Driving digital innovation

*Illumiti is a member of United VARs, which is an SAP platinum partner.

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T H E J O U R N E Y TO SAP S/4HANA

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• Seamless integration with mobile platforms, Big Data, Internet of Things, and more.

We also know that the move to SAP S/4HANA is a big commitment that can seem daunting or even overwhelming. That’s why we’ve created this paper: a resource to help you better understand SAP S/4HANA and its potential benefits to your organization, with a step-by-step process to assist you in planning your unique journey forward.

As always, we welcome your feedback and hope that you find value in these insights.

While SAP systems have long driven success for organizations worldwide, SAP S/4HANA takes innovation and intelligent automation to the next level. SAP S/4HANA is fast, streamlined, and designed to drive increased value across all lines of business.

Deployable on-premise or in the cloud, SAP S/4HANA can help your business realize:

• Improved decision making through real-time insights

• Increased performance through streamlined, reinvented processes

• Higher productivity through the personalized Fiori user experience

• Lower total cost of ownership through simplified architecture

The business world is evolving – and ERP systems must keep pace. That’s why at Illumiti we see SAP S/4HANA as a true game-changer for today’s businesses. SAP S/4HANA, the modern digital core, is a next-generation business suite designed to help organizations excel in the digital age.

Lorraine Howell, Vice President, Research & Development, Illumiti

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Getting to Know SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA is a next-generation business suite built to support companies’ activities in a digital age. Built on the HANA in-memory platform, S/4HANA enables real-time connections across lines of business, and gives users access to critical business information faster and more efficiently. SAP’s extensive list of cloud-based applications can enhance and expand functionality beyond the S/4HANA digital core, including integration of Internet of Things, eCommerce, and more. This is SAP’s Digital Universe.

SAP has made considerable technical and structural improvements in S/4HANA (the Digital Core) over prior systems. Not only does HANA’s in-memory architecture deliver instantaneous responsiveness, but it has also enabled SAP to restructure the ERP solution from the ground up. S/4HANA’s simplified data structures reduce duplication and redundant tables, and create a “single source of truth” for reporting that reduces the likelihood of errors. These changes have also made it easier to write code and run reports. (It is worth noting, however, that SAP made these evolutionary structural changes while still providing the capability to do a migration without re-implementation by enabling views referring to all of the old structures.)

SO WHAT IS SAP S/4HANA AND WHY IS IT A GAME-CHANGER FOR SO MANY ORGANIZATIONS?

WHAT DOES SAP S/4HANA MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

An ERP system is a critical component of the smooth operations of today’s business—but some customers are wondering whether an upgrade to SAP S/4HANA is worth the trouble. While many organizations are considering moving to S/4HANA within the next five years, multiple barriers can pose an impediment to upgrades. Uncertainty over total cost and lack of a supporting business case rank as top reasons why companies have yet to move from their current system. Yet, for many, the reasons for hesitation are far simpler: uncertainty over how S/4HANA differs from previous SAP ERP systems, what it offers, and how it can benefit the business. Whether approaching your project as a technical upgrade or a true business transformation, understanding what S/4HANA can bring is the first step in your journey.

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The solution’s streamlined architecture has also enabled SAP to bring diverse functional areas back into the core solution, including SRM, CRM, and SCM products, considerably reducing integration issues.

However, customers should also be aware that some of the “classical” functionality in existing ERP suites may not yet be part of S/4HANA (such as the Equipment and Tools module – as of version 1610), and are instead in the interim delivered through compatibility packs. There are also some non-supported functionalities, duplicated capabilities (such as credit management) and no longer used functions, a full list of which can be found in SAP’s Simplification List.

From a user perspective, S/4HANA provides a breath of fresh air via

STREAMLINED ARCHITECTURE

SAP’S DIGITAL UNIVERSE

SAP’s award-winning Fiori 2.0 interface. For the new HTML5 transactions and analytics this interface creates a role-based, people-centric view that renders on any device, including a smartphone or tablet. This means that each user type has easy access and quick line-of-sight to relevant data, regardless of location, with embedded workflows and decision support.

