The fol­low­ing guest per­spec­tive was authored by Steve Sei­de, Glob­al Head of Adop­tion & Strat­e­gy, SAP Intel­li­gent Spend & Busi­ness Network.

Back in the days of on-premis­es soft­ware deploy­ments, go-live was the pin­na­cle of the imple­men­ta­tion jour­ney. It was a time to cel­e­brate and reflect on the accom­plish­ments of months, if not years, of hard work. Upgrades would come lat­er. Much lat­er. Even with today’s more expe­dit­ed cloud deploy­ments, the idea per­sists that go-live is the fin­ish line. Today, I’m here to explain why that has to change.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion via SAP cloud solu­tions offers huge ben­e­fits for orga­ni­za­tions: improved access to data, faster and more accu­rate deci­sion mak­ing, process inno­va­tion dri­ven by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and more. One of the biggest chal­lenges of cloud soft­ware imple­men­ta­tions involves enabling users to adopt new soft­ware inno­va­tions as they become avail­able — not just at go-live but also in the months and years that follow.

Too often, com­pa­nies still choose at go-live to ​“set it, then for­get it.” But the real­i­ty of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is that you can only real­ize the full val­ue of oper­at­ing in the cloud if your busi­ness is ready and able to reg­u­lar­ly adopt updates and inno­va­tions as they become avail­able. That’s what suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies do — and that’s why they achieve and retain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, as well as the abil­i­ty to adapt quick­ly to emerg­ing mar­ket chal­lenges and opportunities.

I firm­ly believe that the will­ing­ness to proac­tive­ly pre­pare for what hap­pens after the go-live is a super­pow­er that helps the best tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als ensure suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able adop­tion for any cloud imple­men­ta­tion. Of course, pri­or­i­tiz­ing such prepa­ra­tion requires a new approach to rolling out solu­tions and equip­ping peo­ple to use them. SAP divides this approach into three phases:

• First Use. Tra­di­tion­al­ly thought of as go-live, con­sid­er ​“first use” instead as the start­ing point for any cloud jour­ney. With solu­tions deployed and test­ed, and your teams trained to use them, here is where you can start to real­ize the val­ue of the func­tion­al­i­ty you’ve deployed. But there is more you can do.
• Full Use. Usu­al­ly, you can’t deploy and use 100% of your cloud solu­tions at go-live. Func­tion­al­i­ty must be rolled out in waves, which requires addi­tion­al train­ing and change man­age­ment. When you reach ​“full use,” you will have deployed all the SAP solu­tion func­tion­al­i­ty avail­able — at the time of deploy­ment — to address your busi­ness require­ments. But you need to keep look­ing ahead.
• Future Use. Part of the promise of SAP cloud solu­tions is that, as busi­ness require­ments evolve, SAP will intro­duce new func­tion­al­i­ty to address them. To be pre­pared to adopt new solu­tions on a rolling basis, your orga­ni­za­tion needs to have deploy­ment per­son­nel, train­ing and sup­port resources, and change man­age­ment per­son­nel in place.

Essen­tial­ly, this approach means busi­ness­es can still be dri­ving inno­va­tion while run­ning live oper­a­tions. Today, SAP is work­ing with many orga­ni­za­tions, such as Roy­al DSM N.V. (DSM), that have embraced the First/​Full/​Future Use approach to adoption.

Roy­al DSM N.V. – Empow­er­ing Pro­cure­ment for the Future

A glob­al, pur­pose-led, sci­ence-based com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for health, nutri­tion, and bio­science, DSM last year merged with the Swiss fra­grance com­pa­ny Fir­menich Inter­na­tion­al to become dsm-fir­menich.

Like many orga­ni­za­tions, DSM embraces the strate­gic role of pro­cure­ment to achieve cor­po­rate goals. Pri­or to merg­ing with Fir­menich Inter­na­tion­al, DSM ini­ti­at­ed the ​“buy.SMART” pro­gram to dig­i­tal­ize and auto­mate pro­cure­ment trans­ac­tions. The goal of this pro­gram? To enable pro­cure­ment to deliv­er addi­tion­al val­ue beyond cost savings.

Andries Feike­ma, Glob­al Direc­tor of Pro­cure­ment Dig­i­tal­iza­tion & Trans­for­ma­tion for dsm-fir­menich, rec­og­nized ear­ly on that go-live would be only the start­ing point for a larg­er busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion. ​“For us, dig­i­tal­iz­ing our pro­cure­ment oper­a­tions was like get­ting a driver’s license,” Feike­ma said. ​“It’s just the begin­ning of our jour­ney and it cer­tain­ly doesn’t stop after deployment.”

