My 10 takeaways from Michael Mullis's Interview on Ingevity’s SAP S/4HANA Business Transformation

For those of you who are about to embark on your S/4 HANA journey, you would probably find "An Insider Look at Ingevity’s SAP S/4HANA Business Transformation - Executive Q&A with Michael Mullis, VP of IT and CIO of Ingevity" published in SAPinsider very insightful (Link). 

I want to thank Michael Mullis for sharing his knowledge and insights. Having been on a similar journey, I want to call out a few ideas that stood out for me and add some of my lessons learned for discussion purposes.

1. SAP Landscape: If you have been on SAP for couple of decades, consider moving to the cloud to leverage new models and functionality enabled by modern technology and powerful platforms. In Ingevity's case, for example, they saw an opportunity for IBP which is a powerful technology.
2. Organize Remotely: Figure out how to implement a Global Program of this size during the Covid-19 Pandemic. S/4 HANA Transformation affects almost everyone in an organization. How do you hire, educate, prepare, and execute successfully ... all of this remotely without burnout?
3. Agile Implementation: Is your team new to Agile? This adds another layer of complexity. Be prepared for N+1 landscape, dual maintenance and a teams learning how to work in an Agile fashion. This could be a steep learning curve along with them learning S/4 HANA at the same time.
4. Operating Committee: Set up a PMO for putting together Program Governance. Assemble a dedicated project team. If you do not have a SAP CoE structure in place already, consider setting it up so they can continue supporting the application after go-live. This would ensure knowledge gained during the Transformation Program is not lost.
5. Cost of Not Transforming: Can you really afford it? In Ingevity's case, they were something like 12 versions behind where SAP currently is on ECC. This meant they could not make changes easily and could not use technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation to compete if they did not move to S/4HANA. Btw, some newer SAP modules are only available on S/4 HANA.
6. Analytics is exciting!: Archive data, clean your data where required, put in tools to control your data better with master data governance platform and tools. This will get you to a point where you can start slicing and dicing the data and doing real-time analytics. The exciting thing about the analytics is that you can integrating machine learning into your business functions and start using predictive analytics.
7. Organizational Design: Whats the best way to deliver value faster? Teams can feel they are tasked with responding to a faster world by working longer and harder, not smarter. Most organizations are in the process of moving to a Product delivery methodology using SAFe Methodology or are yet to start on this journey in the SAP world. Remember Infrastructure projects have to to be done first and planning will need to include them.
8. Outsourcing: I have worked in companies that outsourced lot of their work and in other companies which had no outsourcing. I think there is a balance there and we need to think strategically on this one. I would suggest outsourcing work that is heavy on the maintenance side. I would also look for partners who can help deploy the latest technologies and slowly bring that cutting edge knowledge in-house to help implement new business models and processes that provides a strategic advantage for the organization.
9. People make is successful: Working 100% remotely during a project is a real challenge, but it can be done. There is a huge sense of pride and accomplishment after go-live and the system is stable. The team has to maintain good dialogue and communication; and leaders have to have a regular cadence of touch points to help people understand what’s expected. Stress is a silent killer, so ensure that you have fun, connect with people and don't take yourself too seriously.
10. RISE offer from SAP: New customers would find it easier to have everything bundled in an offer so that they can get on to the Transformation Program faster. Some customers prefer SAP not managing their cloud hosting partner, so they can go to SAP to make sure their system and the applications and the functionality are working correctly and to their hyper-scaler for infrastructure as a service. My own view is that RISE has some other advantages to consider for new customers and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Please comment and leave your thoughts, I would very much like to read them. If you want to talk about how to manage your S/4 HANA Program delivery successfully, let's connect. I love to help as many people as I can as I love this topic. Best of luck on your journey and thanks for sharing/liking.