Yet where S/4HANA truly stands out from its predecessors is in the way that its technological innovations can be used to support a smart business transformation. For example, S/4HANA

USER EXPERIENCE

provides the ability to create an exception-based management environment that helps identify the KPIs where attention is most needed to improve company performance. S/4HANA also has a suite of smart tools with embedded analytics and, through machine learning (using the SAP Cloud Platform), the ability to simulate and predict user behaviour and outcomes. These are potentially revolutionary tools that can change the way you run your business for the better.

Simpler data model Improved user experience

New business capabilityImproved productivity+ =

CONCURSAP SuccessFactorsSAP FieldglassWorkforce engagement

SAP AribaSupplier collaboration

business networks

SAP HybrisConsumer experience

omni-channel

SAP Cloud PlatformApplications (IoT, ML)SAP Leonardo

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 1

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UNDERSTANDING YOUR DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS

When looking to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA from your current ERP system, there are two broad areas to consider: where your company is starting from, and where you would like to go. Your destination—the deployment option that best fits your corporate needs and environment—will necessarily shape your transition plan.

Transition your SAP ECC 6.0 deployment on any database to the SAP HANA database (Suite on HANA). This will unlock the HANA live reporting capability (real-time analytics directly from your transactional ERP system) and pave the way to a transition to S/4HANA in the future. This helps reduce your risk.

SAP S/4HANA Simple Finance (1503/1605), which is a finance-focused on-premise deployment, which provides the benefits of the simplified modern architecture and the Fiori 2.0 user experience.

You have a choice to deploy S/4HANA on-premise or in the cloud. And there are a number of different deployment options in each of these cases. For on-premise (or hosted) deployments, there are three core options to consider:

Or there is the full SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management solution, of which there have been three major releases to date (1511/1610/1709).

There are also a number of cloud-based deployments available:

An on-premise deployment in a hosted cloud is a hybrid option in which another company hosts your ERP and manages your services.

Your chosen version of S/4HANA can be deployed on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, hosted by SAP. Here, you are responsible for governance and own all upgrades but can delegate to SAP for additional cost.

You can choose to deploy S/4HANA Enterprise Management Cloud in a Private Cloud environment, hosted by SAP. This is a subscription-based option.

Or you can choose a version of S/4HANA Cloud with a Public Cloud deployment. This is a completely subscription-based option, hosted and fully managed by SAP. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has key capabilities in Finance, Sales, Procurement, Professional Services, Human Resources and Component Manufacturing.

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One thing to consider when choosing a deployment option is the innovation cycle. S/4HANA Public Cloud has a quarterly innovation cycle. These same upgrades and updates are rolled down to the on-premise and other versions annually.

SAP S/4HANA ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT EDITIONS

SAP S/4HANA1610

(on premise)

SAP S/4HANA1709

(on premise)

SAP S/4HANACloud1611

SAP S/4HANACloud1702

SAP S/4HANACloud1705

SAP S/4HANACloud1708

1610FPS02

1610FPS01

1511SPS04

1511SPS03

1610SPS03

1511SPS05

Quarterly innovation cycle

Annual innovation cycle

Continuous innovationAvailable today

FPS = feature pack stackSPS = support pack stack

SAP S/4HANA CLOUD INNOVATION SCHEDULE

SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management Cloud

Deployment On Premise HANA Enterprise Cloud Private option Public option

Scope Full ERP scope Full ERP scope Full ERP scope Core digital business processes implemented with Best Practices

Process FlexibilityFull process flexibility; complete

configuration scope, extensions and modifications possible

Full process flexibility; complete configuration scope, extensions and

modifications possible

Full process flexibility and configuration options within standardized packages; extensions to standard code possible

Guided process flexibility (Best Practices); extensions to standard code available

SW & DB Licensing Traditional license & maintenance model Traditional license & maintenance + substription model Single subscription contract Single subscription contract

