Take a Deep Dive on Simple Logistics with SAP S/4HANA

Simple Logistics is one of the most profound offerings from the house of SAP and has various facets to its product attributes. Given below is a list of everything that you experience as a potential customer, or an employee in SAP implementing organization would need to know in order to achieve success in the workplace:

The Business value of SAP S/4HANA for customers, the payback period, and who is likely to benefit most

SAP S/4HANA has been written natively for the SAP HANA platform. And this is a brand new generation of Business Suite which is marked by highly enhanced efficiency, various simplifications and features that are compelling such as simulation and planning options in several traditional transactions.

The main value addition here is that it moves beyond mere data recording towards real time decision support based on data from external and internal sources.

Time taken for a SAP S/4HANA Implementation

Even though implementation times will vary widely with the enterprise and its current host of SAP products, empirical data based on reliable sources have estimated migration time at six months. This is said to be a great timeline for migration to a new platform. This is assuming an average size for the enterprise and similar nominal conditions for the SAP products.

Longer implementations will obviously invite exponentially larger timelines. For example in greenfield project implementation, the enterprise will go in for a complete overhaul of their ERP landscape including IT infrastructure. Brownfield implementation refers to the adoption of new technology while utilizing the existing IT landscape. And migrating to SAP S/4HANA is only a single part of such a project.

SAP programs to simplify the move to SAP S/4HANA

There is comprehensive support for customers in this regard, with SAP Rapid Deployment solutions enabling accelerated migration to SAP HANA platform. Pre-defined implementation packages are also offered by SAP or by SAP partners to facilitate fixed-price implementation for enterprises on a fixed budget.

Experience expected from potential integration partners

Integration and service partners tend to have a wide-spanning experience in implementation of SAP Business Suite for customers. A statistic as of 2015 has revealed that over 60% of implementations have been carried out by partners and not by SAP itself.

 Skillsets required by the implementation partners

Customers are in most cases assisted by their implementation partners who handle their project, so that the customers will not be burdened by the finer details of the implementation itself.

Possibility of migrating according to company-specific customizations

It is possible in principle to migrate according to company specs, with the product being what is called “Backwards compatible.” The customer will be able to keep their original customizations and continue to use the same even after migration. But this has certain nuances that have to be looked into, since it is not a universally portable solution.

Requirements for moving to SAP S/4HANA

The first step is to move to SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA, the next step would be to implement required packages which include the needed simplifications.

System-driven implementation

SAP S/4HANA implementation focuses on radical simplification for faster ROI and overall success. This is even more relevant in a post Cloud world where customers look to deploy pre-configured systems. Hence, system driven implementations are offered by SAP which lead to ready-to-run business processes based founded on best practices which can be activated. Here, in such activation, the system will configure itself. The SAP S/4HANA Guided Configuration facilitates customers to personalize the processes delivered by SAP.

The new data model

SAP looks to reduce the size of and simplify underling data structures as in-memory databases work best with wide tables. But conventionally a financial document was stored in one or two tables with aggregates and indexes needed to map the different views of the document. In the new architecture, these aggregates and indexes have been rendered obsolete.

 Conclusion

Simple Logistics is a detailed product offering from SAP that needs attention from enterprises of all sizes across the world. Enterprises looking to catch up t SAP products in the current market should consider it for all round Business success.