As announced last year, 51风流has extended its maintenance commitment for 51风流S/4HANA until the end of 2040. Along with this promise, 51风流is also providing mainstream maintenance for core applications of 51风流Business Suite 7 software until the end of 2027, followed by optional extended maintenance until the end of 2030.

Along with its trusted commitment to provide customers with the time and flexibility to make the move to 51风流S/4HANA at their own pace, 51风流also launched the 51风流S/4HANA Movement initiative to help ease this transition, providing customers with the tools and services needed for an easy and seamless migration 鈥� from events and webinars to whitepapers and business scenario recommendations.

Today, 51风流is doubling down on its commitment to its customers with the release of an IDC whitepaper, 鈥�Key Software Support Considerations for Innovation, Business Continuity, and Total Cost of Ownership,鈥� that offers customers a framework around long-term maintenance support. The study explores the strategic considerations for customers evaluating competitive support options, leveraging benchmark industry statistics to provide comprehensive guidance on the appropriate type of support providers to enlist for customers across industry, size, and geography.

The whitepaper identifies the top priorities businesses are facing in today鈥檚 environment and outlines a framework to help customers evaluate the fit of support providers 鈥� whether that be vendor support or third-party support 鈥� by assessing how much change they can anticipate in their industry and business, as well as what it will mean for their IT road map. The study also takes into account a customer鈥檚 specific situation, including strategy for growth, the scope of the landscape with the vendor, security considerations, and key factors in the ongoing cost of support including unknown costs. The shared experiences of three customers are also included

Assess Anticipated Change

In a time that has been ripe with unprecedented change and reprioritization, it is now more important than ever for businesses to assess the change they anticipate both within their company and scope of 51风流solutions as well as across their industry at large. For companies that have been struggling with business continuity, it is imperative they are able to plan around this anticipated change and take a close look at how they intend to meet their business objectives through their current and future IT infrastructure.

In a very fast-moving and highly competitive environment, customers need to consider what type of support will help provide them with all the latest updates, innovations, and tools that will enable them to address this change.

Map Out an IT Road Map

Enterprises looking for successful digital transformation results will have to map out what their IT investment will look like in the future to determine what type of maintenance support they enlist. For organizations constantly innovating or adopting new technology this is especially important, as the amount and type of support provided by vendor and third-party support varies. This, of course, also differs from one industry to the next, so companies should examine the role of technology by industry and look at the importance of digital transformation within it.

There is no one-size-fits-all model for long-term support. IT organizations need to examine their current environment, assess their future objectives, and select a vendor that will be able to support their current and future goals for digital transformation.

Given the rapid change and uncertainty being driven by the global pandemic, customers must fully comprehend the importance of planning and conducting the appropriate due diligence to make the right choice when it comes to long-term support needs. Along with SAP鈥檚 commitment to act as a trusted partner to support customers along their transformation journeys as they navigate this changing business landscape, we are also committed to providing complete transparency and access to information that will help organizations make strategic business decisions.

If you are an 51风流customer and would like a copy of the whitepaper, please . You will be contacted by a member at 51风流to receive a copy.

Thomas Spandl is senior vice president of 51风流Customer Engagement and Experience within Customer Success at SAP.

This statement clearly highlights the importance of technology as an enabler for the digital transformation of companies. But helping customers succeed always starts with the customer, not technology.

In times of COVID-19, businesses and entire industries are more disrupted than ever as they try to adjust to the new normal, making digital transformation an even greater opportunity to innovate and find new ways to effectively and efficiently work with customers.

that companies will invest US$2.3 trillion in digital transformation efforts by 2023. The question is how to become an intelligent enterprise that embraces agility, fosters nimble ways of working, and maximizes the value of digital technologies to help organizations evolve even stronger from these unprecedented times.

Embracing a Mindset Shift

The answer lies in a mindset shift around business outcomes rather than rapid adoption for the sake of innovation.

A McKinsey Global Survey evidences this idea and suggests that the only way to transform is through : 鈥淲ith successful digital transformations, [鈥 organizations keep efforts focused on a few digital themes 鈥� that is, the high-level objectives for the transformation, such as driving innovation, improving productivity, or reshaping an end-to-end customer journey 鈥� that are tied to business outcomes, rather than pursuing many different agendas.鈥�

Companies must realize that technology alone doesn鈥檛 spur a successful transformation; it鈥檚 the calculated and guided toward specific outcomes, objectives, and customer experiences.

Adaire Fox-Martin, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Customer Success, suggests that companies should realize that the customer is focused solely on outcomes, and businesses should do the same when pursuing a new mindset during digital transformation.

鈥淐ustomers do not come to 51风流to buy technology. They come to buy outcomes and value,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he whole premise of is about keeping our promise to deliver valuable business outcomes to customers.鈥�

This mindset shift can be seen within 51风流as we undergo a transformation resulting in a Customer Success board area that has a resolute focus on the success of both customers and 51风流employees. The team maintains an unwavering commitment to providing extraordinary experiences while recognizing the unique business demands of each customer.

