In 2027, organisations that use the ECC version of SAP ERP are going to hit the end-of-support deadline.
They will have to migrate their ERP applications across to SAP S/4HANA and undertake a lengthy process to ensure that this migration is as seamless as possible and does not impact any critical business operations.
While SAP is a trusted solution that delivers exceptional value for many organisations with an ERP platform, there is still one question that every organisation wants answered – why?
Why should they undergo this migration and overcome numerous logistical challenges just to meet this deadline?
Pieter Potgieter, Senior Commercial Manager from Dimension Data explains that the answer lies in 4 measurable and valuable business benefits that come with SAP S/4HANA operated in the cloud on a hyper-scaler like Microsoft Azure:
1 – Serving customers better
In the always-on, always-connected economy we operate in today, organisations run a very real risk of losing business and customers if their critical business applications are not available and performing to expectation.
Customers demand swift and flawless service, regardless of industry, and the capability to serve and charge customers are highly dependent on the ERP solution at the centre of the application landscape.
For this reason, the adoption of a modern and intelligent ERP system like SAP S/4HANA can drastically alter a customer’s experience of an organisation.
If you combine this with the power of cloud and a hyper-scaler’s ability to provide highly available infrastructure at reasonable cost, you have a powerful basis for digitally enabled organisation, poised for growth.
2 – Predictable and manageable cost
Traditionally in on-premise SAP deployments, environments had to be sized to cater for peak processing requirements like month end financial close or production runs.
This meant that the business paid a premium for already expensive hardware that operated at 15% efficiency for 90% of the time.
This was exacerbated by the unpredictable business demands in the form of ad-hoc projects, unexpected growth and other business activities like mergers and acquisitions.
Deploying S/4HANA in the cloud allows organisations to align infrastructure related expenditure with its actual real-time processing requirement in the form of OPEX and avoid costly upfront CAPEX investments.
It also significantly reduces the risk of business interruptions and project delays associated with hardware order lead times.
When you combine this with the proven capability of Dimension Data to cost-efficiently manage SAP landscapes in the cloud, you have a powerful platform from which to operate your business without having to worry about keeping the SAP lights on.
3 – Richer insights
There is little doubt that data remains the black gold of the business world, providing insights and information that can be used to transform businesses by increasing product relevance, service delivery and customer satisfaction.
With SAP S/4HANA, an organisation has easy access to a rich and relevant data, and when combined with Microsoft Azure’s leading analytics capabilities, provides insights that allows everyone in the business to make better decisions.
This can seamlessly be further enriched with data from other business sources like IOT and other operational systems.
4 – Keeping pace with accelerating technology innovation
SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Azure come from two organisations that invest time and money into research and development (R&D) that very few businesses can afford to match.
This not only translates into increasingly relevant features that keep pace with market demand and technology evolution, but also into immense business value.
Every valuable feature consumed from S/4HANA running on Azure means time and money you can spend on business functions that help differentiating you from your competition and making you more relevant in your industry.
And you know you are in safe hands with Dimension Data managing the entire process with highly skilled people and robust management tools from trusted partners.
Adopting SAP S/4HANA is much more than just another software update.
It’s a revolution in how an organisation consumes services and builds applications, how it translates technology into performance, and IT into service delivery.
In a highly competitive market that is challenging to navigate, SAP S/4HANA in the cloud provides your business with the technology partnership it needs to remain relevant and innovative without having to worry about stability, scale and capability.
In collaboration with Dimension Data, you can focus on your customers and your business with visibility across the entire technology stack.
