How to achieve added value from your SAP migration

The migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA is an impactful process. It affects the entire organization; a new way of working may emerge and with it a completely new mindset within the organization. At the same time, a successful migration ensures the digitisation of processes to be ready for the adoption of new technologies. There is always an initial investment, but harmonising, standardising and simplifying business processes ensures that the investment ultimately adds value for the organization. 

In practice, we see that many organizations work with local, historically-evolved business processes and applications that struggle to work together. Because different branches and countries have their own working methods and corporate culture, organizations often lack a single face to the outside world. There is an international trend towards harmonisation; the 'OneCompany' idea. "At the heart of this is the standardisation and simplification of processes (internationally) with the aim of adding value and reducing the time-to-market of new products and services," says Joop van Es, partner at KPMG. "Through harmonisation, employees can collaborate more easily, and processes are more cost-efficient. Moreover, ERP systems work better and faster. This is particularly true of S/4HANA. This software is specially designed to function in a harmonised environment. Implementation of S/4HANA is thus an important driver to strive for a OneCompany profile."

Managers need accurate and timely information to make informed decisions. SAP S/4HANA offers greater scalability to better support this need. Planning, execution, analysis and generation of reports on live data can be done quickly. This allows organizations to quickly gain insight into key performance indicators and trends within the organization and make truly data-driven decisions. 

By integrating Joule – SAP's generative AI assistant – into SAP S/4HANA, major strides are being made in terms of cost savings and operational efficiency. The AI assistant helps to streamline tasks, quickly generate customised content, generate job descriptions, get programming assistance, and/or get answers to certain questions.  

Organizations migrating to SAP S/4HANA also have the opportunity to set up processes more efficiently and take on activities more intelligently. Examples include the ability to add new business acquisitions, proactively monitor assets, and remove repetitive or time-consuming tasks from employees. Routine tasks that were previously done manually can be automated, such as report generation, allowing employees to focus on more productive work. Business processes can thus become much more efficient, streamlined and therefore cost-effective.

By upgrading legacy ERP platforms to SAP S/4HANA, organizations can adapt much faster to changing market dynamics. SAP S/4HANA offers companies the latest technological developments that have the potential to help support their growth strategy. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and integrated, real-time predictive data analytics are present. Enterprise architecture management (EAM) and business process intelligence solutions accelerate transformation and, of course, it also innovates with cutting-edge technologies such as conversational user interface (CUI), predictive accounting, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Thus, as an organization, you have the right technology in place to be a resilient company that is future-proof and more easily responsive to changes in the market.

To get real added value from a SAP migration, it is important to involve the right experts who understand processes in an organization, the technology being used, and know how to implement complex technology. KPMG helps organizations with end-to-end migrations and does so by defining a clear vision and business case, setting up and validating future target operating models, as well as designing, testing and actually implementing the technical design. With proven models such as KPMG Powered Enterprise, we unburden our clients throughout the implementation or optimization. KPMG's SAP specialists help organizations transition to S/4HANA. This can ensure accelerated business transformations in the cloud, aimed at simplifying, unifying and standardising processes as well as faster and more risk-aware implementations.

Would you like to know what added value SAP S/4HANA can bring to your organization and what role our SAP specialists can play in this? Then get in touch with our specialists.

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