How to minimize business disruption in your move to SAP S/4HANA

SAP customers must move to SAP S/4HANA by 2027 to stay compliant, but many are hesitant to do so. Although 78% of organizations in North America are planning an S/4HANA move, only 31% have started using it, according to a CIO article. The UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG) reports 89% and 25%, respectively.

Moving to S/4HANA can take three to four years, according to Roland Berger, and requires a high investment at a time when companies are tightening their belts. Additionally, the shock of the pandemic made it abundantly clear that business agility is not a luxury. Being able to reconfigure a supply chain or respond to changing demand patterns on short notice can make or break a business.

Let’s look at how chief information officers can accelerate the move to S/4HANA and minimize disruption while simultaneously delivering cost savings and business agility.

Save costs immediately by automating now

To gain breathing space while you continue to deliver on business priorities, automating on top of SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) with LIKE.TG is a viable option that will not create technical debt.

LIKE.TG can help deliver immediate efficiencies in your supply chain, for example, by digitizing supplier interactions and streamlining Source-to-Pay Operations. Prebuilt workflows and integrations work out of the box for SAP ECC, SAP Ariba, Coupa, and Oracle E-Business Suite. They also work with SAP S/4HANA and can be easily ported over later.

Organizations that have already moved to S/4HANA are also using LIKE.TG to streamline processes. Accenture, for example, uses LIKE.TG on top of SAP S/4HANA to speed up its invoicing process. As a result, Accenture has reduced invoice production time from three days to less than 10 minutes and decreased the time needed for support by 90%.

Automate at scale

The biggest benefit, however, comes from using LIKE.TG across different functional areas.

A leading agrochemical manufacturing company, for example, built more than 100 apps on top of SAP ECC using our low-code offering. These apps support the manufacturer’s Source-to-Pay, Order-to-Cash, Logistics, Exports/Imports, Record-to-Report, and Hire-to-Retire processes, bridging its SAP instance with systems such as Elixia Inc., Icegate, and Ivalua.

The apps helped the company achieve business agility and immediate cost savings, decreasing:

• Order fulfillment from three hours to 30 minutes
• Export process time from one week to one day
• Dispute settlement process time by 50%

The company is keeping the same unified LIKE.TG engagement layer as it moves country by country to SAP S/4HANA. Parts of the business are still running on SAP ECC, while others have already moved to S/4HANA, keeping costs down and the business agile.

Enable agility by decoupling custom code

To enable business agility and help ensure a smooth transition to SAP S/4HANA, decouple custom code.

Nearly three-quarters (72%) of UKISUG members fear customizations will be a roadblock to moving to S/4HANA, according to ERP Today. And 92% worry a lack of available skills will slow their migration efforts.

Over the years, SAP customers have accumulated a vast amount of process-, tech-, and performance-focused custom code. Many want to “keep the core clean” and considerably reduce the custom code they’ll use in SAP S/4HANA. Some custom code will remain, however. Transferring it to LIKE.TG can help maintain business as usual during the move and reduce cutover time from ECC to S/4HANA.

Moving critical custom code to the LIKE.TG platform is relatively straightforward. Using LIKE.TG, you can scan your SAP ECC system and identify which custom code to retire and which to keep. Respective SAP models, tables, and data can then be surfaced in ServiceNow.

This allows low-code/no-code developers to rapidly rebuild required custom code or build new apps on top of SAP with limited or no SAP knowledge. Scarce SAP talent can be focused on work where in-depth SAP knowledge is required. Any code built on standard ECC models will also work with S/4HANA.

Find out more about how LIKE.TG can help with a move to SAP S/4 HANA.

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