HOW HPE GETS YOU PREPARED FOR SAP S/4HANA
Cloud capability and real-time analysis of all processes in a company are becoming increasingly important in the age of digitalization. The new SAP S/4HANA ERP suite combines both, which enables CEOs, CTOs, IT managers and department managers to gain insights into the organization and the relevant data from anywhere. Information on how to succeed and profit from SAP S/4HANA is briefly summarized in the underlying article and can be also found in the exclusive HPE whitepaper.
This article is addressed to:
- Large companies, which want to speed up their processes and start new business models.
- CIOs that want to renew the existing SAP landscape in the sense of digital transformation.
- CEOs who want to have real-time insights into all processes in order to react quickly to changes.
With the idea of offering compressed air as a service, Kaeser compressors from Coburg, Germany, became a major talking point. HPE provided the tools for this digital transformation by migrating SAP Business Suite to several HP AppSystems for SAP HANA. This is because the real-time data analysis supports several million measurements per day in the compressed air systems supplied by Kaeser worldwide.
Application examples like this have made Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) one of the top technology and service providers in Germany in the SAP HANA Vendor Benchmark 2017 and in the S/4HANA ranking of the Experton Group. This is also the result of more than 30 years of SAP partnership with today more than 9,500 specialists in the field.
The migration of the existing environment into the new S/4HANA solution represents a major technological challenge for organizations of all types, according to a PAC study. HPE accompanies companies from the profitability analysis through the conception to implementation and last adjustments for a successful S/4HANA transformation.
This shows an infographic and a HPE whitepaper with the following title: “Should my organization join the rush to S/4HANA? What is the business value of being an early adopter?”.
How your company benefits from the digitalization and the deployment of SAP S/4HANA, you can read in the current white paper from Hewlett Packard Enterprise!
Download now for free!
Advantages and benefits of the new ERP suite
SAP sees the new “digital core product” in S/4HANA. In contrast to the SAP HANA in-memory database platform alone, the new ERP suite is used to interlink the digital processes of all business areas and to integrate the business networks.
Thus the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 come into play. In addition, SAP S/4HANA can also be used in the form of SaaS (software as a service) and other cloud scenarios or on-premise with its own means of transport.
As an application scenario for the new Business Suite S/4HANA, SAP mentions Finance, Business and Financial Planning, “Segment of One” with an individual customer view, Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Logistics and the Automotive Industry. In the mentioned whitepaper, HPE demonstrates additional benefits such as new supply chains and network models, and more flexibility through cloud services.
HPE offers S/4HANA both as an on-premise and cloud solution. As the two SAP specialists Rob Fletcher and Jörg Tischler explained in a PAC interview, the migration of the existing environment into the new S/4HANA solution is the biggest technological hurdle because of the simultaneous adaptation of different interfaces, applications and linked environments .
The SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) could be very useful in solving the problems, but it is not the only supported cloud platform. Cloud customers in Germany are served through the HPE data centers. The On-Premise installations include the Global Delivery Centers in Manila and India.
A worthwhile journey
S/4HANA is built on the SAP HANA in-memory platform and is a valuable basis for the digitization and acceleration of business processes with the support of solutions such as Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), real-time analysis and mobility.
Despite the growing interest in S/4HANA, many German companies see the PAC study as having a hard to estimate cost and associated costs.
Finally, the migration also requires organizational rethinking, whereby the management should also be involved. HPE has developed a so-called SHAPE methodology.
This is a four-step roadmap, which starts with the business processes and with the advice (Advise), in order to take the company’s customers on the journey.
How your company benefits from the digitalization and the deployment of SAP S/4HANA, you can read in the current Whitepaper from Hewlett Packard Enterprise!
Download now for free!
The ‘SHAPE’ roadmap in four steps:
Advise is the advisory phase, in which the advantages and the roadmap are determined. According to Tischler and Fletcher, most companies are still at this stage. HPE and SAP work closely with the respective teams at the company’s customers.
Transform is the “transformation phase”, in which important adjustments are made to speed up the journey with a view to added value. This includes the deployment of a hybrid cloud and the secure migration of S/4HANA to HPE Helion, an OpenStack architecture for various cloud environments.
Manage is the phase in which the last adjustment screws for the application lifecycle management (ALM) and the operation of the solution are rotated and the transfer of the S/4HANA system into the running operation takes place.
Optimise is the final phase of optimizing processes and applications such as Big Data, as well as optimizing automations for app and cloud operations, to provide business users with lasting value.
Implementation – why and how?
According to HPE, 85% of respondents see the need for transformation towards a digital management. S/4HANA promises 30 to 40 percent lower implementation times and overall TCO costs. Since more support arrangements are available for older SAP products from 2025 on, it seems advisable to switch all SAP projects as soon as possible.
After all, 38 percent of German companies surveyed by PAC have already done this or are planning to do so in the next two to four years. For early adopters in Germany, the acceleration of processes and data analysis and the modernization of SAP landscape are at the top of the list, according to the results of the PAC survey.
Whether and how the migration takes place is up to the company itself. For example, a gradual changeover to S/4HANA Finance can have advantages and disadvantages. These can go as far as the HPE whitepaper so that the migration becomes difficult later and the complete digital transformation is delayed for an unnecessarily long time.
For this reason, HPE considers the entire SAP system landscape of a customer as a whole, in order to advise a long-term favorable transformation strategy.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA, please refer to the free Whitepaper “Should my organization join the rush to S/4HANA? What is the business value of being an early adopter?”.
Source title: iStock via Evernine
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