Application Management and Infrastructure Services Customer responsibility Available as additional, customer-specific

optionsStandard AMS included in single

subscription contract Included in single subscription contract

Support Based on support agreement Customer-specific options Cloud Enterprise Support Cloud Enterprise Support

System Governance Customer Customer Shared responsibility SAP

Management Model Customer owns all upgrades Customer owns all upgrades, but can delegate for additional costs

Shared responsibility. Customer is responsible for project and testing SAP provided upgrades

End User Access Web + SAPGui Web + SAPGui Web + SAPGui Web only

Innovation Cycle Annual Annual Annual Quarterly

Technically same SAP S/4HANA System (different deployment and commercial option)

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 3

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If a Public or SAP Private Cloud deployment is the best fit for your organization, there is only one transition option. You cannot convert or migrate to Public or SAP Private Cloud; instead, you must do a new implementation and then bring your company’s modifications into that environment where possible, or transition the company enhancements as applications/extensions in the SAP Cloud Platform.

For the other on-premise and cloud-based (hosted) deployments, there are three transition strategies to consider, each with its own benefits and challenges.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR TRANSITION OPTIONS

New Implementation or Re-Implementation

This is a clean, greenfield implementation of S/4HANA. Your old landscape is retired, and customizations are re-created in the new system. This approach provides the opportunity to standardize and simplify the existing landscape to reduce your total cost of ownership and take advantage of the latest innovations, though time is required to bring IP across to the new system. This approach can work for either cloud or on-premise deployments.

New Implementation

ERP System

Non-SAP System

On-Premise

Cloud

FIGURE 5

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Landscape Transformation

This approach works best for organizations that have multiple ERP implementations or systems, such as in a global company. With this approach you can reduce the total cost of ownership through simplification of the landscape. You have the option of either migrating part of an existing SAP ECC 6.0 landscape to S/4HANA and then migrating the other systems over time, or consolidating systems into a single target with S/4HANA. This approach can work for either cloud or on-premise deployments. Quite often the choice here is to install a Central Finance S/4HANA system, with data real-time replicated to it, and then eventually configure the rest of the system as a single full Enterprise Management System over time.

LandscapeTransformation

ERP System- Region A -

On-Premise

Cloud

ERP System- Region B -

ERP System- Region C -

System Conversion

This is a migration of your existing SAP ECC 6.0 implementation on any database to S/4HANA. Basically, the conversion is treated like an upgrade, and allows you to keep your custom enhancements. However, with this strategy you can only migrate your system as an on-premise deployment.

SystemConversion On-Premise

SAP S/4HANA

ERP System

FIGURE 6

FIGURE 7

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Is Your Business Ready for Transition?

When considering a move to SAP S/4HANA, there are a number of questions that naturally arise. Key among them is often, “How does S/4HANA differ from my current ERP implementation?”

FREE TOOLS TO ASSESS YOUR READINESS FOR SAP S/4HANA

When considering a move to SAP S/4HANA, there are a number of questions that naturally arise. Key among them is often, “How does S/4HANA differ from my current ERP implementation?”

Understanding what S/4HANA can do for your business, as well as what gaps or changes there may be from your current system, can be a complicated process. The good news is that there are a number of free tools from SAP that can help assess these areas and make your journey forward easier.

SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA

The SAP Readiness Check for S/4HANA is a program that you can run in Solution Manager or directly in your current SAP ERP system. It analyses five critical areas:

1. Custom Code Analysis. Readiness Check assesses all custom aspects of your current ERP implementation, including reports, enhancements and modifications, and provides details on whether your custom code is supported in S/4HANA.

2. Sizing Assessment. Based on your current ERP usage, the Readiness Check estimates total memory and disk space requirements for the S/4HANA database tables.

INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY WITH SMARTER, SIMPLER BUSINESS PROCESSES

Don’t let unnecessary complexity slow your business. With SAP S/4HANA, you can:

• Monitor achievements in real time with KPIs instantly refreshed

• Eliminate end-of-period bottlenecks

• Achieve continuous intercompany reconciliation

• Gain continuous visibility into financial reporting

• Gain full management visibility of close tasks

• Automate routine tasks

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1. Fiori UX Recommendations. By looking at the transaction codes you run today, the Readiness Check suggests the best SAP Fiori apps that could benefit your organization moving forward, rated by potential usefulness.

