ASUG has collaborated with SAP experts, customers, and analysts to compile the essential key considerations for adopting SAP S/4HANA solutions. Explore the top takeaways to keep in mind as you prepare to transform your enterprise. From understanding your business goals to evaluating implementation strategies, each takeaway is designed to provide you with valuable insights and guidance to ensure a successful implementation project.
SAP S/4HANA can be a catalyst for innovation.
- It can also help your organization keep pace with SAP’s technology upgrade path. Using SAP S/4HANA in these ways can serve different purposes and support various business cases. Be sure to understand how SAP S/4HANA can impact your organization in one or both of those ways.
Many organizations customized SAP ECC and those customizations may not be needed in SAP S/4HANA.
- Depending on the industry and version, customizations may be sunsetted in favor of “fit to standard” functionality in SAP S/4HANA. If that’s not possible, it’s important to understand your options for migrating those custom processes to the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) or an equivalent partner technology.
Be sure your A Team is involved in the project.
- While it’s hard to balance the need to keep your expert users and IT staff working on their day-to-day responsibilities, making sure your top SAP experts and business process owners are involved in the project is key. This will help ensure the timeliness, accuracy, and user acceptance of your project.
Data migration is the key to any successful ERP migration strategy.
- Your data migration strategy needs to be as exhaustive as possible to ensure a strong start and a successful go-live for your project. Make sure your stakeholders understand what can and cannot be migrated and how data models and data governance will change and be sure to include that in your business case.
Involve a cross-functional team to work carefully on the essential task of migrating, sunsetting, or replacing your existing customizations.
- Allocate enough as you build your business case to map out expectations and goals for the disposition of customizations and integration issues. Try to be as thorough as possible so your team has a clear strategy and has built the necessary consensus on how you will migrate your current customized processes. SAP offers standardized processes as part of SAP S/4HANA’s core functionality as well as industry cloud solutions that integrate with SAP S/4HANA to support your organization’s specific requirements when migrating to the cloud.
Carefully vet your implementation partner.
- Most projects will involve one or more third-party services partners. These partners must be chosen carefully as their level of commitment and competence can have a huge impact on project success. How many successful projects in your industry and geography has your prospective partner completed? Who are the experts they plan to assign to your project? What is their methodology? Getting the mix of people and competency right is essential to a successful project.
Consider all your contracting and licensing options throughout the planning and negotiation phases of your project.
- RISE with SAP comes with long-term financial and technical implications that should be discussed and considered as early in your project as possible. Be sure to gather the necessary stakeholders from both the business and IT sides of your organization to ensure that your particular RISE contract is the right fit for your business needs.
Plan change management and end-user acceptance as part of your SAP S/4HANA project.
- Many key business processes in SAP S/4HANA will look and act differently than they did in SAP ECC or some other legacy application. It’s important to ensure that your users understand the differences, are comfortable with their new work requirements, and have a sense of agency in the overall success of the project.
Invest in training and continuous education.
- Business transformation is an on-going process, and this means training and education need to be ongoing. Training should be available both leading up to go-live and following go-live. This will help you avoid poor user acceptance, insufficient ROI, and, unfortunately in some cases, outright project failure.
Gather strong project sponsorship throughout your transformation journey.
- Projects that lack high-level sponsorship often run into accountability and governance problems—especially if the project fails to meet its milestones. It is critical that the project sponsor is involved in the project and is invested in its success.
Connect with your peers at ASUG about your SAP S/4HANA journey.
- There is a wealth of experience and information at your disposal within the ASUG community. Be sure to leverage the experience of customers that have made the journey before you to understand the potential impact of SAP S/4HANA.
Remember that this is just the beginning of your SAP S/4HANA journey into your enterprise landscape. We’ve highlighted key considerations to guide you along the way, but there’s still much more to explore and learn. We invite you to delve deeper into other ASUG resources, including guides, customer stories, and content collections to deepen your understanding. ASUG is here for you to help you get the most out of your SAP investment.