All customers have their own cloud strategies. For service engineers, individualization is crucial when focusing on the customer’s success plan.
Every company is on the move to the cloud – when the timing is right. This may entail a full migration but will certainly include a partial one.
Large enterprises and corporations aiming to transform complex, heterogeneous IT landscapes that have grown over decades are particularly reliant on support. Often, they begin by standardizing and consolidating their entire infrastructure before they’re ready to embark on their digital transformation journey.
Different Routes to the Cloud
Currently, most of SAP’s biggest customers use the strategic, long-term 51·çÁ÷MaxAttention program comprising of nearly 300 engineered services. Those services cover SAP-centric strategy and road map planning, architecture reviews and design, end-to-end business process integration, and operations across solutions, product expertise, safeguarding of implementations, and much more. It is imperative for 51·çÁ÷to meet these customers wherever their starting point happens to be and to ensure that the groundwork for a successful digital transformation is in place.
Each enterprise chooses its own route. Indian mining company , for example, first had to upgrade its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to the latest version before it could go ahead with its plan to move to RISE with 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud, private edition.
“Deploying 51·çÁ÷Business Suite powered by 51·çÁ÷HANA and working with experts from 51·çÁ÷MaxAttention can help us become cloud ready and build a sustainable environment using technology and innovation,” said . “With 51·çÁ÷Integrated Delivery Framework and 51·çÁ÷ActiveAttention, we have delivered this program on time and on budget.”
Other customers begin their cloud journey by migrating some processes to a protected cloud operated by a hyperscaler and then retiring their own data center. Kurt Bauer, global head of Premium Engagements at SAP, observed that most customers with an 51·çÁ÷ERP-centric core have added public cloud solutions from 51·çÁ÷and are implementing private cloud on their way to lay out the path for a full public cloud adoption. plays a pivotal role for agile core business process extensions. Therefore, it is no surprise that a vast majority of premium engagements used by 51·çÁ÷customers are driving fast cloud adoption and hybrid operations.
Serving Today’s Customer Requirements
The prospect of innovation and greater efficiency is drawing more and more enterprises toward the cloud. Many of the largest 51·çÁ÷customers still run their core ERP business processes on an on-premise platform, often safeguarded by premium engagements.
Premium engagements service engineers frequently deal with some challenging constellations, such as 250 process steps across 40 systems, data growth of 640 GB per month, 800 million orders every year, and multiple enormous warehouses in global logistics operations. Customers with volumes and requirements on this scale think twice about which of their business-critical processes they should move to the cloud and, if so, in private or public.
“In hybrid infrastructures, too, interfaces still need to be robust, efficient, and keep data consistent – cloud technology doesn’t change that,” said Bauer. In other words, for any transformation to succeed, someone must not only take ownership of the transformation itself but must also ensure that the systems – whether they are on premise or in the cloud – function properly, are stable, and deliver the right level of performance.
It’s Not Just about Money
In Bauer’s 28 years at SAP, one thing has remained unchanged for the company: the focus on the customer, which has always been about more than chasing KPIs. “Customers reward companies that listen to them and take their suggestions on board,” ex-Board Member Gerhard Oswald said in an interview for 50 Years, a book published to mark SAP’s anniversary.
Bauer wants to see this 51·çÁ÷tradition live on in the cloud era and for 51·çÁ÷MaxAttention customers to benefit from expertise and best practice-fueled services offered as part of the 51·çÁ÷MaxAttention program they have known and trusted for the last 20 years. This 20th anniversary calls for a proper celebration and experience sharing by best-running 51·çÁ÷customers and 51·çÁ÷top executives, exchanging how to leverage 51·çÁ÷solutions and 51·çÁ÷MaxAttention for years to come.
Therefore, we would like to invite you to the 51·çÁ÷MaxAttention Summit in Munich, Germany, from March 19-21. Take advantage of this opportunity to network and engage in discussions with peer customers, gain knowledge from 51·çÁ÷specialists, and listen to 51·çÁ÷leaders, such as Member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE Scott Russell and Thomas Saueressig, as they reveal insights of 51·çÁ÷technologies and innovations jointly with customers’ experiences. Be a part of shaping the future by building a resilient network of intelligent and sustainable enterprises.
Eleonore Gossart is senior marketing manager for Customer Success Services at SAP.
