As technologies rapidly evolve and the world gets smarter, we see a simultaneous change in enterprises and the way they function.

Businesses have transformed to reflect needs of the new generation of energetic entrepreneurs who prefer simplicity and flexibility in business processes and practices.

In 2015 SAP launched the most innovative enterprise platform SAP S/4HANA – the biggest release from SAP for the last decade. SAP S/4HANA offers new best practices, amazing user experience and faster analytics in real time. SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is the digital core of enterprise and based on in-memory HANA database technology.

But, does an investment in this newer solution make sense for your business? Let’s find out.

In our previous article we talked about advantages of SAP S/4HANA for your enterprise. Let’s revisit a few of these.

The main business advantages of SAP S/4HANA migration for existing ERP customers:

• Improved performance

Refine business performance with high speed of transaction processing and reporting. SAP S/4HANA allows you to drive business activities such as planning, execution, reporting and analytics in real time. Connect with customers through any channel to deliver value and provide a better service level for customer-centric applications.

• Agility & flexibility

Analyze big amounts of data quickly and in real time. Get instant insights to any data, any time and from any device to make decisions as rapidly as your business grow. SAP S/4HANA gives customers the opportunity to boost business agility and flexibility and drive new revenues and profits.

• Simplicity

Enjoy simplified table structure and data access. When all the data is fully-automated you can spend time to build greater strategy of your growing business. Plus user-friendly interface is SAP Fiori driven with a modern design which means real-time insights lets you drive business processes online and adapt them instantly through your device.

• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership

Reduce your expenses with the single SAP S/4HANA database platform. Larger data is collected in one single source combining analytical and transactional operations of the systems that saves hardware, operational and time costs.. SAP S/4HANA offers two deployment options: On-Premise and On-Cloud Editions to drive quick time-to-value.

•  Innovation

Keep up to date with the modern digital technologies. SAP S/4HANA is always evolving  its software products and services to expand the capabilities of S/4HANA and match all customers’ needs. Be one step ahead of your competitors with SAP innovations for better business performance.

The benefits of migrating to SAP S/4HANA may have convinced you at this point. And if your next step is to get started, allow me to steer you in the right direction.

Key concerns for any business, when considering an important investment such as this one will obviously revolve around ROI, business value, adoption strategies, and the possibility for system conversion. Therefore, before business transformation, companies should assess their business and IT environments and analyze the enhanced features, new solutions, and capabilities to determine whether a move to SAP/S4 HANA platform will bring about the desired business benefits.

Previously, we also published a guide about migration strategy and a step-by-step process. Before migration, each customer should prepare his organization for the future digital journey.

SAP S/4HANA migration strategy includes:

• Business and IT environment assessment (understand what is working well, what is not and why);
• SAP S/4HANA value analyze (explore SAP solutions, capabilities and benefits for your business);
• Business case development (prepare a properly thought out reasoning list for better decision making);
• Definition and building roadmap (define and build activities around how you are going to start migration).

After the strategy path is completed you can start a step-by-step migration process.

The current version of ECC software supported by SAP is predicted to expire in 2025. It is evident that customers who want to stick to SAP as their ERP solution provider may delay the adoption but will be unable avoid it, as it’s not an “if” question but “when” and “how”. It is therefore, advisable for businesses to start using innovative digital technologies and begin the migration sooner than later.

The team at Savantis has tremendous experience in helping existing SAP customers migrate to SAP S/4 HANA successfully. If you are considering a migration yourself, do get in touch with us for a consulting session.