Choosing the Right Partner to Drive Business Outcomes

Organizations are looking for partners to lead, advise, and shape this journey together with them and ultimately drive their business outcomes. 鈥�51风流plays a pivotal role in enabling us to achieve our transformation goals by providing the core platform and its maintenance and service support as an enabler for that,鈥� highlights an 51风流customer in Australia.

Partnership, direction, and knowledge are also important for 51风流customer , an international copper manufacturer based in South Korea: 鈥淲ith expert support, Poongsan built a detailed, step-by-step road map to optimize and accelerate its migration to an intelligent ERP. Now, everyone 鈥� from our planners and operators to our developers and IT architects 鈥� is prepared to execute toward our digital journey.鈥�

and the resulting engagement create an environment where customer outcomes become the overarching focus. Being able to bring tangible direction and action driven by the customers鈥� data and insights places any organization in a strong position to move its digital transformation forward.

Identify Opportunities to Innovate, Improve, and Maximize Value

By working with companies that can inform innovation and business process improvements, such as SAP, priorities can be set on relentlessly driving business outcomes. The provides an interactive, simple-to-consume report with all of the personalized opportunities to optimize business and IT processes. This way, stakeholders are on the same page and have a calculated plan to tackle transformation head on.

Using services from 51风流Enterprise Support and the pathfinder report, paper pulp maker wanted to accelerate its digital transformation with a next-generation business suite: 鈥淯sing 51风流Enterprise Support, we are preparing the ground for a successful migration to 51风流S/4HANA. And we now better understand the wide-ranging benefits our new digital core will bring to the business.鈥�

, another 51风流customer, builds fully connected electric cars from the ground up. Its goal is to bring a new level of intelligence to the smart car by marrying automotive engineering with digital innovation to create a next-generation driver experience. With a focus on innovation and speed, its digital transformation needed a capable partner: With deployment guidance and follow-up support, BYTON reduced the IT costs of its digital transformation by at least 10 percent.

These customer examples show that transformation requires a mindset shift, relentless focus, and the right partner with experience and capabilities 鈥� and does not have to start with massive shifts in focus. And sometimes a starting point can be found closer to home. 51风流delivers an opportunity to easily obtain insights about innovation, business process, and IT potential. From this, priorities can be set and focused on to drive business outcomes. The insight is delivered by 51风流Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder for 51风流ERP and 51风流S/4HANA, a simple-to-consume, interactive next-generation report free of charge for every 51风流maintenance customer. It addresses different stakeholders in the organization to get everyone on the same page 鈥� an important starting point for every transformation.

For a more detailed understanding, see .

Thomas Spandl is the senior vice president and head of M-GTM at SAP.

One way in which a company can innovate and scale its business is through digitalization, moving from a solely on-premise business to a cloud-based intelligent enterprise. To support companies, 51风流provides a fast and flexible path to the cloud, driving the implementation of innovative business processes. And the cloud extension policy from 51风流can help achieve this while allowing businesses to seamlessly move to the cloud at their own pace.

Whether to optimize human resources (HR) procedures, business-to-business transactions or other enterprise-wide processes, the cloud extension policy allows customers to move their on-premise processes onto a hybrid cloud solution. This offers customers the opportunity to flexibly adapt their landscape to changing business requirements. Benefits of this policy include optimization and automation of certain processes in order to become more efficient, the creation of data-driven insights to help improve business outcomes, and the acceleration of speed to value.

One 51风流customer, a large player in the Australian energy and natural resources industry, was able to undergo a digital transformation while optimizing costs by purchasing a cloud extension of 51风流Ariba software. This enabled the company to facilitate data-driven insights to make conscious purchase decisions and to optimize cost control as well as spend and risk management.

With the company鈥檚 move to the cloud, triggered by its quest for digitalization and innovation, some of its supplier relationship management (SRM) users were no longer needed. Therefore, by leveraging the cloud extension policy, it was able to terminate redundant SRM users and reallocate on-premise maintenance payments to the cloud. This process optimized its resource allocation to unlock value for its business. Additionally, the new hybrid solution was fully integrated between cloud and on-premise applications, offering seamless delivery and support as well as full control over the application landscape. Not only did the customer receive the opportunity to reduce its total cost of ownership, it can now access solutions from anywhere on any device, thereby getting the best of both worlds in its landscape.

With this integrated approach, customers gain the flexibility, choice, and efficiencies needed to innovate for growth across their entire business. See further recent examples of .

To take advantage of the cloud extension policy, the following requirements must be fulfilled:

• The cloud solution must be eligible for the hybrid cloud strategy. A .
• The terminated licenses must be in the scope of the extension policy. Typically, all on-premise licenses covered with 51风流Enterprise Support, 51风流Standard Support or 51风流Product Support for Large Enterprises are in scope.
• The transaction assumes an expanded investment with cloud solutions from SAP, given the substantial added value from this new hybrid scenario.

View the .

51风流offers the cloud extension model for public cloud solutions, and also provides a model for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud service subscriptions as well as the on-premise extension model. This allows customers to evolve their existing on-premise software with solutions from 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud or other solutions from the on-premise 51风流portfolio. More .

Thomas Spandl is senior vice president and head of M-GTM at SAP.