The right dialog between business and IT is key to the success of SAP S/4HANA

The possibilities offered by SAP S/4HANA are more extensive than before. Optimal implementation therefore requires fundamental choices. These important choices cannot be made without the knowledge, experience and extensive involvement of both business and IT.

Such a migration offers the perfect opportunity to carefully consider whether you, as an organization, opt for a technical migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, or you take the opportunity to harmonize processes and eliminate unnecessary complexity.

Sooner or later, organizations will have to deal with the question of how to make the transition from ECC to S/4HANA; the new ERP generation. SAP ECC support is ending in 2027, making a transition inevitable and setting a deadline for migration. The answer to this question will vary between two extremes: either a strict technical conversion, or a complete (greenfield) business transformation. Which will your organization choose? The answer to this question is closely linked to key drivers. Do your current business processes support your long-term strategy? Are process harmonization and landscape consolidations important motives? Can standard processes be adapted or do previous customizations need to be retained?

KPMG’s approach to finding the best solution with you focuses on the quality of the communication between business and IT, because dialog is the only way to arrive at the best solution. Fortunately, the times when IT fully conformed to the wishes of businesses or completely ignored them is over. Today, IT and business need to join forces and together look at how they can move forward and use technology as a real business enabler.

S/4HANA’s ERP technology has built-in possibilities for the harmonization and standardization of processes, in combination with process digitalization. This puts an end to the unnecessary complexity of many SAP landscapes. These processes are the building blocks for increasing the agility and effectiveness of an organization: an objective that is high on the agenda of every large enterprise.

The necessary transition to S/4HANA is therefore the perfect reason to take the dialog between IT and business to a higher level. KPMG helps to create and guide that dialog. On the one hand, as an external party that independently brings together internal knowledge and skills, so that you can determine how S/4HANA can be valuable to your company. On the other hand, as an experienced expert in both ERP implementations and business transformations. We do this together with your organization.

We always work with our Powered Enterprise approach, in which we run through different phases of the transformation. In particular, the Powered Enterprise Vision phase is important as a starting point to map out the balance between business and IT. This is where we deal with questions such as "Which processes can be harmonized?" and "Where are the bottlenecks?" We do this based on a very large collection of best practices for virtually every conceivable process, which allows us to draw on countless successful customer experiences. Powered revolves around the optimal mix between custom and standard processes, making it a perfect match for the new, and special technical capabilities that characterize S/4HANA.

What is the best way for your organization to use S/4HANA, the new digital heart of your company? We would like to tackle this issue together with you by combining the perspectives and input of IT and business.

Want to know more details of our approach? If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help.