2. Simplification. This is a critical part of the tool, which compares the S/4HANA Simplification Database to your SAP ERP 6.x system to detect where system changes may have an impact. Based on transactions and table contents, it highlights what has changed in S/4HANA and how these changes will affect your organization.

3. Business Process Analytics. Finally, the Readiness Check reviews your active business functions and add-ons to see whether they are compatible with S/4HANA, and highlights any gaps.

Even if you are planning to move to S/4HANA at a later date, it can be helpful to run the Readiness Check now so you can understand and begin to plan around potential impact areas.

Business Scenarios Recommendation Report

Like the Readiness Check, the Business Scenarios Recommendation Report (BSR) uses your current ERP system usage to review the applicability of moving to S/4HANA, but goes into much greater detail. The in-depth BSR highlights specific areas of change or improvement, identifies where your organization will realize the greatest benefits from a transition, and ranks each area based on its relevance to your business needs. Given the level of detail granularity, the BSR can also be a great starting point for the development of your business case for S/4HANA.

The BSR report is embedded in the more comprehensive SAP Pathfinder Report; however, due to the fact that you will need to run an Enhanced Early Watch Report, it can be useful to have a partner’s help to run the process and review the results.

SAP Roadmap Viewer

As important as it is to understand the differences between your current system and S/4HANA, it’s also critical to look forward to what SAP has planned for the future. The SAP Roadmap Viewer provides a guided look into the future of S/4HANA and highlights areas relevant to your business that could be changed, updated or decommissioned in future versions. This data, as well as SAP’s broader roadmap for the product, can be used to help guide the optimal timing for your transition to S/4HANA or identify areas where additional support may be required.

FIGURE 8

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As you look to transition to SAP S/4HANA, it is important to understand the differences between S/4HANA and your current ERP system. While there have been significant changes to the technical side, about 80% of the changes in S/4HANA will not affect your operations. Other changes are more strategic, and are designed to make day-to-day processes easier, such as using a task-oriented modern user interface, providing exception-based management opportunities via relevant KPIs, and delivering smart business tools to guide decision making.

Even so, there are ways to manage the disruptions of a transition, especially if you plan for the change in advance. One way to prepare for a conversion to S/4HANA is through a process of slow, managed change through the adoption of target capabilities in the classic SAP Business Suite. This process can be broken down into three high-level steps:

PREPARING YOUR ORGANIZATION FOR SAP S/4HANA

1. Understand your business processes. To create a plan to effectively manage change and reduce its impact on your operations, you need to have an in-depth understanding of your own business processes. Document processes and differentiate between critical and non-critical processes so that you can see what functions will be impacted and how

2. Consolidate results of SAP Tools. Combine the results of SAP tools such as the Readiness Check for S/4HANA, the Business Scenarios Recommendation Report (BSR) and the Roadmap Viewer. SAP’s Transformation Navigator can also help determine

your organization’s value aspirations and assist you to convert that into a financial business case using the quick value assessment tool. You can then compare the impact areas with your business processes, focusing first on the impacts to critical business processes. Such impacts could include removal of a business-critical function, a shift of a frequently used function to the cloud, or a movement of current external functionalities into the core. Other new functionality can be considered in the areas of Central Finance, Cash Management, and BPC, which has been embedded and optimized for S/4HANA.

3. Identify any roadblocks or impediments. Based on your assessment, you should be able to document any areas that could prevent your organization from moving forward to S/4HANA immediately (major roadblocks), as well as less critical areas that need to be addressed down the line (impediments). Having identified the major roadblocks that stand between your processes on your current ERP system and S/4HANA, you can then begin to address these areas by slowly transitioning functions toward the end targets. It is best to focus first on areas that are both mission-critical and create a core differentiation that helps you differentiate your business.

