All over the world, SAP S/4HANA is quickly becoming SAP’s most successful ERP system. S/4HANA is the 4th ERP suite developed by SAP. For over four decades, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has been the core of SAP. This explains why CEO Bill MCDermott announced the release of SAP’s next generation ERP system S/4HANA as their “biggest launch in 23 years, if not in the entire history of the company”.

So what is special about S/4HANA compared to the previous generations of SAP ERP systems?

SAP S/4HANA’s primary differentiator is its unique architecture which is quite a contrast from the classic relational database. It runs in-memory, with data stored in columns, allowing for faster, near to real-time analytics and compute capabilities.

Stepping away from merely recording data, SAP/S4HANA focuses on providing end users active decision support in real time, that is data-driven and takes into consideration both internal and external sources of data.

Most importantly, SAP S4/HANA allows organizations to work seamlessly in a digital economy. This has been a key driving factor for various businesses using SAP ERP over the years, to seriously start considering the business benefits of S4HANA and make the decision of whether they should adopt this modernized ERP solution.

In this blog, we will delve deeper into the benefits SAP S/4HANA offers, so you can make an informed business decision.

What value does SAP S/4HANA offer for customers?

SAP S/4HANA has been written natively for the SAP HANA platform and is radically advanced in terms of its simplifications, increased efficiency, and incredible new features. It offers unique advantages to each stakeholder (business managers, IT managers and so on). From reduced maintenance costs, faster report generation, increased contextual awareness, democratized data access, to enabling organizations to be ready for the “digital core”, the advantages of SAP S/4HANA are many. Let’s dig further into why SAP S/4HANA is such a good bet for your business.

1. Simplification

SAP S/4HANA brings about immense simplification to the management and administration of the IT landscape – in fact, simplicity is one of the key features SAP has brought in to its ECC application structure.  SAP S/4HANA enables the centralizing of hardware and network resources, and serves as the digital core for business process simplification, by harnessing the power of its HANA in-memory database. In older systems, enterprises often ran into issues of multiple batch-run dependencies. Elimination of aggregate tables, reduced processing time and the ease with which your systems can respond to transactions and queries, ensure that you are able to spend your efforts on strategic growth efforts.

2. Ease of use

Fiori 2.0, provides a modern design for a completely innovative user experience, enabling users to easily access Overview Pages, Work Lists and List Reports. SAP Fiori’s UI is designed specifically to be highly intuitive, personalized, responsive, and simple, which allows users to prompt questions and access required details, regardless of device or deployment. This allows an organization to evolve and eventually drive new revenues, connect with customers at a deeper level, access IoT and Big Data, and most importantly, gain relevant insights into any data, in real-time, thereby supporting quick decision making.

3. Increased performance

S/4HANA enables improved performance by allowing you to plan, execute, generate reports and analytics based on live data, as well as triggering period closing and providing improved predictions. It also enables your organization to provide better service for customer-centric applications. HANA offers increased contextual awareness and democratized data access.

4. Cost effectiveness

Adopting S/4HANA is a smart move, as far as cost efficiency is considered. You have the ability to bring together all the analytical and transactional capabilities of a plethora of systems onto one location. This enables immensely better decision making.

5. Innovation

SAP S/4HANA sets the stage for future innovation. Technology is evolving rapidly, which means merely ‘keeping up’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Enterprises have to stay ahead of the curve and make decisions that are future ready. S/4 HANA applications leverage speed, context and data accessibility like never before. It is also driving cloud adoption by businesses, a platform which enables organizations to deliver innovative solutions and widens the capabilities offered by S/4HANA itself.

6. Easy transition from on-premise to cloud

While we talk about a cloud based future, it’s also important to note that S/4HANA offers easy transition to the cloud. Since a move to the cloud can happen at any time in an organization, typically to reduce costs, this is an important benefit for business leaders to consider.

Making the switch from traditional ERP solutions to SAP S/4HANA will not be an easy one. It requires deep thought and intensive evaluation of the benefits your organization can leverage, in a cutthroat, competitive business environment.

Although SAP S/4HANA can provide the digital core, it is simply an enabling platform. In order for you to truly maximize benefits from an upgrade or migration, it is important to consider its digital capabilities, as you evaluate your decision to progress towards this modern, next-generation ERP.

We have enabled our customers to go-live on SAP S/4HANA within 8 weeks. If you are looking to get started, or you want to discuss strategy or an implementation roadmap or a migration/Conversion roadmap that would work for your business, do get in touch with us.