How to Move to the Cloud While Meeting the Pace of Change

As customers release pent-up demand and the pace of change doubles or triples, moving to the cloud has never been more urgent. But how do businesses shift quickly from an on-premise mindset when they lack the skills, expertise, and strategy to move forward? For SAP customers, the answer is SAP Enterprise Support services.

Never have businesses – even the most risk averse – had to transform themselves so rapidly and completely. After a year of reshaping how employees work, suppliers are engaged, and customers are served with digital technology, organizations must now evolve again to set a scalable foundation for today’s recovery and tomorrow’s growth.

Business transformation can emerge in a variety of forms in the cloud. Some companies experience greater operational speed and agility by migrating their legacy data and capabilities to intelligent ERP. Other businesses enjoy the support of predictive analytics and extended visibility to proactively identify opportunities and mitigate risks. We’ve even helped organizations implement the latest intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning, to open the door to socially responsible and environmentally friendly outcomes.

How do they accomplish such advantages at a time when the pace of change is perhaps one of the most significant disrupters? For many companies, it comes down to accessing hands-on, expert-led workstreams and step-by-step guidance from SAP Enterprise Support services.

Matching Urgency with Expert-Led Guidance and Support

Sometimes market dynamics, competition, and customer preferences shift so quickly that legacy systems, processes, and mindsets can become obsolete at a moment’s notice. But that doesn’t mean that businesses should respond immediately by heading to the cloud on their own. Instead, many of our customers have learned that relying on strategic support from a trusted partner can put them in an even better position for growth and innovation than they could achieve on their own.

For First National Operation & Maintenance Company (NOMAC), this realization came during an upgrade of its core system, which spans across more than 10 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia. NOMAC turned to SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council for guidance during its implementation of the extended edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. With direct access to SAP experts, prescriptive learning, and social collaboration forums, the company had at its disposal the relevant tools, best practices, and resources needed to move to the cloud faster and with less expense.

Sorrifácil Franchising Ltda. also took advantage of the expertise of SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, but with a different goal in mind. Serving 1.3 million patients at more than 100 dental clinics throughout Brazil, the company already relied on cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to drive its customer experience. But the Sorrifácil team wanted to better understand the functionality of these solutions, as well as their integration capabilities, best practices, and benefits. This desire led to its engagement with SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, increasing the independence and self-sufficiency needed to make the most of future innovations.

Eczacibaşi Group underwent an even more profound transformation with the assistance of SAP Enterprise Support. In an enterprise-wide transformation impacting five companies in four locations across four countries, the company connected its cloud technologies to business objectives – all within a tight timeline during a worldwide pandemic. By leveraging a tailored engagement plan and SAP Enterprise Support guides early on, the company fully understood potential limitations and requirements. SAP experts also provided a steady schedule of continuous quality checks and remote live learning sessions on data migration methodologies and best practices to help ensure a low-risk and smooth go-live.

Easing Transitions to Reshape Business Functions

While cloud migrations are usually associated with sweeping company-wide change, there are projects where individual business areas find better ways of getting work done without transforming the entire company. Such situations may come in the digitalization of back-office processes or those for HR and finance and specific capabilities that enhance decision-making.

Take San Miguel S.A., for example. To unify employee data and standardize HR management across global operations, the fruit and vegetable producer and exporter chose the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution. Through SAP Enterprise Support, the company used a continuous quality check service that helped ensure a smooth production system launch in line with recommended best practices, enabling maximum efficiency of the centralized cloud-based HR system.

Oriental Union Chemical Corporation (OUCC) also took a targeted cloud transformation approach to enhance a critical business capability – insight-driven decision-making. To optimize the value the
SAP Analytics Cloud solution brings to OUCC, the company engaged SAP Enterprise Support services to leverage enablement workshops, proactive remote services, and ongoing support. OUCC also received training on key product features and solution overviews through various demos, use cases, insights, and tools. This expert guidance gave the clarity to implement and fine-tune the analytics solution, reducing training costs significantly and cutting the overall load time for some story templates by 10%.

Accelerating Meaningful Change in an Ever-Evolving World

While each of our customer’s transformation stories are unique in their own way, they are all taking part in a massive transformation happening worldwide.

That’s the beauty unfolding when we watch businesses transform with SAP Enterprise Support. With hands-on, expert-led workstreams and step-by-step guidance, our customers see the pace of change not as a business disrupter, but rather as a motivator that’s helping them realize their full potential in the cloud.

Explore how SAP Enterprise Support can help your business move to the cloud without letting the pace of change become a disruption by registering and watching the recordings of our virtual SAP Enterprise Support day held in March 2021.

Chad Crook is senior vice president and global head of Customer Engagement and Experience Success Center at SAP.