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Consolidate results of SAP Tools

Identify any Roadblocks or Impediments

Understand your Business Processes

Differentiate critical and non-critical processes

Compare with your business processes focusing on the critical areas

Document the items that may prevent you moving forward immediately

Document the items that must be addressed, but won’t necessarily block you

• Architecture Changes

• Elimination of duplicate functionality

• Functionality removed in SAP S/4HANA

• Replacement by Cloud

• External to Core

• New functionality

The change management process also provides you with an opportunity to return to SAP Best Practices. Truth is, many organizations implement their ERP systems in a hurry, or may even have completed their implementation years ago when there were no formal best practices. This transition point from ECC to S/4HANA is the perfect moment to look at SAP’s best practices now and take the opportunity to improve.

SAP Transformation Navigator

FIGURE 9

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Building Your Business Case for SAP S/4HANA

CREATING A STRONG FOUNDATION FOR A BUSINESS CASE

The Pathfinder Report consolidates the information contained in a number of other SAP reports to create a customized, detailed and interactive report that shines a spotlight on your ERP usage. Using your unique implementation and usage patterns, Pathfinder uncovers potential areas for innovation, business process improvements and IT innovations.

The Pathfinder report:

• Details opportunities to improve your existing SAP ERP implementation through functional enhancements.

• Highlights areas where your current user experience can be simplified and improved through relevant SAP Fiori apps.

• Shows where you can improve your business processes based on current KPIs.

Across businesses, about 20% of the value of a move to S/4HANA comes from reductions in total cost of ownership, while another 30-40% comes from increases in productivity driven by the ERP system. The largest source of value from upgrading—in the order of 50-60%, depending on the organization—comes from improvements to business processes. It is this latter area that should form the foundation for your business case, and there are two free SAP tools that can help.

Many organizations understand that upgrading to SAP S/4HANA will deliver benefits across the business. However, quantifying and prioritizing these benefits in order to develop a strong business case can pose challenges that delay a move forward.

SAP Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder Report

• Outlines areas to improve or optimize your IT systems to improve security, usability, and function.

• Highlights opportunities to enhance your implementation though SAP cloud solutions.

• Shows you the path forward through digital transformation with S/4HANA.

The level of detail provided in the Pathfinder report is not only relevant for understanding where and how your business can benefit from S/4HANA, but also details how you can begin to make changes within your current implementation to enable a phased transition to S/4HANA. The report is also fully interactive, letting you focus and drill deep on the priority areas for your business.

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One of the most useful aspects of the Transformation Navigator, especially when it comes to developing your business case, is the ability to select and prioritize value drivers across your organization. Based on the areas that you’ve identified as priorities, such as reducing finance costs, the Transformation Navigator will make recommendations on what solutions you should implement to realize those benefits. Specific recommendations can be achieved through process transformation, context-specific program elements or conversion to S/4HANA, as well as appropriate replacements for discontinued content, where available. The tool then allows you to set your priority for each recommended product, depending on the needs of your business. You can access information on the Transformation Navigator directly from here: https://go.support.sap.com/transformationnavigator/#/welcome

The SAP Transformation Navigator is the newest tool in the toolset, designed to support businesses on their journeys of digital transformation. By providing insight into your business processes, the Transformation Navigator delivers the information you need to help create a strong business case and understand your path forward.

As with so many of SAP’s tools, the Transformation Navigator is available for free. Depending on your needs, you can either allow the tool to link directly to your system to analyze your active modules, or provide info on your ERP manually. The tool then outlines which embedded and cloud products would best support your business processes. While the Transformation Navigator provides great insight into the process improvements you can achieve by a move to S/4HANA, it also highlights opportunities for immediate improvement.

SAP Transformation Navigator

The advanced SAP HANA in-memory platform removes the technical constraints that held back earlier ERP systems.

