Decoding RISE with SAP – 5 pointers for your Go / No-Go!

RISE with SAP is more than a year old now and there’s still some opacity around. I started off writing many times but thought of waiting until I experience few RISE programs on my own and understand the merits or otherwise. In last 1 year I saw few of them. This blog of mine will not talk about what RISE offers rather focus on how to leverage those offers, from a customers’ perspective. I have identified some key value drivers for you while considering a RISE conversion. There are certainly more but we will try and tie them to the RISE offers here and gauge the value. I have written this to give you a comprehensive view and hence a bit lengthier and I did not want to split into separate blogs. Please read this at your own convenience.

For ease of understanding we will take a couple of example scenarios and do a fitment analysis of the RISE offers against each of them.

Customer-1(ABC) has implemented SAP 3 decades ago which has evolved over the years and has a highly customized and distributed ECC landscape for different geos hosted on an On-Premises data center. They have peripheral SAP/Non-SAP products and other legacy applications integrated via different middleware products.

ABC says, “My current implementation gives me just enough, then why should I look at RISE? Can I not simply look at an S/4HANA Conversion and probably move to a Hyperscaler Infra of my choice later?” ?

Customer-2(PQR) has moved to S/4HANA recently and had to go through a lot to bring in and adjust the much-needed customizations. They have a similar complex landscape which integrates with multiple SaaS and Legacy applications. They are thinking of adopting non-SAP Paas/IaaS for further extensions. They are yet to start on a journey of transformation.

PQR says, “I have moved to S/4HANA in-time. My operations are running just fine and now I plan to leverage my other cloud credits to innovate and extend out of SAP BTP. Does it make sense for me to even look at RISE at this moment?”?

Most of us know what SAP offers under the RISE program but to set the context I am adding below figure as a ready reckoner. We stay focused on the Private Cloud Edition of RISE as both our customers (in the scenarios) have very matured and complex landscape in place with quite a lot of customizations. We will discuss about Public Cloud in an upcoming blog with new scenarios.

In RISE with Private Cloud Edition (PCE), we have an S/4HANA, open for any magnitude of enhancements and modifications (not advised though) running on one of the preferred Hyperscalers bundled with many other products and solutions to augment a real business transformation. Some customers I have seen, confuse the word ‘Cloud’ with the Public Cloud edition where you cannot touch the source code however with Cloud SDK and new embedded ABAP environment, we can do a lot if not all.

Adopting RISE is a mindset change because it is just not a move rather a journey while you go from CAPEX to OPEX. That’s why I thought, we will focus on some key value drivers for adopting a RISE program and draw possible conclusions for both the customer scenarios we have considered.

1.??Get the “right-field” approach while moving to S/4HANA

Before you move to cloud there’s a bigger decision to be made if you are still running on ECC. One of the hottest discussion today for customers planning for S/4HANA is to select the right approach between Brownfield, Greenfield, or the so-called 3rd option of Hybrid. Let’s look at all 3 of them.

Brownfield: This is typically a system conversion. You migrate to a new HANA database which is a completely different structure in comparison to ECC with a renewed and highly indexed storage for quick access. And then you migrate your application with data transformations, cleansing augmented with functional adjustments and tweaking to make that data work in the S/4HANA scheme of things. Well, this is the cheapest option of all 3 but has its’ own limitations at the same time. You are not really doing any process reengineering however you can choose this if you want to go slow in adopting innovations at your pace.

Greenfield: Starting from scratch or if you want to call it reimplementation is the Greenfield approach. This involves clean S/4HANA installation with a possibility to redesign and reengineer the processes based on a future looking business. While it gives you disruptive process design options on a clean slate, it can also cost you more.

Hybrid: Some may prefer to call it, Bluefield or Selective Data Transition or a Landscape Consolidation. Many words, but in principle here you get an option to Merge or Split existing ECC instances, Migrate selected data by Org units and Configs. This may involve transferring data from one or more existing ECC instances to a new S/4HANA instance. This is an option most would prefer to take if they would like to partially go with some existing processes and do some reengineering on top of it. This option gives a lot of flexibility when customer chooses to safeguard years of investments and best practices. Below figure illustrates the same.

