If you’re hearing the S/4 HANA hype but are not sure where to get started, Sven Denecken, SAP’s global vice president, co-innovation and strategy, SAP S/4 HANA, said it comes down to three key steps – choosing the right business process, the right decision scenarios, and the right technology platform.
Presenting a keynote at the SAP Australian User Group National Summit in Sydney this week, Denecken recommends first selecting an area where moving the business process to a real-time environment could deliver value fast. He said 90 per cent of clients tackle finance first, but this could also be because the first and most mature product in the S/4 HANA solution set was Simple Finance.
This will not be the case for long, according to Denecken, as the S/4 HANA release in Q4 will target all the other lines of business, including supply chain, R&D and engineering, sales, manufacturing, sourcing and procurement, asset management, service, sustainability, marketing and commerce, human resources and information technology. (There will be a new release of the cloud edition of S/4 HANA every quarter, and every 9-12 months for the on-premise edition.)
“Choose your area where you see an impact, and choose also the decision scenarios on what basis you think technology can help. And yes, sometimes it makes sense to take your existing system and just put it on the new platform, because faster is good enough. But there will be areas where by choosing the technology platform you are going to be able to do things differently, and that doesn’t end within your four walls,” Denecken said.
“It comes down to an architectural plan, it comes down to a roadmap … and it comes down to a technical readiness assessment.”
To assist in this process, Denecken pointed attendees towards the S/4 HANA roadmaps available on the SAP Service Marketplace to better understand the product direction and build this into decision-making.
He also said the Australia and New Zealand SAP Architect and Developer Summit, to be held in Sydney on 23-24 November, will address the topics about what current SAP customers will need to change to adopt S/4 HANA.