REAL-TIME INSIGHTS DRIVE BETTER DECISION-MAKING

While a traditional ERP system uses siloed data and delivers insights through a reporting tool, the SAP S/4HANA digital core provides unified data in real time with intelligent, predictive tools to deliver insights based on business patterns and trends. The result is instant line-of-sight on critical business data, enabling you to make faster, better decisions.

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A strong business case for a transition to SAP S/4HANA is critical to gain necessary buy-in and support your investment. While SAP’s free tools can help you begin this process, any business case must be based on the unique needs of your organization and its users.

In our experience, a design thinking or innovation workshop held with members from across your business is an essential step to creating a clear and robust business case. Working together, we review both your Pathfinder report and Transformation Navigator report in detail to assess potential impacts to your organization.greatest value to your organization.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR ORGANIZATION’S UNIQUE REQUIREMENTS

Real - Time Analytics

Improved User Interface (Fiori) IT Benefits (Simplified Landscape)

Performance New S/4HANAFunctionality

New Ways of Doing Business (EBM)

Value (0-10)

2

4

6

8

9

10

FIGURE 10

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3. Performance improvements. Benefits in this area generally include faster reporting times and faster processing, thus enabling the removal of batch jobs and instant access to the results of MRP runs.

4. New functionalities. Assess the impacts of S/4HANA’s new core functionalities, including Central Finance, SAP Cash Management, and embedded business planning and consolidations.

5. IT benefits. S/4HANA’s simplified landscape can drive technical improvements, such as reduction of database size.

6. New ways of doing business. S/4HANA can also drive other changes to business processes, such as enabling exception- based management or real-time business management.

1. Improved user interface and simplified architecture. Benefits could include:

• Fiori applications, which provide a task-oriented modern user experience.

• The Universal Journal, which removes the need for reconciliation and hence facilitates faster, more reliable and more frequent financial closes.

• Visibility to profitability analysis at all levels of the organization.

2. Real-time analysis. Having all your data accessible immediately and directly out of your transactional database (no longer needing to extract to a data warehouse) will impact your ability to make faster and smarter decisions, and provide the ability for real-time forecasts and simulations.

In general, impacts may fall into six broad categories:

SAP S/4HANA delivers a dramatic reduction in TCO, thorough:

• Smaller data footprint with no need for aggregates, materialized views or indexes

• A simplified landscape that blends transactional and analytical systems into a single platform

• Reduced setup costs and increased time to value with SAP Activate

• Native, out-of-the-box integration of SAP Cloud solutions including SuccessFactors and Ariba

• Lower testing costs

• Increased asset utilization

LOWER TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP THROUGH SIMPLIFIED ARCHITECTURE

As you classify and categorize benefits and other impacts, assess the relative importance of each area. Which areas are the top priorities or will have the greatest potential benefit for your organization? Use this information to create an S/4HANA heatmap that clearly highlights the areas of greatest value and ROI. Together, these areas create the core of the business case needed to support and validate your investment.

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Once you have clearly defined and prioritized the benefits and other impacts of S/4HANA across your business, follow these three steps to finalize your S/4HANA business case:

FINALIZING YOUR BUSINESS CASE

1. Evaluate the process to prepare your current SAP system. Based on your transition assessment, evaluate what will be required to get your current SAP ERP system cleaned up and ready for the transition process. This can include deleting unused custom programs, returning used custom programs to standard SAP wherever possible, and reviewing and identifying specific business processes that can be updated to adhere to best practices.

2. Be clear on business process improvements. Create an outline of all business process improvements that will be achieved through a move to S/4HANA, with clear values or ROI attached to each area. Consider: what is the cost of adopting these improvements? Do you have defined measures for each benefit, or ways to clearly demonstrate the impacts of improvements? Do you have your team’s buy-in for these process changes, or is additional time or effort required to gain that backing?

3. Choose your adoption strategy. There are three core methods of moving your business to S/4HANA: a new implementation, a system conversion, or a landscape transformation. After assessing each option, decide which strategy best meets the needs of your business, now and in the future.

As you develop and finalize your business case, remember to look at the current S/4HANA functionality as well as the product roadmap, which outlines what’s to come in future releases. Given that SAP adds to and refines S/4HANA with each release, there may be additional benefits or impact areas for you to consider in light of your timelines for transition.

