Still confused about S/4 HANA ?

Most IT / Business relationships are strained - partly because IT sees itself as separate from the business and the business sees itself as separate from IT.

But let’s be clear - IT is a department of the business. It is part of the business, not separate from it. So to truly anchor an ERP roadmap and business case you need to short circuit this chasm and rebuild rapport.

If you think you already have decent rapport, great. But most people don’t - they've just convinced themselves that they have.

So try this.

Record interviews and transcribe them.

Use an independent 3rd party (a shameless plug for what we do) to interview your key execs and discuss how future ERP solutions must support the business strategy.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING A 3RD PARTY..?

• The traditional business vs IT emotion is removed and Execs speak more freely.

• A different tone can be set with Execs in terms of strategic business alignment - which is crucial at the outset of business change.
• This step allows you to build a narrative for your ERP roadmap - which then provides the scaffolding for your business case.
• And, it enables you to play back the roadmap in language that resonates with your key stakeholders.

Most SAP customers we speak to have opted for the Business Scenario Recommendation report (v2.0 even) that SAP provides.

And why not? It’s free, right?

Sure, it will tell you which parts of SAP you use today. It will also do some rudimentary benchmarking of your KPIs to convince you of the business benefits you could realise by moving to S/4HANA.

But they’re generally generalisations. They don’t take into account the nuances of your business and don’t really provide an apples vs. apples comparison.

We’ve been asked a number of times to review BSR outputs by SAP customers and we generally concur with the customer's view that the report lacks credibility and authority.

WHERE SAP'S BSR TOOL RUNS OUT OF RUNWAY

What’s worse, is that the BSR fails on two important points.

• It fails to tell you which areas of ECC are being removed as part of the S/4HANA migration. Small things like Payroll for example.
• It over-fascinates what you use in ECC today at the expense of where else you might use given the chance to look under-the-hood

Some of your business case will be in the white-space areas of SAP that you don’t currently use.

In addition, the Business Process Framework analysis can also enable...

• Portfolio Shape Analysis which maps Competitive Advantage of business processes to Customization if your ERP solutions to drive Architectural decision making.

• Mapping business processes to potential RPA (Robotic Process Automation) opportunities.

• Identifying each processes suitability for Shared Service Centre delivery.

• Mapping processes to the Toyota 7 Wastes framework to identify cost reduction opportunities.

AND DON'T FORGET TEST AUTOMATION FOR S/4HANA.

If you spend too much time testing (or not enough). If your SAP releases have historically taken months to push live due to test defects or waiting on UAT. Or, if you constantly find SAP issues in production after making changes. Then you ought to look at Test Automation for SAP.

Your move to S/4HANA is the ideal time to clear the decks and move into the 21st century. A Business Process Catalogue provides the perfect basis for Test Automation because, once your processes are correctly categorised, you have your automation hit list. Focus on the processes that matter most first (remember Pareto?) - start small but focus on value.

Start with a get-fit programme to automate your ECC processes with a plan to accelerate your S/4HANA move - and validate business process results through automation along the way

If you already have a standard list of business processes, this can form the basis of your Process Framework.

However, we advise you standardise on APQC.

Not only is it the most comprehensive open-sourced business process framework available, but there are some other key benefits of using APQC as a foundation.

• APQC have 20 process models including a core model and 19 industry variants.
• APQC invests time and effort updating their process model as new business models evolve - and are diligent with their version control.
• APQC publishes over 2,500 KPIs linked to their process model - providing a ready-made framework for your S/4HANA business case and analytics design.
• APQC provides reliable benchmarking data for a large proportion of processes and KPIs indexed back to their catalogue.

DO APQC & SAP PLAY NICELY..?

Although not common knowledge, in 2020, SAP are standardizing their Reference Architecture on the APQC process framework - meaning that all future product releases will map seamlessly into your Process Framework.

So, by building a detailed Process Framework linked back to APQC you bake in best-practices and future SAP solution referencability whilst also accelerating the time it takes to reconstitute your business process model.

Given that statistic (validated at a number of live Resulting research events with ECC customers) - is it any wonder that you find it so hard to build a business case for S/4HANA?

First, you need to understand what’s new, what’s changed and what’s been completely removed from S/4HANA.

You need to do this alongside your Business Process Catalogue - so that you can identify what’s new in the areas that matter most.

Which existing challenges (workarounds, usability issues, complex areas listed in your Business Process Framework) will S/4 functionality resolve for you?

Crucially, what functionality is being taken away? You’ll need to find alternative solutions for these things before you move to S/4HANA.

The big gotchas are Payroll and SRM. But the devil is in the details - with hundreds of minor ECC transactions and features now obsolete.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT IN S/4HANA...?

What functionality is being changed significantly? You’ll need to plan for training, comms and maybe change management for these things.

How have data objects changed? And what does this mean for reports, interfaces, forms and downstream analytics?

You and your team need to immerse yourselves in these details as this provides the jigsaw pieces.

Most importantly, by spending time reviewing what’s new and different in this way, you’ll stumble on functionality that ticks off big strategic thrusts or solves big business pain points.

A reminder - the K in KPI stands for Key.

Traditionally, IT business cases and benefits are not tracked and measured. Similarly, business intelligence and analytics platforms fail to deliver the required output.

Through the AQPC aligned Process Framework analysis and FusionGraph curation, we are able to tap into APQC’s 2,500 KPIs to identify the levers that matter most to your business.

You should take measurements before and after. If you’re evaluating process mining using Celonis or Spotlight from SAP, this is a great team to get serious about KPIs and benefits tracking.

If you do invest in taking measurements, why not also benchmark your existing performance against your peers using APQC benchmarks now. This will serve as a business case baseline.

The I in KPIs stands for Indicators. These are the things that indicate performance changes. You’ll want to feed these into your solution design for analytics and your future data model for ERP.