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SapphireNow – Speed of implementation and business persuasion

SapphireNow – Speed of implementation and business persuasion

If SAP is to be believed, Cloud and HANA adoption is accelerating. Businesses no longer discuss the commercial value of implementation, but rather how to get the most value out of their investment.

SapphireNow, the three-day flagship event for SAP, its customers, prospects and partners, pushed heavily to affirm the trend. SAP demonstrated their investment in products and technology with S/4HANA, C/4HANA, HANA Cloud platform and more.  They went to great lengths to explain how businesses will get more value out of their Cloud systems in future.

Throughout, SAP echoed the mantra of all Cloud implementations: adopt standard best practices; don’t try to fit the product around your legacy processes and practices. However, the reality is that most ERP projects to date have not been able to stick to this principle. The pain of persuading the organisation to take on the required change has often been too great, and projects have chosen the path of least organisational resistance.

In effect, one of the largest barriers to getting the most value out of Cloud and S/4HANA adoption is business and organisational change. This is evident in some of the S/4HANA adoption case studies. Customers have chosen to ‘migrate in place’ from existing ECC ERP installations to using S/4HANA on-premise, retaining existing customisations and only adopting new Fiori user interface where absolutely necessary, to minimise the impact on business users.

 

How do I get the most value from adoption?

Many organisations rack up consulting and development costs to customise the system, rather than taking the leap into a more radical change programme. Organisations are eschewing the opportunity to radically redesign processes, adopt best practices and enhance business capabilities.

Their businesses are missing out on capitalising on the latest technology including:

  • Embedded AI – automation
  • Integrated CRM
  • Cloud as a platform – for development, innovation and flexibility

The real question is, will you get more value in making the move to a new core enterprise applications platform now, or are you better to work with your current assets? If you do decide to re-implement your ERP (S/4HANA or otherwise), how do you get the most benefit and value from a wholesale redesign and radical change programme, while managing the inherent risks?

The opportunity is there if your organisation is prepared to invest in the change.

 

Take the leap

Searchlight has a broad and independent knowledge of delivering enterprise application and technology-enabled change. If you would like to understand more about and learn from our direct and deep knowledge of SAP and its products, please get in touch.

Searchlight TeamSapphireNow – Speed of implementation and business persuasion

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