Why you should consider migrating to SAP S/4HANA
The case for moving off an older SAP system, and the four things that actually change when you do.
For more than forty years the ERP software marketplace has been dominated by SAP, and rightly so. Their solutions have streamlined business operations across the board, and when S/4HANA launched in February 2015 it was hailed by many as one of the biggest product introductions in the company’s history.
If you are considering migrating from your current system, there are a number of advantages that will usually outweigh the background work needed to make the switch.
HANA
The explanation for a lot of the excitement is in the name. HANA refers to the integral data store, a considerable leap forward from the methods used by SAP products in the past. All storage operations are carried out in memory, and data is kept in a column-based structure, which makes writing and retrieval far quicker. Even though each individual activity may only save a few seconds compared with a previous SAP solution, adding up those savings across a business means it runs far more efficiently over the longer term.
Deployment options
The keyword for S/4HANA deployment is flexibility. It can operate in an organisation’s own data centre, on a third-party platform such as AWS, IBM or Microsoft Azure, or in SAP’s own private Enterprise Cloud environment.
The solution is scalable, which means a cloud-based implementation gives your business the opportunity to increase processing power in line with growth. Future expansion is faster and more cost-effective, which makes migration a reasonably future-proof decision.
Processing power
Another benefit of HANA is that satellite applications can run in the same instance, greatly reducing the load on the system. The solution is designed to keep both application data and the database within the same layer, which further improves operating efficiency. Many companies who migrate do so because they need to work with data updated in real time, and it handles large and evolving incoming streams of information well.
Machine learning for automation
In September 2017 the 1709 update introduced a range of machine learning capabilities designed to help companies introduce elements of automation, and these have improved with every subsequent release. Machine learning features analyse a company’s data operations to identify opportunities for automation, leaving employees free to concentrate on more important work.
It is worth remembering that S/4HANA is not just for existing customers of previous SAP products. It was built to compete against the other big ERP packages on the market. One of the highest-profile platform changes came in 2015 when Airbus switched from Oracle, and reported an improvement in data load processing and reporting soon afterwards.
Thinking about a migration? We will give you a straight answer on whether it is worth the disruption for your business.