You’ve heard this before: Businesses are being pushed to the brink by dynamic market forces that their legacy systems simply can’t handle. The mandates of staying competitive and profitable are showing our customers that they need to become more agile, harness their data into insights, and rethink their current business processes.
The pressure to support modern business needs for real-time, actionable insight and process agility increases every single day. Companies may choose to wait but the market will not.
Our customers know they need the next generation of enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems. Not next quarter or next year. Now.
Enabling a Transition to Intelligent ERP with
Minimal Disruption, Risk, and Time to Value
This is the reason we are seeing a clear SAP S/4HANA Movement from our customer base. The SAP S/4HANA Movement initiative comprises an optimized portfolio of tools, programs, content, and services that enable customers to move to SAP S/4HANA, our flagship intelligent ERP, with minimum disruption and risk.
With SAP S/4HANA, customers can implement a more agile IT landscape, dramatically reduce TCO, and support continuous innovation. SAP offers a consistent solution in any environment — cloud, on premise, or hybrid — allowing customers to benefit in any scenario or combination that is right for them.
German Launch of SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement
We understand that any move to a new ERP system is a substantial effort requiring a high level of skill, experience, best practices, tools, programs, and services.
This is why, at the 2018 DSAG Annual Conference today, we are happy to announce the initial rollout of SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement, starting first with our German customers. The goal of SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement is to provide customers with clear guidance and support as they begin designing their move to SAP S/4HANA. This is a methodology that combines a virtual classroom with self-guided steps to help customers structure and assess their transformation.
SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement also includes the following:
- SAP Readiness Check: This is the tool for those wanting to convert an existing SAP ERP Central Component 6 system to SAP S/4HANA. Use SAP Readiness Check to learn the technical requirements and actions needed to convert your system to SAP S/4HANA. You can feel confident in knowing that we already have more than 1,600 CIOs engaged and preparing the final stage for their move to SAP S/4HANA using this tool.
- SAP Transformation Navigator: This tool builds your SAP S/4HANA roadmap based on your SAP landscape so you can see exactly what components are involved when you make the move. Over 15,000 unique customer roadmaps have been produced, signaling strong interest from prospects and existing customers.
The result is an executive-ready transformation plan that covers business, technical, and transformation views. In fact, we currently have 20 German users on this rollout.
Here’s what ElringKlinger, an automotive supplier headquartered in Germany, has to say about SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement: “We looked for answers to the questions how are we positioned and what do we have to do to introduce SAP S/4HANA,” describes Fabian Hörz, project manager, Global IT Projects, ElringKlinger AG. “Answers were given by the pilot project SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement. The analysis of the current system landscape with the tools was very helpful. We prepared a basic decision document that was interesting for the entire IT department. Furthermore, the project has enabled us to align our long-term corporate strategy with the future ERP strategy.”
Christian Füssel, Business Information Services, Financial Process Solutions, TRUMPF GmbH + Co. KG, adds his experience with the engagement: “SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement a good way to do a structured and guided pre-study for analyzing where your company stands and how a possible transformation path to SAP S/4HANA could look. With the right staffing in the engagement, it is possible to create an SAP S/4HANA awareness among the business departments as well as on top management level. SAP S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement can serve as a trigger for further in-house activities toward SAP S/4HANA.
If you are interested in the adoption starter engagement, please join the DSAG webinar or contact your SAP account representative for more information.
Join SAP S/4HANA Movement Today
Already, over 2,100 SAP customers are live with SAP S/4HANA. SAP customers such as Airbus Defense and Space, Carl Stahl GmbH, Colgate-Palmolive, Enel, Döhler, and WEIG have joined the SAP S/4HANA Movement.
Are you next? As a starting point, you may want to check out the Business Scenario Recommendations, which will help you formulate your business case by identifying the business processes that will be directly transformed by SAP S/4HANA. In addition, our offerings from the SAP Digital Business Services can help make the transition a smooth one. These support and services from SAP Digital Business Services include:
- SAP Value Assurance, which helps ensure efficiency and risk reduction for all project phases via service packages that support SAP S/4HANA deployment when a customer or system integration partner leads the project — from planning and design to implementation or migration and innovation.
- SAP Advanced Deployment, which enables the fast and safe adoption of the next-generation digital core by providing customers with access to a turnkey, SAP-led implementation option to simply and systematically deploy SAP S/4HANA.
- SAP Model Company, which provides a preconfigured, ready-to-run reference solution with business content and engineered services for multiple industries and lines of business, allowing customers to secure the critical foundation for the success of their transformational program.
The Time Is Now to Adopt and Adapt
The movement to SAP S/4HANA shows the market and our customers that the time for adoption is now. SAP supports this with a full program of offers and tools along with our unmatched ecosystem of IT service providers that lower the cost and improve the confidence of SAP S/4HANA implementation projects – backed by over four decades of continuous success, innovation, and growth.
Join the SAP S/4HANA Movement today.
Interested customers in Germany are welcome to join our DSAG webinar on October 17. For customers in North America there will also be a webinar on October 17 sponsored by ASUG: Strategic Choices for SAP S/4HANA Deployment.
Michael Kleinemeier is a member of the Executive Board, SAP Digital Business Services, SAP SE.
