HOW TO INTEGRATE S/4 HANA AS A TRANSFORMATION VECTOR
As the world leader in ERP, SAP now offers a wider range of solutions that are better adapted to the needs of companies. Whatever the size of the company, the offers respond more precisely to the sectorial stakes and challenges of this era of digitalization.
SAP extends its maintenance to 2027 on ECC and 2040 on S/4HANA, which allows companies to better build the scalability strategy of their information systems. An example of this is the SAP Integration Suite, an integration platform that offers the simple integration of applications and processes on site and in the cloud with predefined tools and content. By updating its maintenance policy on these two solutions, SAP is reassuring that it is not slowing down the race to digitalization, which requires rationalization and convergence of application systems.
Less restrictive, SAP solutions guarantee, through their connectors, the means of technical interoperability with other SAP components, but also with other application landscape components. The transformation of the IS is necessary to harmonize all the applications and to optimize the flows through a single major system that covers all or a large part of the activity. The more complex the application landscape is to manage, the higher the maintenance costs.
In addition to an intuitive and faster use for the user, the introduction of agility in its 4th generation application with S/4 Hana its operation allows to centralize the company’s essential information. At the same time, it reduces the time it takes to obtain qualified and reliable information, allowing it to reallocate this time to higher value-added actions while limiting the risk of errors.
The challenge is to respond to a horizontal and vertical simplification of existing processes. The editor highlights the simplified processes provided by S/4 HANA, which it supports with its Activate program, combining both best practices in methodology and assisted configuration. The SAP Activate agile methodology, known as ASAP, adapts to company organizations and facilitates the deployment of solutions.
Thus, SAP migration and Information System reengineering projects have important impacts whose changes go beyond the IT framework and fully integrate the business departments, the internal and external processes as well as the organization.
The major objectives of such a project are to optimize and enhance the activities, restructure and strengthen its IS to enable it to be fully operational to support the company in its growth. There are two types of migration possibilities, allowing each company to take this turn according to its maturity and roadmap. The first is the technical migration “Brownfield” which means keeping ECC by migrating the technological environment and the database to HANA. The second, known as “Greenfield”, is an approach in which ECC is replaced by a new S/4HANA installation. This trajectory involves a complete overhaul of all processes in order to optimize them, by adopting new functionalities to support the business.
Even if the postponement of the ECC maintenance until 2027 seems far away, it has become crucial not to wait any longer to stay in the race, business does not wait! Many companies have taken the step, will you follow them?
