly pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­aged and use tools for that, so their busi­ness­es become more com­plex. Trig­gers for that could be expand­ing to dif­fer­ent coun­tries or increas­ing the num­ber of prod­ucts that they have. As they get chal­lenged with expand­ing their space, they real­ize it’s time for them to use ERPs to get there. They might then ask, ​“But is it com­plex? Is it for me?” That’s more of what we have to over­come: the com­plex­i­ty and the time-to-value. 

Q. How does GROW with SAP fit into the over­all SAP strat­e­gy toward sim­pli­fy­ing land­scapes instead of com­plex­i­fy­ing them? 

A. Both GROW and cloud-native solu­tions are our shared answer to that chal­lenge. The fact that it is a cloud-native ser­vice run by SAP means you don’t have to wor­ry about the secu­ri­ty or any of the infra­struc­ture, which elim­i­nates a lot of the bur­den that com­pa­nies can’t deal with. We hear a ton about secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance and that com­pa­nies in that space can­not keep up. Hav­ing a true, cloud-native solu­tion that’s always up to date and hav­ing SAP be respon­si­ble for the ser­vice-lev­el agree­ment (SLA) is extreme­ly important. 

And what we have done with SAP S/4HANA, pub­lic edi­tion, and GROW is to take the knowl­edge that we have from 50 years of indus­try exper­tise and build those process­es with­in the prod­uct. The gen­e­sis of GROW is sim­pli­fy­ing and bring­ing that exper­tise. We have learned from all of our years what works in spe­cif­ic indus­tries, and we have very spe­cif­ic process­es. With our part­ners, we work with our cus­tomers to assess what they have and what they need. What scopes are the ones they need to get up and run­ning? With that, we map them to the best prac­tices in their indus­tries. And that maps into the CALM tool, which gets them to pro­duc­tion. The accel­er­a­tion ser­vices play into that piece, bring­ing a small scope to get them up and run­ning. And then you can add as you grow or as you need. That’s at the cen­ter: bring­ing that exper­tise to them, but in a way that elim­i­nates the com­plex­i­ty or the extreme lev­el of choice. Of course, a lot of cus­tomers will have needs that grow beyond that. But that’s the point of being a cloud plat­form that enables them to extend. And in par­al­lel, we’re also work­ing with our part­ner ecosys­tems, so they can bring their IP and their exper­tise into this same mod­el of fit to standard.

Q. What path­ways are in place to enable dis­cov­ery for cus­tomers using GROW with SAP, or for those fig­ur­ing out how they might max­i­mize a poten­tial invest­ment in GROW with SAP?

A. It starts with the pack­ag­ing. We sim­pli­fied what we sell to our cus­tomers, so cus­tomers real­ly know what they’re get­ting. And as part of that ini­tial pack­age, we are mak­ing sure they have every­thing they need to get up and running. 

We have a base edi­tion and the pre­mi­um edi­tion. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, is a full-on ERP solu­tion; every­thing is built into the prod­uct, includ­ing all those best prac­tices. In addi­tion to that, we’re adding CPEA Cred­its and BTP Build with Process Automa­tion and Build Apps. We have that in two mod­els: the base and the pre­mi­um. The base is what you need at a min­i­mum, and that’s focused on cus­tomers that are more cost-con­scious, have less require­ments, or even for some emerg­ing economies. And then, for the base, on the finance side, we enhanced that with group report­ing and dig­i­tal access. For the pre­mi­um, we’ve added a lit­tle bit more, with addi­tion­al finance solutions. 

We know, based on our expe­ri­ence of the cus­tomers’ needs, that one part of the answer is putting in the pack­age what cus­tomers actu­al­ly need, mak­ing that eas­i­ly clear and acces­si­ble. Also, think­ing about CALM, with its tools and method­olo­gies in one place, under­lies our strat­e­gy here with all the tool­ing. Hav­ing that in one set of method­olo­gies, and hav­ing clear pack­ag­ing, ensures that cus­tomers can take advan­tage of every­thing that they have.

Q. Are you tar­get­ing any spe­cif­ic indus­tries with­in the mid­mar­ket space where you’ve seen par­tic­u­lar demand for an offer­ing like GROW with SAP? 

A. From an indus­try stand­point, where we see that demand ini­tial­ly is from pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices like con­sult­ing, audit, media, engi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion, pub­lic sec­tor, high­er edu­ca­tion, bank­ing, and high-tech insur­ance. Those are more ser­vice-cen­tric indus­tries. On the prod­uct-cen­tric side, it’s indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing, machin­ery, and com­po­nents (IM&C), high tech, and auto­mo­tive. That’s basi­cal­ly 70% of, from an indus­try stand­point, where we see demand. It’s about places where every­thing is a ser­vice, com­pa­nies that need to com­bine phys­i­cal prod­ucts with ser­vices and make it a sub­scrip­tion. How do you do that with­out hav­ing an ERP that can com­bine the prod­uct and ser­vice, make it togeth­er, bill it as a sub­scrip­tion, tag on the usage if it’s going to be use-based, billing … Those [cri­te­ria] indi­cate that those indus­tries are real­ly look­ing at this type of solution. 

Q. Can you break down the points of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between GROW with SAP and RISE with SAP, and how do you iden­ti­fy whether a cus­tomer is bet­ter suit­ed to pur­sue one or the other?

A. We don’t pitch GROW and RISE in par­al­lel to cus­tomers. We see that com­par­i­son hap­pen­ing more inter­nal­ly and with part­ners. When we’re going to events focused on mid­mar­ket and when those cus­tomers are look­ing for a cloud-native solu­tion, GROW is our lead­ing mes­sage, with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, at its cen­ter. For cus­tomers, we dif­fer­en­ti­ate more in terms of whether they’re ​“start­ing fresh” or ​“migrat­ing.” SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, is that com­mon ele­ment between GROW and RISE. In the con­text of RISE, pub­lic edi­tion gen­er­al­ly tends to be more of a two-tier type of mod­el ver­sus start­ing fresh with a new ERP. It com­ple­ments whether you have a sub­sidiary divesti­ture, for exam­ple. There are a num­ber of sce­nar­ios where pub­lic edi­tion enhances pri­vate edi­tion in the con­text of a RISE cus­tomer migration.

Q. What else would you like to share with the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty about GROW with SAP?

A. GROW with SAP is us putting 50 years of knowl­edge into a cloud-native solu­tion and low­er­ing the bar­ri­er of entry for ERP for grow­ing com­pa­nies. That’s, in a nut­shell, what GROW is. We want com­pa­nies in the mid­mar­ket space to see us as a part­ner and a helper in that space. They can bet on SAP to grow their busi­ness, and we will grow with them. Lots of solu­tions in the mid­mar­ket space can’t grow with their com­pa­nies. We want to both reduce the bar­ri­er of entry and grow with them and mar­ry that with our indus­try exper­tise. And we want cus­tomers to be advo­cates with us on this fit-to-stan­dard. Com­mu­ni­ty is an extreme­ly impor­tant angle for us with GROW. Our com­mu­ni­ty is also get­ting up to speed on the acti­va­tion method­olo­gies, best prac­tices, and how to real­ly embrace this by start­ing with the fit-to-stan­dard and then build­ing on it. Advo­cates in the com­mu­ni­ty will be key to success.