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Transitioning to SAP S/4HANA

Once you have created a business case for your organization’s transition to SAP S/4HANA, the question quickly becomes: when is the best time to make the move? Understanding what “style” of adoption suits your unique business will have important ramifications for your transition plan.

DEVELOPING YOUR ADOPTION STRATEGY

A best practice when deciding on a path to adoption is to hold a strategy workshop with the IT leadership team. In our experience, businesses looking to transition to SAP S/4HANA generally fall into one of two adoption categories:

1. Strategic Adopter. Strategic adopters are organizations for which S/4HANA could deliver significant benefits to their business and/or support strategic business initiatives in the short term.

2. Tactical Adopter. Tactical adopters see the benefits of moving to S/4HANA, but these benefits are not significant enough to make switching an immediate priority. Businesses with particularly complex SAP environments also often fit into this category.

If you are a strategic adopter, you need to make moving forward with S/4HANA a top priority—even if it means taking on additional risk as an

early adopter. While the idea of “additional risk” makes many shy away, being an early adopter isn’t a bad thing if you do the appropriate planning. For strategic adopters, a faster move to S/4HANA can also result in significant financial advantages, which make a few bumps along the road entirely worthwhile.

For tactical adopters, the question is not if you’ll move to S/4HANA, but what timeline works best for your organization. This could be any time between now and the end of 2025, when SAP stops providing support for prior ERP versions—though most organizations would be best served by not leaving this important transition to the last minute.

Re-imagine your user experience. SAP S/4HANA is designed for SAP Fiori, a modern, role-based user experience (UX) that provides instant value to any user, in any role, in any line of business.

With Fiori, complicated, difficult user interfaces are a thing of the past. Fiori is personalized, responsive, and available on any device, simplifying the user experience across the business. Fiori on SAP S/4HANA lets your employees quickly focus on high-value tasks, increasing productivity and adding value to your bottom line.

PERSONAL, RESPONSIVE USER EXPERIENCE WITH SAP FIORI

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One way to help decide on a go-forward date is to consider all of the work that needs to be done to make a move feasible and create a corresponding timeline/deadline for the transition. Another is to consider at what point not moving to S/4HANA creates more work, delays important projects or results in more lost revenue than committing to a transition. Tactical adopters should also look at other events and changes that are occurring within the business. For example, if you are looking at embarking on other SAP initiatives or integrating new apps into your current suite, you

may reduce duplication of work (and associated cost) through an earlier transition.

Understanding what adoption strategy best fits your business is an important step before developing your transition plan. In our next blog, we’ll look at how to build a plan to support the move to SAP S/4HANA on your ideal timeline.

Are you a strategic or a tactical adopter? The answer will shape your journey forward.

When identifying the most appropriate path for your business to move to SAP S/4HANA, there are two important decisions that must be made: what version are you going to choose, and what is your approach to transition? In many situations, it’s best to decide which version of SAP S/4HANA you want to use, then choose the best approach to get you to that goal.

Once you know your desired version, you can choose the route to adoption. As discussed earlier, you will be deciding on one of three different adoption paths:

1. New implementation. This is the greenfield implementation of S/4HANA into which data from a legacy ERP system is migrated. While this approach is a good fit for new SAP customers migrating from a third-party ERP system, existing customers may also choose this approach to achieve a clean implementation. As only data migration is involved, customers can move to either an on-premise or a cloud-based version of S/4HANA.

2. System conversion. This is the complete conversion of an existing SAP Business Suite, ECC, or Simple Finance system to an on-premise S/4HANA system. This approach is also appropriate for customers looking to upgrade from S/4HANA 1511 or 1610 to a newer on-premise version.

3. Landscape transformation. This is the merger of multiple source systems, such as ERP systems used in different regions, into either a new or existing SAP S/4HANA system. As this can be a very big leap, some customers may want to look into using Central Finance as a “stepping stone” in this transition process.

