Challenges of integration today & in the future
You will gain some insights to the following topics:
Why a S/4 HANA project should be a business transformation
With the sunset of SAP ERP Version ECC in 2027 currently the SAP community is in uproar. The new release featured by SAP is well known as S/4HANA - on premise or cloud. During the development SAP did several things quite well: they are faced with disruptive events. set-up a design and analysis phase, and reviewed their former software-solutions. They analyzed what was good, what was less good and what could be done in a better way.
And yet the resulting product S/4HANA drives SAP customers in the same way. Cloud, social media, mobility and in-memory computing are modern technology developments that have transformed workflows, business models, and overall business strategies. Although this technology revolution is putting pressure on IT organizations, its effects go beyond IT. Investors, regulators and financiers all expect high levels of transparency into companies' financial status, pushing CEOs to adapt to change as well.?
These new technologies build up in S/4HANA unlock new opportunities, evolve business processes and can solve previously intractable challenges. Organizations can make a leap forward - but be aware of the challenge.
What happend to grown ECC systems
Todays system-landscapes are grown over years with different demands to cover. A lot of companies are nowadays understand that those investments had to be made but for future demands investments are more vulnerable. Today processes need to be standard but also flexible. Well this is also valid for processes in e.g. SAP ECC 6.0 - and as a result you find in nearly every ECC a customizations (also known as modifications): custom software changes the ERP system's inner workings fundamentally. ECC customization generally involves changing the ABAP code that drives the core system's functional behavior. But we all know problems can arise if SAP subsequently makes any changes to the software. Ok - so let's take User-Exits or business add-ins provided by SAP...
SAP provides several standard-processes in ECC and it's successor S/4HANA. But industry business practices are most certainly a starting point for specialized functionality. For example for construction companies it is necessary to use software that can accommodate processes such as purchasing, sales and invoicing, and project management. Those needs of industry specific solutions drove SAP to launch its Industry cloud program several years ago.
Nowadays SAP and third parties provide these types of specialized capabilities through Industry Cloud solutions:?software for automotive companies; engineering, construction and operations; consumer products; industrial machinery and components; professional services; retail; and utilities
Challenges of integration today
Based on our experience over the years, it is very difficult to make a business case with a high ROI solely based on technology promises. In the case of SAP S/4HANA, higher speeds and new interfaces alone are only of limited benefit to businesses.?
Mostly you get recommendations to not just take IT aspects into consideration for your own SAP S/4HANA strategy. In order to gain a strong return on investment from SAP S/4HANA, it is also recommended that you incorporate process improvements. But improvements also come with new details in technical opportunities - which than drives IT strategy.
SAP calls this strategy outcome 'The Intelligent Enterprise'. An intelligent enterprise has one topic in front - integrated business processes; an 'Integrated Enterprise'.
This integration approach breaks up the siloed IT landscapes and sets up a holistic integration of data, technology and business processes. This does speed up innovation and pushes down the effort of integration. It also gives the opportunity of real-time insights and clearly improves operations.?
Challenges in the future in integration area
Fun note from SAP Global Partner Summit a couple of years ago given by a SAP Executive Board Member: 'We want to be best of breed & best of sweet. To be best of sweet the integration of components is the key.' That said at a partner summit sums it up: integrate the partner intelligence into the SAP world.?Partnering opens up SAP solutions to a broad range of technical integration possibilities - but also to the aspect on how to best serve customers.
SAP currently offers solutions that cover the complete enterprise - giving the opportunity by adding value by e.g. hyperscaler-services: AWS, Azure, GCP etc.
This companies are well known for their disruptive innovations - but innovation is the key. Opening the world of SAP to open-standards is giving customers the oppurtunity to seamlessly integrate new technologies such as?APIs, IoT-scenarios, data-analytics - just to stay at the surface of possibilities.
For me several question arises starting by: What to use when, why and to what benefit?
领英推荐
Way to go: ISA-M
SAP provides a?methodology?to master all aforementioned challenges. It is called the 'Integration Solution Advisory Methodology (ISA-M).
It utilizes a proven methodology for cloud and hybrid landscapes, which includes integration patterns, architectural blueprints, and best practices.?The goal of ISA-M is to simplify integration and help enterprise architects to manage the complexity in their hybrid landscapes.
First you assess your integration strategy of your organization. You scope your integration domains and scope integration use case patterns (both technology-agnostic) and map those to integration technologies or services to?define your hybrid integration platform.
You might define best practices for integration scenarios by creating architecture blueprints for relevant integration use case patterns. These document the scope and the interaction of integration technologies with business applications.
Once integration best practices have been defined, they can be rolled out throughout the company and beyond (to external integration developers). By doing so, project teams can develop interfaces in an agile manner, based on a clearly defined integration strategy.
This sounds to easy but you have to consider different factors of your organizations or customer context: general IT strategy, existing investments, skillsets of your staff and also the existing and future application landscape.?
Want to get started?
Covering given topics in daily business allows me and my colleagues to offer precise guidance for your 'integration journey'. We use the SAP provided methodology and added additional value based on our experience e.g. executing the integration assessment, defining the integration strategy and for sure considering the implementation of the results. Our integration advisory journey focus strategies concerning application management too.
Source: NTT DATA Integration Advisory Journey
Your thoughts
I am quite curious about your experiences in given context. What are your lessons-learned on this subject? Where you started, what did work out properly - what doesn't?! Please feel free to get in touch with me and my colleagues to exchange some insights.
What to read next?
There will be some more content aroud S/4 HANA Transformation Integration Architecture, BTP, and Cloud Integration by my colleagues?Thorsten Düvelmeyer and?Martin Tieves. All of us would be very happy to start a conversion around these topics and discuss together what would could be a sustainable and resilient integration solution and architecture for the ERP landscape of the future!
In case you are looking for additional information, please check out our?website or get in touch.
Sources: