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Deploying SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud requires strategic planning, meticulous coordination, and disciplined execution. Unlike traditional on-premise deployments, the public cloud model imposes some constraints on customisation, scalability, and operational flexibility. Therefore effective project management is crucial to balancing these limitations, whilst achieving the business’ objectives.
Fundamental principles for success
SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud implementations succeed based on several principles, with strong executive leadership being paramount. When the leadership team provides clear direction and actively champions the programme, particularly around process standardisation, the implementation will proceed much more smoothly and be much more likely to achieve its objectives.
Prior to implementation, organisations often consider documenting their current processes, but for public cloud implementations this should not be an extensive exercise. Simple documentation will help with change management and aid in identifying any genuinely unique requirements, whilst maintaining focus on adopting SAP standard processes.
SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud has many best practice processes, developed through SAP’s fifty years of experience. Following a clean core strategy and limiting the extent of customisation, compared to on-premise or private cloud implementations, businesses implementing S/4HANA Public Cloud must critically assess their business processes and look to adapt them to SAP’s best practices, rather than expecting extensive modifications.
Success comes from embracing SAP’s standard processes, except where genuine competitive advantage exists. Standard purchasing processes, for instance, suit most organisations perfectly well since procurement rarely drives competitive advantage. The most successful projects embrace this as an opportunity to adopt proven best practices, rather than viewing them as limitations, and this pragmatic approach significantly reduces project complexity and duration.
Project methodology and phases
SAP provides the Activate methodology for S/4 implementations, which is structured into six distinct phases:
- Discover: Conduct feasibility assessments, establish business cases and outline high-level requirements; this is typically pre-contract and part of your system selection process
- Prepare: Set up the project plan and system, onboard key resources and provision the cloud environment
- Explore: Complete fit-to-standard workshops, analyse process alignment, and identify potential gaps – this is a crucial phase for the project success
- Realise: Configure the system, integrate with existing architectures, conduct thorough testing, and execute data migration strategies
- Deploy: Implement cutover activities, complete data migration and go-live
- Run: Hypercare support for stabilisation and then ongoing operations and continuous improvement
Full and active engagement by the business in each phase is imperative, but most importantly during the Explore phase. Fit-to-standard workshops during this phase play a decisive role in shaping how the business aligns with SAP’s best practice processes.
For most organisations, a focused initial implementation proves most effective. Starting with core functions only like finance, basic sales, and procurement, the implementation typically takes only 4-5 months. This targeted approach allows organisations to establish essential functionality quickly while keeping the flexibility to expand later. It works particularly well with the GROW with SAP package where you benefit from access to other SAP solutions within your licence agreement, such as SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BTP and depending on the version of GROW you have licenced, SAP Concur for Expenses. This core foundation strategy therefore enables organisations to demonstrate early value from their Cloud ERP and build confidence for future phases, where you can leverage the additional benefits included within GROW with SAP.
Challenges and risk mitigation strategies
1. Avoiding customisation
As mentioned already, S/4HANA Public Cloud provides standardised best practice processes, requiring businesses to change their internal processes, rather than the software. Early stakeholder involvement is essential in aligning expectations and identifying necessary process changes, and a robust change management plan can help facilitate smoother adoption.
2. Data migration complexity
Organisations should start data preparation early, as this often proves more time-consuming than initially estimated. It is also important to remember that you do not need to migrate everything into your new S/4HANA Public Cloud solution – for example products that the business no longer sells don’t need to be migrated, so it is a good opportunity to spring clean your master data! Depending on the system being replaced, there may be more data cleansing required as SAP is stricter in terms of data quality than older ERP solutions, for example ensuring postal codes fit the format for the country of the address. The key message here is to be proactive on data and start early.
3. Change management and user adoption
The transition to S/4HANA Public Cloud and the adoption of the standard processes can require strong organisational change management, particularly if internal business processes need to change to adopt the SAP processes and there is resistance to this change. Regular communication, comprehensive training programmes and phased rollouts can aid with user adoption but change management deserves sustained attention throughout the project and should be a consideration from kick-off, rather than an afterthought.
