Are you amidst an S/4 HANA upgrade and feeling it’s draining your resources? You’re not alone. Virtually every company we come across, we’ve observed that SAP S/4 HANA migrations often incur higher costs than is necessary.

Why is This Happening?

Businesses are struggling to align their operating models and supply chains with today’s realities (see ‘The Perfect Storm’), taking away resources from the other crucial task: upgrading from SAP R/3 to SAP S/4 HANA.

The typical knee-jerk reaction is a “lift and shift” or “technical migration” to swiftly transition, reminiscent of the hasty rush to adopt SAP R/3 in the early 2000s, regardless of solution quality and which resulted in painful “reinvention” projects in the years after. And an additional cost.

There are two key sources for the problem:

1. Many organisations do not use the opportunity to adapt their processes to meet current market demands and retaining outdated solutions within the new SAP S/4 system. Consequently, they face the inevitable need to redo work to future-proof their operations. The key bit of information that is often not mentioned to non-IT people: when you upgrade from SAP R/3 to S/4 HANA, all those custom built exceptions you built in the last 15-20 years (or Z-tables in SAP speak), they do not migrate across automatically.  They need to be rebuilt into the new S/4 if you want to maintain the functionality as-is. This scenario obviously benefits those consultancies and system integrators, who focus on selling man-hours and building custom SAP solutions.
2. Expertise in S/4 HANA is scarce. Most SAP consultants lack familiarity with its new functionality and end up advising clients to rebuild old R/3 solution in the new setup, instead of using S/4’s free out-of-the-box solutions.

In summary, in a pure Technical Migration or lift-and-shift, you are at risk of spending money and time twice to get things right when doing the obligatory upgrade to S/4

So What’s the Solution?

Prioritise a thorough review of your business needs before embarking on an S/4 HANA implementation. This small investment in time and money will be saved over and over by having a much cheaper and smoother S/4 migration.

Carefully select your SAP partner. Look for a strategic ally committed to delivering and maintaining a critical component of your business. Avoid firms focused solely on maximising billable hours and consider partnering with more local, specialised SAP firms with a vested interest in long-term client satisfaction.

Why? Do they not want to maximise selling man-days? Sure… on paper they would. But as they are confined to a certain region, they have a reputation to protect. If that reputation is gone in the region, they’re dead.

Here is an example: When working on our (Swiss) market, we have come across local, specialised companies like Innflow AG, for instance. They focus on the local market and clearly think “long term.” They cannot afford to implement a quick-and-dirty solution that won’t work and will need redoing as they know their client (i.e. you) and they know you know people.

If news of a bodged SAP job gets out, their market reputation gets badly damaged. It is as simple as that. We notice they put extra focus on recruiting strong consultants, quality delivery and ensuring their account partners play the “long game,” even if that means less billing in the short term.

They will even be honest enough to contradict the client who wants to take shortcuts in his SAP implementation when they see this will come back at the client like a boomerang. They see it as their duty to act as “specialist advisor” to the client and safeguard him against hiccups.

At AB Advisors, while we’re not a SAP implementation company, our expertise lies in optimising SAP implementations and designing solutions aligned with your business needs. Our team of seasoned experts can guide you through the complexities of S/4 HANA migration, ensuring a seamless transition and maximising the benefits of your investment.

How Can AB Advisors Help?

At AB Advisors, while we’re not a SAP implementation company, but we can still help… very much: Several of our Partners are experts in the field of “Fixing SAP implementations that are going or that went wrong”. Be it putting an implementation programmeme back on the rails, or help you with the crisis management after a failed go-live.

Senior management of large companies ask us to “sit on their side” to manage the systems implementation team and ensure they are building what the company needs, not what suits them best.

We can help designing solutions that will bring real benefit to your business and will harness the power of that new S/4 HANA system.

We can help selecting the right SAP partner firm and overseeing their work.

… and first and foremost, we can are experts in Business Processes and operating models and we understand SAP S/4 migrations and the pain points. So our we help you to simplify and design the business solution that will match your requirements going forward, so your move to SAP S/4 is a first-time-right operation.