You might think, why I considered this as a value driver. Well, under RISE with PCE you have the liberty to choose one of the 3 options and with that you safeguard your years on investments and innovations. If you consider a Hybrid approach, you will need added support of tools and offerings for selective transition. Some of them are SAP DMLT, CBS, SNP, Datavard & Natuvion.?

Conclusion: RISE with PCE gives you the freedom to take one of the paths. For ABC, this is the starting point. Identifying the right-field approach will completely depend upon future business diversion and expansion plans of an organization and drawing a fitment in the current estate to understand gaps to cater to the future. PQR, must have chosen an approach already while they moved.

2.??Move to the Cloud wisely

A recent report from McKinsey foresees more than $1 trillion value enabled by adopting cloud by the end of this decade. This $1 trillion is less a prediction than an estimate and rather call to action.

Are we still scratching the surface here? I can tell from an experience where I had to evaluate and propose a TCO reduction while moving from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA. The biggest cost components were from the fees they paid to run their SAP systems in a local data center and the AMC for the S/W. It was really making little sense to have this annual premium just to switch-on, set aside AMS & other operational demands from the system of records.

RISE with PCE, as you know will be hosted on one of your preferred Hyperscaler where you don’t have to worry about the cloud infra, uptime and most importantly the Cloud Economics of hosting multiple SAP instances. This whole stuff is baked into the Material code RISE offers in the form of FUEs (Full Usage Equivalent). While RISE offers the infra and operations under the same contract, a customer hosting the same SAP instance/s with a Hyperscaler becomes a completely different calculation. Believe me, there’s a big TCO difference. RISE clearly wins. The RACI shown below is very high-level but good enough to understand what “One Contract & One SLA” is. There’s detailed RACI published by SAP which double-clicks into each of them, but for now this would be enough for our analysis.

Conclusion: Moving your infra to cloud is essential for bringing resiliency into business. RISE makes sense for both ABC and PQR. PQR is already on S/4HANA hence it should be a clear discussion in doing a TCO analysis for next 5-7 years comparing both the options and move. ABC needs to consider the different approaches for the move we discussed in the earlier point while PQR can look at the TCO and decide.

3.??Seize opportunities with continuous process intelligence

In my opinion, this has to be one of the best offers bundled with RISE. I admit, I did not understand this till I got my hands onto it. For an SAP customer, processes are key and when we look towards transformation; there will be changes to these which have to be meaningful and can never be one-time thing. They should be evolving and ready for change with meaningful insights and pointers from your day-to-day transactions. We are talking about the core here; we are talking about verifying the effectiveness of the business processes we have implemented.

SAP acquired Signavio and integrated the offering well into its product portfolio. The possibilities are many now. Signavio should be used by all those running SAP, doesn’t matter which version you are in. I agree, we need to become an intelligent enterprise – transforming at our choice of pace. But we must also accelerate change cycles that can lower costs, simplify adoption, make business outcomes known and prioritize them even though we want to go slow.

Signavio helps with business process insights that prescribe automation based on industry benchmarks, KPIs, and usage patterns, to enable new processes to be designed and simulated. This technology-enabled approach helps empower you to meet the needs of a dynamic marketplace, become resilient against disruption, and understand the impact of every change. More important, you gain transparency into your business reality and improvement potential while controlling your path to become an intelligent enterprise. You can apply predefined process KPIs and workflows, drill down into details based on system data, and access a 360-degree view into user interactions and efficiency across your processes. Furthermore, the impacts of continuous process transformation is getting tracked through real-time blending of actual versus modeled data and with a comprehensive visibility into your user community.

This is disruptive, isn’t it? The best part is, you can import and use the SAP Best Practices for S/4HANA On-premises & Cloud in Signavio to start with the basic process templates. No other solution gives this power. Check the high-level capabilities of Signavio in below figure.

Conclusion: Whether it is ABC or PQR, they both will have huge benefits in using Signavio as a Process Governance and Insights tool. It is a must have for continuous improvements. If the Signavio subscription under RISE does not cover all the needs, you must look for adding more.

?4.? Leverage the Business Networks to kick-start your journey into Industry Cloud ?

There’s nothing more competitive than a company that understands its customers’ needs and responds to them with internal operations seamlessly connected with suppliers, logistics partners, service groups, field operations and assets.

