Published on March 1, 2022 – Johannes Strasser, Solutions Consultant SAP S/4HANA Finance & Business Process Intelligence at Westernacher
A lack of collaboration and business insights combined with hard-to-adjust IT landscapes might negatively affect SAP S/4HANA transformation initiatives. Projects may fail due to missing buy-in from the people on the ground, while reacting quickly is challenging because getting instant insights is painful or even impossible. Moreover, legacy IT systems slow down change because these systems are scattered, and adjustments require major involvement. As a result, key-decisions are made with low confidence since the data is typically outdated and not harmonized. It’s time now to take effective data-driven business decisions, having complete transparency of your processes, aligning your business and IT people as well as transforming your business predictably and safely. Welcome to this new post, where we dive deeper into elements that will make your SAP S/4HANA migration a success.
Understand the value of SAP S/4HANA with SAP Process Discovery
SAP S/4HANA is so much more than a traditional ERP system. With the technological evolution and the potential value release created by SAP S/4HANA, significant value might be missed out on because the available capabilities are not implemented holistically from a business perspective. It is also about more than just deciding whether to choose a greenfield approach or a technical conversion/ brownfield approach when migrating to SAP S/4HANA.
Like a doctor caring for a patient, it is about understanding the disease, understanding the medication, and understanding the cure. Considering this analogy, SAP Process Discovery helps to answer the questions “why”, “what” and “how” in the context of an SAP S/4HANA migration. SAP Process Discovery not only supports you not only to understand the value of moving to SAP S/4HANA, but also how to achieve your business goals with it (In case you missed it, in our last blog post we looked at 10 aha moments in making the move to SAP S/4HANA.)
We at Westernacher see an SAP S/4HANA migration as a journey we walk together with you. We partner with you. We team up with you. And we ensure all your questions, doubts and uncertainties are clarified beforehand, so that we can enjoy this journey together with one objective in mind: helping you run even better with SAP S/4HANA.
Unleash the full potential of your business transformation with RISE with SAP
According to the complexity report by BCG, large organizations can spend between 40% and 80% of their time on non-value-added activities. In this context, large multinationals have created so much complexity that they often struggle to bring good ideas to the marketplace profitably, a McKinsey study revealed in 2014. The Global Simplicity Index revealed in 2019 that as a consequence, at least 10% of profits are lost due to hidden costs of complexity. We can change that. Let’s change that. Let’s focus again on value adding activities instead of non-value adding ones, stressing your differentiating processes while respecting your commodity processes.
In today’s fast moving world, there are innovations everywhere: from Internet of Things (IoT), intelligent Robotic Process Automation (iRPA), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain to business networks and digital supply chains. The question emerges how to yield competitive advantage by embracing these smart technologies while fostering transparency, automation, agility and effective decision-making. With this in mind, SAP created a bundle of products, services and tools to support organizations with their digital transformation: RISE with SAP. The principal idea of RISE with SAP is to provide business transformation as a service, covering various areas including infrastructure, technology, applications and business processes.
A successful business transformation requires a solid understanding of your pain points, in-depth process analysis, industry benchmarking, process reimagination and a smooth collaboration of all involved stakeholders, just to name a few. Business Process Intelligence (BPI) from SAP is the first to bring all these components into a unified set of solutions, combining deep process analysis with the tools needed for process re-engineering or creating entirely new and innovative business processes. It covers business process design, benchmarking, gap analysis, improvement, and process change management. BPI solutions enable strategic E2E process transformations and represent the base for the intelligent enterprise of tomorrow.
To get started, the following BPI solutions are included for free in your RISE with SAP subscription:
- SAP Process Insights (50GB)
- SAP Signavio Process Manager (3 users)
- SAP Signavio Collaboration Hub (10 users)
Human aspect > Tech aspect
An S/4HANA migration is a business topic and not uniquely an IT topic. Even if we are talking processes, data and systems, the human aspect remains at the core of your business transformation. Business transformation is about the people who run and continuously innovate your business processes by taking advantage of your IT systems to process data intelligently.
Transformation itself means change, of course, and there is no successful and especially sustainable change if all parties in your company are not totally involved from day one. It’s about emphasizing the needs of your employees, suppliers and customers to not only reach process and operational excellence, but also customer excellence.
We at Westernacher support you in harmonizing your processes, data and systems while emphasizing the human aspect – your company’s most valuable asset.
Wrap-up
From technical improvement of IT implementation efficiency, selective adjustment of process and technology, and evolving processes to enable higher volumes for digital business, all the way to developing new businesses using digital technology as well as transformation of your core business areas, the variety of SAP S/4HANA migration scenarios reaches from technical to strategic, from small to big business influence. Depending on your intentions and needs, BPI solutions like SAP Process Discovery can support you in order to understand the true business value behind SAP S/4HANA as well as how you can achieve it.
We at Westernacher help you identify the right approach that fits your business. We support you in answering the “why”, “what” and “how” in the context of your SAP S/4HANA transformation. We are there for you. We are walking this journey together with you, keeping one objective in mind: helping you run even better with SAP S/4HANA.
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