It’s been a lit­tle more than four years since we first began to hear about SAP S/4HANA and how it’s the path­way to the intel­li­gent enter­prise. For some, it was anoth­er new solu­tion from SAP that sound­ed great but need­ed to be put on the back burn­er. For oth­ers, it was the right solu­tion at the right time. But the mes­sage from SAP has been clear: Main­te­nance sup­port for SAP ECC will no longer be avail­able after 2025.

We’re just about five years out from the dead­line and, to date, 10,900 cus­tomers have pur­chased the ERP sys­tem across the globe while 3,000 are live. Accord­ing to ASUG’s 2019 State of the Com­mu­ni­ty Study, more than half of ASUG mem­bers have plans to imple­ment SAP S/4HANA in the future, but have held back because of pri­or­i­ti­za­tion, lack of resources, wait­ing for the prod­uct to mature, or need­ing to jus­ti­fy the move. Accord­ing to SAP, they need to get moving.

“When it comes to North Amer­i­ca, there is a lit­tle bit of a lag mak­ing the move,” said Sven Deneck­en, senior vice pres­i­dent and head of prod­uct man­age­ment for SAP S/4HANA. Deneck­en stressed the impor­tance of the need to build a lev­el of trust with cus­tomers. And that’s exact­ly what SAP aims to do with its new­ly launched SAP S/4HANA Move­ment (S/4HANA Move).

Get­ting the S/4 Show on the Road

The move­ment began late last year and was launched by the Ger­man-speak­ing SAP User Group (DSAG). The ini­tia­tive includ­ed a port­fo­lio of tools, pro­grams, con­tent, and ser­vices that help pre­pare cus­tomers to move to SAP S/4HANA with min­i­mum dis­rup­tion and risk. 

“We’re basi­cal­ly try­ing to encour­age our user base to start the jour­ney toward SAP S/4HANA,” said Bjo­ern Brae­mer, glob­al head of S/4HANA Move­ment pro­gram. ​“We dug deep to under­stand why our exist­ing user base wasn’t as quick to start the jour­ney as our new cus­tomers were, and we dis­cov­ered that we need­ed to bet­ter explain the why, what, and how. We need­ed to improve the tools and the engage­ment mod­els that help cus­tomers under­stand why SAP S/4HANA would be the right move.”

In the eight months since this ini­tia­tive launched in Ger­many, Brae­mer said the Move pro­gram can now help cus­tomers define a strat­e­gy, under­stand ROI in both the short- and long-term, build a busi­ness case, and make the right deci­sion for deploy­ment options.

[ad]

Tools for the Trade

S/4HANA Move has four dif­fer­ent pro­grams in place to help cus­tomers as they eval­u­ate mak­ing the move or the migra­tion process. The first one, SAP Trans­for­ma­tion Nav­i­ga­tor, is more of a self-plan­ning tool for cus­tomers who do not want to inter­act with SAP right away. It helps them under­stand the road map for each indus­try and application.

The sec­ond pro­gram, SAP Adop­tion Starter, is a vir­tu­al class­room that helps cus­tomers under­stand the why, what, and how. ​“We guide them through what is the key inno­va­tion that comes with SAP S/4HANA,” Brae­mer said. ​“We talk with them about what is the pro­posed archi­tec­ture, and what they need to con­sid­er when they move from their exist­ing lega­cy sys­tem and how to do it. We talk about deploy­ment strate­gies, and the sup­port tools offered by SAP.”

Find­ing Your Indi­vid­u­al­ized ERP Path

The third pro­gram, Val­ue Dis­cov­ery Work­shop, has been on the mar­ket for quite a while. Accord­ing to Brae­mer, it now aligns with all the top­ics men­tioned above, but in a for­mat that’s more indi­vid­u­al­ized. ​“We dig into the details,” he said. ​“We look at spe­cif­ic prob­lems for that par­tic­u­lar cus­tomer in that par­tic­u­lar indus­try, and then try to pro­vide the answer with SAP S/4HANA.”