4. Integration with external systems
Ensuring seamless and robust integration between SAP and third-party applications is a critical success factor and demands careful design, specification and testing. It is strongly recommended to unit test as you go, rather than wait for everything to be completed before testing as this will save time and effort overall by identifying bugs or other unforeseen challenges earlier. An agile approach is very much the best methodology to use for integrations, particularly when there are a large number to be completed for a successful go live.
5. Testing
Integration testing, user acceptance testing, and performance testing all play crucial roles in ensuring system readiness. Automated testing tools can help manage the regular update cycle but as part of the implementation you should plan for multiple testing cycles and ensure adequate business participation, as it is more straightforward to resolve issues during this phase than after go-live.
6. SAP Cloud ALM
Using the right tools to manage the implementation is also an important topic. SAP Cloud ALM, which is included in the cloud subscription, is more than likely the best tool to use to manage the implementation. By providing close integration with Central Business Configuration, Signavio and the ability to import seamlessly the Activate roadmap tasks and accelerators, you can very quickly get your implementation project set up and managed centrally. SAP Cloud ALM offers robust project management capabilities (Gantt charts, burn-down charts, etc.), requirements and feature tracking, test management including test automation tools. These are all available via a browser so your project teams can effectively collaborate wherever they are based, and the guided methodology via the Activate roadmap helps to reduce project risk by ensuring all tasks are covered. It is strongly recommended, however, that you tailor the pre-built Activate tasks to fit the size and scope of your implementation!
7. Effective project governance
Effective project governance is important to ensure the implementation progresses to plan and delivers the required business goals. Failing to effectively manage and govern the project will lead to a failed implementation. Regular steering committee meetings maintain project momentum and the end of phase quality gates help to maintain implementation quality throughout the project. It is also important to establish a Solution Standardisation Board (SSB) to oversee process deviations and maintain alignment with standard processes as far as possible. The SSB reviews any non-standard requirement or customisation request to validate the business case for deviating and are responsible for approving any customisations or extensions.
Additionally, defining key performance indicators (KPI) linked to the business goals and project business case will help measure implementation success and drive continuous improvements. Establishing baseline measurements before implementation helps to quantify the improvements and justify the investment and monitoring these KPIs during the project will help to ensure the business priorities are front of mind.
Ensuring a seamless Go-Live and post implementation
A structured go-live strategy is also essential, incorporating detailed cutover tasks in the order they need to happen, contingency planning in case of last-minute problems and an issue resolution process to enable quick and prompt resolution – delays are not an option during cutover!
Post-implementation support needs careful consideration and we always recommend a period of hypercare to manage early-stage operational challenges and help stabilise the system and processes, along with an ongoing AMS service to resolve issues that arise after the project has been closed that won’t be dealt with by SAP Support, such as ‘how do I?’ type questions.
A dedicated centre of excellence helps to maintain solution quality and ensures continued user satisfaction. This team often takes responsibility for continuous improvement initiatives, managing the regular upgrade cycle and ensuring the business achieves maximum return on investment.
In addition, SAP Cloud ALM can continue to be used after go-live to provide real-time operational monitoring across business processes, integrations, job execution and system performance and health. Through built-in analytics and machine learning, it can detect and predict anomalies and, if enabled, automated corrective actions can be configured to maintain smooth business operations with minimal manual intervention.
Conclusion
Taking a structured approach following the SAP Activate methodology, supported by committed leadership and pragmatic standardisation of processes, provides the foundation for successful S/4HANA Public Cloud implementations. By understanding and working within the constraints of the public cloud model, organisations can achieve a streamlined deployment whilst maximising their SAP investment. The journey to S/4HANA Public Cloud will present challenges along the way, but with proper planning, governance, and execution, organisations can realise significant benefits and opportunities from their digital transformation efforts.
