For 15 years, John­sonville has been a rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly adopter of SAP tech­nolo­gies. We’ve relied on SAP solu­tions to sup­port and enable our growth and innovation.

In fall of 2016, John­sonville — where I’m the VP and CIO — took the next big step: We began the jour­ney to SAP S/4HANA. In fact, we were the first North Amer­i­can cus­tomer to suc­cess­ful­ly go live with a brown­field migra­tion from SAP ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA (1610). Over­all, the migra­tion efforts went very well. The tech­nol­o­gy has worked as promised, and we are hap­py with the results.

But the issue of part­ner cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for SAP S/4HANA has been a more sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge than we were expect­ing. And it made me won­der if John­sonville was alone in this experience.

What’s the Issue with SAP S/4HANA Certification?

SAP requires third-par­ty cer­ti­fied solu­tions to be cer­ti­fied or recer­ti­fied on every release of SAP S/4HANA, which to date has includ­ed releas­es 1610, 1709, 1809, and 1909.

This is obvi­ous­ly a thorny issue for SAP and its part­ners. From SAP’s per­spec­tive, it wants to be sure that third-par­ty solu­tions are com­pat­i­ble with the newest release and will not cause issues for cus­tomers. Part­ners see cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as a val­ue to be able to attract new cus­tomers, but the cost — both in cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fees and time to com­plete — make it more dif­fi­cult to achieve.

Giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of cus­tomers on the lat­est releas­es of SAP S/4HANA, part­ners end up hav­ing to be more strate­gic and selec­tive in their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans and are not always ready to make the time or finan­cial invest­ment in cer­ti­fy­ing on the lat­est release in a time­ly manner.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this puts the SAP S/4HANA cus­tomer in an unen­vi­able posi­tion: Either force a partner’s hand to jump­start the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process or post­pone adopt­ing the lat­est SAP S/4HANA inno­va­tions and wait for certification.

Why SAP S/4HANA Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions Mat­ter to SAP Customers

In April 2019, John­sonville had to aban­don an upgrade from 1610 to 1809 because of the lack of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of crit­i­cal third-par­ty solu­tions. Ulti­mate­ly, the more than six-month delay between the 1809 gen­er­al avail­abil­i­ty (GA) ver­sion and avail­abil­i­ty of cer­ti­fied solu­tions required John­sonville to move on to oth­er initiatives.

While at SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence this year, I had con­ver­sa­tions with sev­er­al cus­tomers con­sid­er­ing a move to SAP S/4HANA, in the plan­ning phas­es, or active­ly engaged in a project. SAP S/4HANA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion came up as a com­mon theme, and I soon dis­cov­ered that many oth­ers have faced chal­lenges sim­i­lar to our expe­ri­ence at Johnsonville.

Addi­tion­al­ly, many cus­tomers who were ear­ly in the imple­men­ta­tion process had not even con­sid­ered the top­ic and were unaware of the poten­tial roadblock. 

No Sil­ver Bul­let but Cus­tomer Participation

I don’t have a sil­ver bul­let to fix this issue. I do believe, how­ev­er, that all par­ties involved should par­tic­i­pate in a con­ver­sa­tion. SAP needs the part­ners as much as the part­ners need SAP — and cus­tomers need both to be in lock­step with the other.

ASUG is doing its part. The orga­ni­za­tion has vol­un­teered to help under­stand the indus­try per­spec­tive and issues relat­ed to third-par­ty soft­ware cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for SAP S/4HANA. An ASUG research project com­plet­ed in 2019 has iden­ti­fied the ben­e­fits and chal­lenges of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, which will help all par­ties — cus­tomers, part­ners, and SAP — bet­ter under­stand how to help each oth­er make this part of ini­tial tran­si­tions and, ulti­mate­ly, lead to smoother upgrades. ASUG will pub­lish a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings in its SAP S/4HANA Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion study in Q1 2020, and will share them at its events and through its pro­gram­ming in 2020. 

I strong­ly encour­age you to share your opin­ion on the issue of SAP S/4HANA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by lend­ing your voice to the con­ver­sa­tion. Please reach out to ASUGNews@​asug.​com if you are inter­est­ed in shar­ing your expe­ri­ences with this top­ic. Our active engage­ment will help pro­mote dis­cus­sions and a move toward bet­ter out­comes that all of us can be sat­is­fied with.

Get the Jan­u­ary 2020 update on SAP S/4HANA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from Ron Gilson of John­sonville. Or reg­is­ter for ​“Your Move to SAP S/4HANA: Find­ing a Path that Fits” Pre-Con­fer­ence Sem­i­nar at ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence to hear lessons learned, val­ue sce­nar­ios, and tips for build­ing a busi­ness case from cus­tomers who are already live.