A (C)loud & Compelling Case for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud

2021 has been a spectacular year in our relentless efforts at moving both our existing (installed base) and net new customers to the cloud. RISE with SAP, launched early this year to simplify and expedite this move, has been successful. ?For those that are looking for a world-class SaaS ERP solution, we offer S/4HANA Cloud - variously known as S/4HANA Public Cloud or S/4HANA Cloud Multi-tenant Edition (MTE) or S/4HANA Cloud Essentials Edition or simply as S/4HANA Cloud – as one of our RISE offerings. Please check out my LinkedIn post from earlier this year for a ‘RISE in a nutshell’ perspective: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/rise-shine-sap-anurag-barua/?trackingId=m6QwBpIyIqPXY2M9XwG8%2Fw%3D%3D

The S/4HANA Cloud is a relatively new application and started its journey about 6 years ago. It’s scope and capabilities have expanded rapidly, especially in the last couple of years, commensurate with the investment SAP has been making. We have also witnessed a corresponding uptick in customer adoption rate. ?Meanwhile, it has garnered favorable ratings from independent research organizations: IDC & Forrester recently placed S/4HANA Cloud in the Market Leader category & Gartner placed it in the magic quadrant in the category of cloud core financial management suites for midsize, large, and global enterprises. And though all of this is exciting, we are expecting 2022 to be the BIGGEST year yet for the S/4HANA Cloud. We are ramping up significantly in every success factor we can influence, if not control, and we will be laser focused in meeting the aggressive targets we have set for ourselves.

I hope I have piqued your interest in learning more about this product/application. So, let me get straight to the point and answer the question that’s likely on your mind: why should I care? To answer this question, I’ll highlight & explain its value propositions. I have placed them in three categories – strategic, operational, and technical.

Strategic

o??Speed & agility – Our S/4HANA Cloud solution is nimble & agile. Our customers receive the latest developments, enhancements, & innovations on a frequent, almost continuous basis – starting 2022, these will be made available every month. ?This is a significant acceleration of our already impressive quarterly innovation cycles. Customers do not need to wait for an upgrade – as a subscriber, functionality is available for productive usage as soon as we release them.

o??Scalability – As you might expect from a world-class SaaS application, its elasticity meets your organizations needs for scaling up or down to meet your business needs. It is therefore a platform that fully supports mergers & acquisitions (M&As) as well as divestitures and spin-offs.

o??Platform for innovation – An executive of a mid-size enterprise that is currently deploying the S/4HANA Cloud recently pointed out to me that she is investing in a platform, not a product. She is spot on! It is not merely an ERP application in the cloud but a platform that helps organizations achieve business process excellence, continuously innovate & enables entry into new markets.

o??Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – The application requires zero infrastructure investment, has a relatively short ‘implementation’ timeline (typically months versus years), & minimal operational maintenance & support. Consequently, you benefit from this Capex-light model & overall, from a low TCO.

o??Risk minimization – A versatile platform that can be established in a clean manner, is scalable and flexible, can be implemented with low effort and requires limited maintenance, demonstrates value in a faster and regular manner & has a low TCO overall, minimizes the overall risk to your organization & puts your squarely on the path to success.

Operational

o??Standardization – S/4HANA Cloud provides enterprises with an almost unique opportunity to impart operational discipline & utilize industry-standard best practices. A mantra that you will regularly hear us chant is ‘fit-to-standard’.

o??Comprehensive coverage – S/4HANA Cloud combines the vertical with the horizontal, and the global with the local. It supports all major functional/business areas and across 20 industry verticals (as of this time). ?It currently supports local business processes in 43 countries as well as 23 languages. These numbers will continue to grow.

o??Deeper real-time insights – The ability to obtain actionable insights from your data is embedded into business functions enabled by S/4HANA Cloud. This enables you to make informed decisions on the fly that enable you to stay ahead of your competition and proactive plan for & execute operational issues.

o??User experience – We provide an engaging user experience – SAP Fiori - that is consistent across all devices and platforms. It is this ‘stickiness’ that will bring return users and help you gain new users. The metric that most contributes to the success of any transformation program is user adoption. Our UX is designed to maximize user adoption.

o??Low maintenance – S/4HANA Cloud is designed to be a low-maintenance application, as befits a cloud/SaaS product. To make this low-maintenance effort systematic & self-sufficient we provide a tool called Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) that assists in activities such as content activation, project planning, on-boarding etc.

Technical

o??Flexibility & extensibility – S/4HANA Cloud is a highly flexible application in that it can integrate efficiently with your existing applications & systems (SAP & non-SAP and on-premise, cloud & hybrid). It is also enables you to extend its packaged content with both low-code & no-code options to address your specific business needs. Both capabilities are largely enabled by our robust Business Technology Platform (BTP).

o??Intelligence & automation – You can automate & operate smarter by utilizing the embedded intelligence that S/4HANA Cloud provides. These include the ability to transact key business processes via chatbots, Robotics Process Automation (RPA) that does certain mundane & repetitive tasks for you, proactive notifications & handling of deviations, exceptions etc., and superior decision-making support via Machine Learning (ML).

o??Security – The S/4HANA Cloud is a highly secure solution. Security & compliance are deeply embedded in its DNA. It is backed by secure operations & architecture, stringent data privacy & protection standards, adherence to nearly all global security and compliance standards, and a multitude of industry-standard security certifications.

In conclusion, the S/4HANA Cloud provides you – the customer or potential customer - a versatile, scalable, extensible, agile, secure, low-cost, low-maintenance, innovation-centric solution and platform for transforming into a highly efficient, nimble, business process-optimized, and data-driven organization. Above all, at a time when Covid-19 continues to throw curve balls at us with its myriad mutations, the ability to embark on a business transformation journey in a disruption-minimized, value-optimized, & risk-mitigated manner backed by SAP’s comprehensive support, makes the S/4HANA Cloud a compelling proposition.