COMPLETING YOUR TRANSITION TO SAP S/4HANA

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If you are looking at a new implementation, SAP has a tool that can help. The SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit is an advanced tool that can vastly simplify the transition and data migration from an ECC environment to S/4HANA. This tool also supports legacy migrations.

If you are planning to move forward with a system conversion, SAP has a System Conversion Guide that can help with your planning. This guide provides a detailed, step-by-step outline of the preparation and tasks that you will need to complete to

successfully convert to S/4HANA. The process outlined also walks you through the use of a variety of free SAP tools that will make your way forward easier, such as the Maintenance Planner and the Software Update Manager (SUM).

Another useful tool is the Migration Roadmap Viewer, an interactive website that gives you a clear visual overview of the details of your migration project, from the discovery phase through to deployment. This can be particularly useful in the creation of your project plan.

Regardless of your desired version or adoption path, one final area that all customers are encouraged to consider is what we might refer to as a longer-term functional roadmap. Often, focus before and during a transition process is on the transition itself, doing what needs to be done to get the business to S/4HANA. But it’s also important to consider the implications of and opportunities created by the move. Starting from the top down, look at the wider implications of the move to S/4HANA, from your Business and IT Vision through to the implementation project itself.

For example, consider: what are the longer-term benefits that SAP S/4HANA can bring to your company, and how can you best take advantage of these opportunities? In what order will you roll-out new business functions or SAP Fiori apps, and on what timeline? Where is the low-hanging fruit, and what areas require more detailed planning, training or adjustment time?

Business and IT Vision

Adoption Strategy

Process

Projects

Systems

Applications

FIGURE 11

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Illumiti SAP S/4HANA Implementation Journey

Get to know S/4HANA

Compare S/4HANA best practices with your current environment

Perform high level benefit analysis

Define S/4HANA adoption strategy

S/4HANA Innovation Workshop

Transition Assessment Workshop

Business Case Workshop

Adoption Strategy Workshop

1

2

3

4

STEP WORKSHOP

SAP S/4HANA: Your Journey Ahead

SAP S/4HANA offers exciting opportunities for today’s modern businesses, now and for years to come. Whether you’re already moving forward on your journey to SAP S/4HANA or are planning a transition for the future, Illumiti is here to help.

From personal advice to in-depth support, Illumiti can provide assistance to help you understand the unique benefits your business can realize from a move to SAP S/4HANA, plan and prepare for your move to the desired implementation, and assist you to realize a smooth transition.

If you have questions or would like individual support on your company’s journey to SAP S/4HANA, please contact Raymond Boodram at rboodram@illumiti.com

For more information about our SAP S/4HANA Workshops, please visit illumiti.com/sap-software/sap-hana/

Illumiti’s S/4HANA Workshops

Building on our propriety four-step implementation process, Illumiti’s SAP S/4HANA workshops provide the knowledge and support that your organisation needs - no matter where you are in your transition journey. Let Illumiti help you unlock the power of SAP S/4HANA for your business.

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Our team enables customers to realize their vision by leveraging the world’s leading on premise and cloud-based business applications. Illumiti helps its clients achieve optimized operations in the key areas at the core of their business, by implementing custom-fit SAP solutions faster, at a lower cost, and at a lower risk than other alternatives.

Illumiti is a member of United VARS, which is an SAP platinum partner. For more information please visit www.illumiti.com.

Illumiti is a leading systems integration and management consulting company with offices in Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland, serving customers globally.

ABOUT ILLUMITI

SAP Transformation Navigator

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“While SAP systems have long driven success for organizations

worldwide, SAP S/4HANA takes innovation and intelligent

automation to the next level. SAP S/4HANA is fast, streamlined, and designed to drive increased value

across all lines of business.“

The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular entity. No one should act on this information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.

Copyright 2018 Illumiti. All Rights Reserved. The Illumiti name and logo are registered trademarks.

For more information, please contact:

Raymond Boodram, Inside Sales Manager, Illumiti rboodram@illumiti.com

illumiti.com