When you transform the supply chain into an extensive network of streamlined and systematic processes and communication, you can complement your business processes, services, and capabilities while focusing on the core competencies. Business Networks can simplify the evaluation, contracting, delivery, and services needed to deliver more complete and distinct offerings and outcome driven XAAS-based business models . In principle, Business Network can help make this possible for your company. The cloud-based business network allows you to connect and manage trading partners through a single directory, collaborate using shared data and process workflows, and adapt & improve your business with cross-network intelligence.

With Business Networks, SAP wishes to offer you a connected partner eco-system readily available to integrate into your core SAP functions.

However, I wish this portfolio grows beyond just these 3 options. The offer could be realigned to address industry pain points. It could be a bouquet of Industry Cloud solutions that customer can choose from. For example, I could look at leveraging Field Service Management integrated with AIN and Customer Service for an end-to-end Asset Maintenance and Service or may be interested in managing my fleet with Digital Vehicle Hub. This would make the offer far stronger, in my opinion.

Please note, SAP has categorized AIN and LBN as Industry Cloud solutions in the SAP Store.

Conclusion: For both ABC or PQR, if they do not have a robust procurement solution or a highly integrated and automated asset maintenance solution; this would be an incredibly good starting point in adopting Ariba and AIN. Please note that the limits given under RISE, might not be enough but worth getting you started with basic functionalities.

5.? Lay the foundation to nurture Innovations via SAP BTP

Relentless change and volatility are compelling most businesses to create and improve their enterprise intelligence and processes. But as the importance of data grows, so does the complexity of turning knowledge into action. Most believe that IT landscape complexity limits their operational agility.

SAP BTP unifies this fragmented environment of applications, devices, and processes into a single digital foundation that takes data discovery and governance, as well as business operations, to a new level.

When you turn data into action across all business areas, you can automate and innovate new ways to react, adapt, and expand quickly. For many businesses, the foundational elements necessary to support this goal are enabled by SAP BTP Extension and Integration Suites. Together, the suites aid in the custom code migration to SAP S/4HANA, integrate it with SAP and third-party applications, and extend it to optimize and stabilize the core data platform.

Adopting BTP Extension Suite to extend S/4HANA allows faster development of flexible and secure side-by-side extensions that help keep the digital core clean and reduce upgrade costs. Developers using the ABAP environment can move and build applications that function across cloud infrastructure providers and could be deployed globally. More important, the user experience offers a big list of innovative business-services accessible on desktop and mobile devices. Whereas with BTP Integration Suite, you can speed and simplify the integration of SAP S/4HANA by supporting workflows, process orchestration, process visibility, monitoring, event-driven architectures, and business rules facilitating synchronous and asynchronous scenarios, as well as KPIs for clear, concise visibility into process performance.?

Conclusion: Believe me, if either ABC or PQR have not started on BTP yet, it will be the best way to start with RISE CPEA credits and create some use cases. I have been advocating usage of SAP BTP as a central PaaS for laying the foundation of innovations and published quite a few blogs in the past. There are many other interesting blogs published by many and you will find several guided missions to kick-start your journey. However, if your plan is to extend and integrate without BTP, you certainly need to consider a relook at your architectural decisions. I agree, you will have to consider Hyperscaler services to extend your use cases and scale but let BTP do the talking to SAP and bring in the multi-cloud flavor with interoperability with the Hyperscaler services. Important Note here would be; the CPEA credits under RISE might be just good enough to start this journey. You can explore the Free-Tier as well to develop some of these missions in your landscape and transport them for productive use when you have the CPEA credits.

Apart from these 5 value drivers we discussed, there are many more interesting offers like Cloud ALM, Enable Now etc. I did not focus on them as they will not have the same size of impact. However, you should know that CALM is the new Solution Manager for you under RISE which is getting new features with every release and Enable Now is your tool for guided internal user sensitization.

This brings me to the end of my blog. Hope, I could justify the length of this post. I could double click into each of the pointers with a blog but preferred to cover in one. I tried to be as fair as possible from a customers’ perspective based on different conversations, I have had. Please bear me for TYPOs, if any.

The views are solely mine and not of my organization.