Last­ly, the fourth pro­gram, Move in Motion, is an invi­ta­tion-based pro­gram of up to nine cus­tomers and region­al sys­tem inte­gra­tors to par­tic­i­pate in a design think­ing work­shop. ​“It’s where cus­tomers approach us with their spe­cif­ic ques­tions, and we try to pro­vide the answer and help them to do the move.”

SAP cus­tomers will be hap­py to hear that all these pro­grams are free of charge.

Help Build­ing Your Busi­ness Case

Build­ing the busi­ness case is one of the biggest bar­ri­ers for cus­tomers look­ing to make the move. Some­times it can even be a bar­ri­er to get­ting the con­ver­sa­tion start­ed. ​“Know­ing what to focus on isn’t a black and white issue,” Brae­mer point­ed out. ​“It real­ly does depend on the indus­try and the cus­tomer. But one of the things I always put first is to think about the future of the company.”

When build­ing a busi­ness case, cus­tomers need to think about where they want the busi­ness to be in five to ten years. It’s also impor­tant not to think about quick wins — things like process automa­tion, opti­miza­tion of cost struc­ture, and ways to reduce TCO — although it’s easy to get caught up in those. ​“Instead,” Brae­mer sug­gest­ed, ​“think about real­ly lever­ag­ing the S/4HANA Move­ment as kind of a fit-to-stan­dard approach chang­ing your busi­ness model.”

It requires a change of mind­set, and it’s not easy to do. ​“But it’s nec­es­sary,” Brae­mer said. ​“Things like change man­age­ment become very impor­tant and essen­tial fac­tors in these projects, and that’s where you should focus.”

Sup­port on the Field: Green or Brown

Tak­ing a green­field approach means you get to start on a new play­ing field. ​“It’s where a cus­tomer can — I don’t want to say — for­get about the parts, but they can real­ly look at what SAP rec­om­mends,” Brae­mer said. S/4HANA Move can help those cus­tomers con­fig­ure the sys­tem using stan­dard best prac­tice process­es. And if cus­tomers agree to a fit-to-stan­dard, then accord­ing to Brae­mer, it’s an easy path for­ward. If a cus­tomer has need for mod­i­fi­ca­tions, then there is an easy path for that as well on any major cloud plat­form because the API man­age­ment allows for con­nect­ing everything.

“Sys­tem con­ver­sion is a bit dif­fer­ent,” Brae­mer said. If cus­tomers don’t have a lot of cus­tomiza­tion and a sys­tem con­ver­sion makes sense, then it’s usu­al­ly a faster and cheap­er way to get to SAP S/4HANA. ​“We have the tools that sup­port the move whether it’s on-prem, on the cloud, or even to a hyperscaler.”

Start Moving…Really

The 2025 date is fast approach­ing and most of you know that you need to get going on your move to SAP S/4HANA. But what’s the opti­mal time to begin? And what’s the risk of wait­ing any longer?

Accord­ing to Brae­mer, it real­ly depends on the cus­tomer seg­ment. For small­er com­pa­nies, mak­ing a move may not be as involved so it may take any­where from six to nine months. But when we talk about larg­er com­pa­nies such as the Nes­tles or the BMWs of the world, a move can take upwards of 18 to 24 months.

“My rec­om­men­da­tion,” Brae­mer said, ​“is there’s no need to wait. Com­pa­nies need to have that inter­nal dis­cus­sion. They need align­ment between busi­ness and IT. They need to adopt a change of mind­set, too. It’s a busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and it’s hard for me to answer how long it will take for a com­pa­ny to over­come hur­dles. But giv­en the length of the project, I would rec­om­mend start­ing right now. If you’re going to wait, 2022 should be the latest.”

Are you ready to make the move to SAP S/4HANA? ASUG Mem­bers can watch a ​“How to Build a Busi­ness Case and Road Map to Jus­ti­fy Your Trans­for­ma­tion to SAP S/4HANA” web­cast, avail­able on demand. If you’ve already start­ed the move to SAP S/4HANA and need to help pre­pare your tal­ent for the switch, reg­is­ter them for the ASUG Uni­ver­si­ty SAP S/4HANA 101 Course.