Deploy­ing SAP Spend Man­age­ment and SAP Busi­ness Net­work Solutions

DSM invest­ed in SAP Busi­ness Net­work, which inte­grat­ed with the company’s source-to-con­tract process using SAP Ari­ba solu­tions; these cur­rent­ly include SAP Ari­ba Sourc­ing, SAP Ari­ba Con­tracts, SAP Ari­ba Sup­pli­er Life­cy­cle and Per­for­mance, and SAP Ari­ba Sup­pli­er Risk solu­tions. For its pro­cure-to-pay process, DSM select­ed SAP Ari­ba Buy­ing.

Work­ing along­side the DSM team, the SAP Adop­tion & Strat­e­gy team worked to help imple­ment the buy.SMART pro­gram. DSM also engaged two imple­men­ta­tion part­ners; McCoy & Part­ners sup­port­ed the build and con­fig­u­ra­tion, while Deloitte led the trans­for­ma­tion and project man­age­ment office. Deloitte also man­aged busi­ness process and solu­tion design, test­ing and go-live, and change man­age­ment for pilots, and pro­vid­ed local project exper­tise and support.

Because it was under­tak­ing large-scale process improve­ments, DSM pro­vid­ed com­pre­hen­sive change man­age­ment sup­port, includ­ing a per­ma­nent, glob­al expert desk to sup­port sup­pli­er enable­ment, sourc­ing, and con­tract operationalization.

DSM also estab­lished a glob­al team of 270 cham­pi­ons to improve adop­tion and train users on its new pro­cure­ment process­es. An iden­ti­fied first point of con­tact spoke the local lan­guage, while addi­tion­al change man­age­ment cham­pi­ons who focused on suc­cess­ful solu­tion deploy­ment were avail­able to explain changes and train end users.

So far, over more than 450 train­ing ses­sions have been con­duct­ed world­wide, and change man­age­ment has been addi­tion­al­ly strength­ened by the cre­ation of 50 instruc­tion­al videos and 120 quick-ref­er­ence cards span­ning sev­en languages.

SAP Cus­tomer Suc­cess Part­ners (CSPs) are also avail­able to assist DSM’s deploy­ment team. James Pry­or, CSP at SAP, reg­u­lar­ly helps SAP cus­tomers like DSM by answer­ing ques­tions, pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal exper­tise and guid­ance, and con­nect­ing cus­tomers with deploy­ment resources that help them address tech­ni­cal challenges.

“I had reg­u­lar dis­cus­sions with Andries Feike­ma regard­ing change man­age­ment in sup­port of DSM’s deploy­ment,” said Pry­or. ​“It was great to sup­port a cus­tomer that took change man­age­ment — in its mul­ti­ple guis­es — seri­ous­ly. That was the key to their success.”

From a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, the SAP CSP team sup­port­ed DSM and McCoy & Part­ners in address­ing the tough­est solu­tion and inte­gra­tion ques­tions they encoun­tered. For­tu­nate­ly, DSM’s ​“cloud mind­set as stan­dard” approach helped keep these ques­tions to a minimum.

Achiev­ing First Use

To date, DSM’s buy.SMART imple­men­ta­tion is live at 83 sites across 20 coun­tries, with sur­vey feed­back show­ing a high lev­el of enthu­si­asm among end users. DSM has been suc­cess­ful, in large part, because of its ear­ly align­ment with com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and their con­tin­ued sup­port for a glob­al stan­dard solution.

One sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tion in DSM’s imple­men­ta­tion has been the link­ing of SAP Ari­ba solu­tions with Eco­Vadis. This enables them to qual­i­fy sup­pli­ers based on spe­cif­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria. The com­pa­ny is extend­ing its sus­tain­abil­i­ty assess­ment to give its pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als greater vis­i­bil­i­ty into trad­ing partners.

Antic­i­pat­ing Full and Future Use

“Dig­i­tal­iza­tion is not sim­ply an imple­men­ta­tion of tools, but rather a busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion where change man­age­ment plays a key role in the organization’s suc­cess,” Feike­ma said.

With an eye to Full Use and Future Use, the com­pa­ny has adopt­ed a con­tin­u­ous improve­ment mind­set and seeks to sup­port more autonomous pro­cure­ment process­es in the years to come.

Guid­ing SAP Cus­tomers Toward Future Use

As DSM approached go-live world­wide, Feike­ma reflect­ed that ​“the real work starts after deploy­ment and final go-live.” SAP’s goal for every cus­tomer is to help them move from First Use to Full Use, and for Future Use to remain top-of-mind.

The SAP Cus­tomer Suc­cess team will help you find new ways to adopt and con­sume SAP tech­nol­o­gy and max­i­mize the val­ue of our cloud solu­tions. I encour­age you to lever­age the expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of SAP CSPs, our cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ty, our part­ner ecosys­tem, and user groups such as ASUG. With SAP, you are nev­er alone.

Steve Sei­de is Glob­al Head of Adop­tion & Strat­e­gy, SAP Intel­li­gent Spend & Busi­ness Network.