As times change and technology advances, the challenges of enterprise resource planning (ERP) become more prominent and intricate.
Current headaches that enterprises are looking to relieve include lack of system integration; inability to adjust to the rapidly changing business environment; complexity of business transformation; change management, data conversion, and migration; and the total cost of ownership (TCO).
The technology that drives ERP must be flexible, provide advanced analysis immediately, and make decision making easier. However, the biggest challenge in transformation for many organizations is not how to apply the technology but how to redesign and innovate business processes to use that technology to uncover further hidden value. Today’s software landscape is complex, and organizations need a clear and simple path toward deployment. SAP keeps this in mind as it continues to accelerate the transition to the cloud and focus on expanding its core business with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is SAP’s solution for deep business issues, helping organizations by redesigning processes and leveraging data as the driving force for automation and decision making, while also helping to ensure that software can integrate effortlessly with third-party applications. Let’s take a deeper dive into SAP S/4HANA Cloud and its technology and capabilities that will help enterprises thrive.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Technology and Capabilities
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, a wide range of functionalities based on innovative technologies is made available, which can help companies with complex processes and system landscapes. This provides them with the opportunity to transform at their own pace as they move to the cloud.
One reason businesses have turned to cloud-based ERP is the high degree of standardization. This standardization is a precondition for automation but also can challenge a business to adapt existing processes and flows. SAP S/4HANA Cloud uses standardization to improve efficiency and quality. Highly automated processes reduce errors, redundancies, and variances, setting companies up for operational success. Standardization and multitenancy mean that switching to the cloud reduces the TCO.
Standardization may deliver fast time to value, but it’s not sufficient on its own. To differentiate business processes, extensibility is needed, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud comes with extensibility capabilities on two different levels. First, SAP provides measures to adapt the user interface (UI) and SAP S/4HANA Cloud applications via in-app extensibility. Second, it’s also possible to implement differentiating capabilities on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), the platform that hosts the intelligent enterprise and is closely integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
The underlying foundation for SAP’s cloud applications is SAP BTP, where process models, data models, business services, and application programming interfaces (APIs) come together. SAP BTP allows the extension of SAP applications and gives organizations the flexibility they need, while keeping core solutions “clean” for future upgrades. By implementing capabilities on SAP BTP, an organization can stay agile. With extensibility with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, companies no longer need to choose between innovation and standardization; they can move forward with both while safeguarding necessary flexibility.
With SAP BTP’s embedded analytics and real-time reporting capabilities, the technical foundation of the intelligent enterprise allows for an ecosystem of organizational and partner integration. This can be done with SAP and third-party applications, with data across hybrid landscapes, to extend and create innovative business processes.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud enables the intelligent enterprise as an intelligent ERP solution in the cloud that helps organizations become resilient, sustainable, best-run enterprises tapping into complete, innovative, and flexible capabilities.
SAP built this comprehensive, intelligent ERP by further extending the capabilities of existing cloud solutions using intelligent technologies (such as machine learning and AI) and by improving integration of existing systems with net-new capabilities in the cloud. SAP’s “cloud-first” approach ensures that new innovations can be made available for private clouds or for on-premise installations as well.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud can support organizations regardless of their positioning in their digital transformation journey. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the solution all companies can benefit from, enabling both business transition and business transformation. It also offers solutions best suited for their needs; whether these are standardization, quick implementation time, or embedded intelligence, SAP S/4HANA Cloud can help enterprises mitigate existing issues and perform better.
Contact us to learn how DYCSI can help you with the implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in your organization so you can start your digital transformation journey.