This blog post was writ­ten by Arndt Hoff­mann, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of Glob­al SAP Prac­tice at smartShift Technologies. 

I have been work­ing with For­tune 500 enter­pris­es (and their SAP sys­tems) for more than 25 years. SAP cus­tomers had to adapt to many changes in this time — from SAP R/2 to SAP R/3, SAP ECC, SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, late­ly SAP S/4HANA cloud in dif­fer­ent fla­vors. Their SAP sys­tems have always con­tin­ued to grow in com­plex­i­ty and size. Region­al expan­sion, merg­ers and acqui­si­tions, new busi­ness require­ments, or tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions led to an ever-grow­ing num­ber of SAP land­scapes — some­times 100 or more. Over time, more and more cus­tom exten­sions have been added to these sys­tems, some to imple­ment strate­gic process­es, some for ad-hoc report­ing, some for tech­ni­cal migra­tions, and mul­ti­ple oth­er reasons. 

Accord­ing to our bench­mark data­base, an aver­age SAP ECC sys­tem holds more than 30,000 cus­tom exten­sions to enhance SAP stan­dard func­tion­al­i­ty. Some cus­tomers have a cus­tom code foot­print of 100 mil­lion lines of code or more, and 40% to 60% of the code are not used any­more and could be decom­mis­sioned from the sys­tems with­out func­tion­al­i­ty loss. Code has been devel­oped by many dif­fer­ent peo­ple, inter­nal and exter­nal, using dif­fer­ent pro­gram­ming par­a­digms and styles, lead­ing to mono­lith­ic, hard-to-main­tain sys­tems and extreme­ly slow release cycles. The hun­dreds of inter­faces that have to be main­tained and test­ed add to complexity.

The need for change and trans­for­ma­tion has been inher­ent through­out all these years. The answer has been peo­ple-intense water­fall ini­tia­tives, keep­ing orga­ni­za­tions and con­sul­tants busy. The COVID-19 cri­sis has taught us that this approach is too slow, espe­cial­ly for large enter­pris­es with large SAP land­scapes. Accel­er­at­ed inno­va­tion cycles, new tech­nolo­gies, and mega trends like cloud, Inter­net of Things (IoT), and AI require new answers! But how do we achieve agili­ty if the SAP land­scape is large and cus­tomiza­tions are all over the place? 

Automa­tion is the only answer and should be an inte­gral part of all your SAP trans­for­ma­tion pro­grams. Automa­tion does the heavy lift­ing so that your teams and part­ners can focus on func­tion­al deci­sions. Automa­tion accel­er­ates your SAP trans­for­ma­tion pro­grams, real­iz­ing a faster time to mar­ket and suc­cess. Automa­tion deliv­ers the qual­i­ty to short­en test cycles and make your busi­ness hap­py. Automa­tion pro­vides you the option­al­i­ty required to steer through com­plex trans­for­ma­tion pro­grams. Automa­tion stream­lines the required dual main­te­nance to keep your project land­scapes syn­chro­nized and freeze peri­ods short. Final­ly, automa­tion is the only option to address the immense tech­ni­cal debt in your SAP sys­tems. With automa­tion, you have the option to reach mod­ern, encap­su­lat­ed, secure, and main­tain­able cus­tom appli­ca­tions, enabling agili­ty and real DevOps. 

Many of our large enter­prise cus­tomers have embed­ded automa­tion in all their SAP trans­for­ma­tion activ­i­ties. The impact of what intel­li­gent automa­tion for cus­tom code trans­for­ma­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion can achieve is immense. For exam­ple, a For­tune 500 enter­prise has embed­ded cus­tom code automa­tion into its SAP trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram for 69 SAP land­scapes run­ning until 2025. In just the last 2.5 years, 59 projects in 33 SAP land­scapes have been com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful­ly, address­ing over 5 mil­lion code issues, sav­ing the orga­ni­za­tion 27,000 days of man­u­al labor. In addi­tion, 50,000 cus­tom objects and 8.5 mil­lion lines of code have been decom­mis­sioned, reduc­ing year­ly main­te­nance cost by $2 mil­lion. Thou­sands of secu­ri­ty issues have been fixed, and over­all IT risk of those SAP sys­tems reduced by $50 million.

This is not a one-time tool play! Orga­ni­za­tions should inte­grate automa­tion into over­all plans with prop­er gov­er­nance based on defined stan­dards and backed by pre-defined, agreed-upon ser­vice-lev­el agree­ments (SLAs). Only then will you achieve the full ben­e­fits, as well as a boost in qual­i­ty, speed, and a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to get rid of the tech­ni­cal debt in your SAP landscapes.

It’s that time of year again! ASUG­FOR­WARD is right around the cor­ner. ASUG mem­bers can join us online for exec­u­tive pro­gram­ming on June 15‒17. Lat­er, on June 21‒24, be sure to tune in for ses­sions from SAP cus­tomers and experts. Reg­is­ter now for the vir­tu­al event.