When the going gets tough, it is always a good idea to stay cool and move forward strategically. Many 51风流customers agree as they navigate the crisis triggered by the pandemic. Every hour of a business day, somewhere in the world, a company goes live with , supported remotely by 51风流and 51风流partners.
鈥淲丑别苍 COVID-19 and the lockdowns took the headlines, we at 51风流naturally gave it a lot of thought,鈥� says Uwe Grigoleit, senior vice president and general manager for 51风流S/4HANA. 鈥淗ow would our customers cope with it? What would that mean for ongoing implementation projects with 51风流S/4HANA?鈥�
It did not take long for the answers to arrive. Projects would continue as planned almost without exception. Decision-makers from a wide range of companies and industries have recognized that they not only have to react quickly to the crisis and its consequences, but also must build resilience and potential for the future.
Unleash Possibilities Quickly
In this unprecedented situation, many organizations need to reorganize critical processes and map them digitally. It has become apparent that legacy enterprise management systems can be more of a burden than a help. There is a lack of necessary financial and operational transparency to safely adjust to the new normal.
鈥淢any companies have realized that they now need to focus all the more on their core business and strengthening their resilience, instead of spending valuable time and resources on managing IT systems and running their own data centers,鈥� Grigoleit says.
51风流and its partners are well prepared for this. Every implementation project and go-live of 51风流solutions can be supported and executed remotely. It therefore came as no surprise that 75 percent of all 51风流S/4HANA Cloud customers that had planned to go live in the second quarter of 2020 went live. Currently, there is one go-live of an 51风流customer with 51风流S/4HANA every hour of every business day.
More Resilience and Innovation Through the Cloud
While the on-premise edition of 51风流S/4HANA is functionally very comprehensive and modular, the cloud solution is more straightforward. This can be a big advantage, especially if time is of the essence. Standardization allows companies to more efficiently establish end-to-end processes based on best practices. This way, 51风流S/4HANA Cloud provides value faster and offers superior flexibility, scalability, and agility compared to traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This results in more resilience and capability for innovation.
In financial terms, too, moving to the cloud solution offers major advantages. Traditional, in-house models for data centers require a huge investment 鈥� capital expenses or CAPEX 鈥� in equipment, software, and a workforce to run and maintain everything. 51风流S/4HANA Cloud switches IT spending to a pay-as-you-go model. From an accounting point of view, this means that only operating expenses (OPEX) arise. These expenses, unlike CAPEX, do not have to be depreciated or amortized over their useful life, but can be directly deducted in the relevant tax year. Less CAPEX also means that companies have more budget available for other important business investments.
Combining the Best of Both Worlds
Depending on individual business requirements or strategic vendor relationships, existing 51风流customers can choose between public and private cloud or hybrid models with 51风流S/4HANA. 51风流can serve hybrid, or two-tier, ERP scenarios from one common code base and one single semantic model. This allows 51风流customers to set new strategic priorities and to move individual capabilities to the cloud quickly while other areas of the business remain on premise.
From the user’s perspective, the transition to a hybrid model is hardly noticeable. Unified user interfaces (UI) help ensure that the user experience remains consistent when switching between cloud and on-premise systems. They can find their way around immediately and work productively because, for example, the capabilities for analytics and reports look and function the same.
To support companies in their decision to become intelligent enterprises with decisively more resilience, agility, and responsiveness, 51风流offers custom-made , which create perspectives and inspiration for process optimization and innovation. Proven best practices of 51风流customers illustrate what can be achieved with 51风流S/4HANA, namely making companies more resilient and fit for the future.
Oliver Schoenborn is interim head of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Product Marketing.
