SAP Transformation – It’s not like it was in our day!!

Well it wasn’t a shock. SAP pushed out the maintenance window for S/4 and for ERP and there have been many blogs and comments posted as to why that might be.

Since the announcement, here, I’ve taken the last month to discuss this with ex-colleagues to get their views on what this means and what will be the impact across the market. As you’d expect there are mixed feelings ranging from no change to any number of different variations of change.

Over the last few years I’ve seen a direction of travel in the IT market that now seems unavoidable from an SAP perspective and a recent exchange of views with colleague and UK market barometer, David Lowson, appears to confirm this.

Back in the day when Dave and I were working in a fledgling SAP market where R/3 and ERP was driving considerable value as it integrated disparate part of global organisations we started out by providing implementation and support from a single team. In those days the simplicity of both the software and the services meant that was feasible. As the market developed then the typical division of labour happened and separate teams were created that focused on either supporting or changing the application. In this way the whole SAP market developed to satisfy customer requirements.

Since those days a lot has changed, no more so than customer requirements.

As IT, in general, becomes more complex the risk is that it becomes harder to extract value because firstly you need to understand it before you can decide how to use it. Mark Benioff changed the way that customers perceive IT through the creation of the SaaS where the underlying complexity of software delivery & support is removed by providing software all wrapped up as an easy to buy service.

SAP is now at the SaaS party which is very positive for it’s customers because it’s applications can now satisfy these requirements but it’s constrained by a legacy of success in that to get customers to the nirvana of S/4HANA it must help them to evolve from where they are now.

And this is where Dave and I are back on the same page again. To help SAP customers, many of which we know and have worked with over the years, to continue to extract value from their SAP investments the separation of support and change must be diminished.

We’re now in the digital age and so the expectation is that change can happen at a pace that is unconstrained. Also, as change happens it should not negatively impact the current business processes as they stand. This expectation is not only restricted to “digital” platforms but is across the enterprise and it’s something we know SAP can support if your working with the right partner.

Continuous evolution is something I’ve talked about before and it’s now something that SAP are facilitating by extending their maintenance windows. The need for a big transformation is lessened and the opportunity to take proper steps to transform incrementally is available.

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