In most cases, this question is best answered by assessing which risk companies are willing to accept. On the one hand, few entities have the time, money, resources, and appetite for disruption to fully reset their foundational system. However, the inability to manage and prioritize changes effectively can dictate the pace and extent at which a business can keep up with market dynamics, workplace expectations, and customer demands.

According to��, principal of Enterprise Applications Consulting, balancing these risks comes down to realizing that the notion of a “single, unique path to digital transformation is a vast oversimplification.”

In fact, there are many different ways companies can set their own pace for transformation – one of which being intelligent ERP in a private cloud.

Maximizing the Most Wanted Benefits of Intelligent ERP

When choosing a private cloud over a public or hybrid cloud environment, organizations often look to fully transition their ERP data, processes, and user experiences to the cloud while maintaining existing industry functionality. Yet they also expect to accomplish these goals in a fashion that optimizes performance, lowers costs, and simplifies work with intelligent capabilities such as predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and process automation.

We offer this intelligent ERP option through , launched as part of the����offering. Our customers can take advantage of a subscription pricing model for 51����S/4HANA and cloud services and a combination of fit-to-standard architecture and extension capabilities for fast-paced, continuous innovation and digital advancement. Plus, they can adopt the intelligent capabilities they desire at their pace and on their terms.

One key benefit that draws most companies to the cloud is the opportunity to scale their ERP and applications to meet business needs and adopt the latest innovations when needed. To help ensure they implement capabilities that complement their core competencies and resolve their challenges well, some 51����customers prefer the assistance of personalized support, expert-led services, proven methodologies, and intuitive tools.

Our portfolio of����provides this level of guidance that our customers seek. The offering aids the creation of a comprehensive use case that answers critical concerns such as potential cost savings, impacts of existing operations and technologies, and potential for future innovation. Plus, it enables decision-makers to map issues and opportunities to functionalities and identify and access suitable extension solutions.

Setting the Foundation for Bold Digital Transformation

Our portfolio of premium engagements is constantly evolving to amplify our customers’ unique value, from the front office to the back office. This is the case whether a business runs a 24×7 global operation or a local plant of 200 employees. The engagements are designed to scale to specific needs with customized and predefined configurations.

Furthermore, it is remarkable to see our customers’ confidence grow after realizing their ERP is modern and intelligent enough to meet their needs and deliver outcomes successfully. This side benefit is particularly meaningful to organizations positioning their business for growth and expansion.

For example, our customers are increasingly supporting bold strategies with the intelligent infrastructure of 51����S/4HANA Cloud, private edition. With little appetite for wasting time and resources, organizations rely on expert services from SAP, our partners, or both early on, so they can have their projects safeguarded with fewer risks and more predictive costs. We help identify technical gaps early on, explore potential solutions, accelerate the implementation of chosen technologies, and safeguard the project with reduced risk.

Expert guidance on the best-fit technical architecture allows our customers to�� validate the required architecture of their hybrid system landscape. Processes are also assessed for viability and function before the private edition of 51����S/4HANA Cloud goes live to avoid performance gaps and establish best practices. Existing custom codes are also examined for operational necessity and redesigned, if needed, to prevent operational bottlenecks. With the Business Technology Platform we keep the core clean and avoid information silos.

��Fulfilling the Promise of Intelligent ERP

Ultimately, scalability, flexibility, reach, and cost economy draw technology decision-makers to the private cloud when moving to intelligent ERP. And rightfully so – when these benefits are combined, organizations can adapt to rapidly evolving markets.

At SAP, we believe a complete transformation experience is critical to acquiring this competitive advantage while driving the most value from existing and new digital investments. This link between the private edition of 51����S/4HANA Cloud and our portfolio of premium engagements is tremendously beneficial for our customers. While gaining the necessary infrastructure and capabilities, they have the insights and support to capture the full potential of intelligent ERP.

Whether you choose a conversion or clean-slate approach to your implementation of 51����S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, the portfolio of premium engagements from 51����can help. Find out all the details in our “” and “” information sheets.

Christian Zitron is global vice president of 51����Customer Success.

Far from a catchphrase, the concept helps organizations break through the paralysis of unanticipated change. This framework advocates for the use of an organized backbone of data knowledge, digital skills and services, and intelligent technologies to actively resolve business challenges, pivot operations, and respond intelligently to disruptive situations.

Many 51����customers rely on the����to quickly restructure and ramp up new approaches to innovate products, services, and experiences that their customers and employees require. The value maps fuel these changes by providing the clarity to choose and set up a best-fit digital foundation with prescriptive guidance, interactive learning, social collaboration, and access to 51����experts and industry peers throughout the application lifecycle.

Whether enabling the Intelligent Enterprise or unlocking its power, the value maps help customers adopt and run 51����offerings, including 51����S/4HANA, 51����Analytics, 51����Customer Experience, and 51����SuccessFactors solutions. Additionally, the value maps provide guidance for topics such as application lifecycle management, security, data volume management, business process improvement, or digital innovation – which are all foundational elements.

Adapting and Thriving with a Best-Match Intelligent ERP

Moving from a legacy IT system to the modern ERP capabilities of�� is a critical part of securing the foundation to become an intelligent enterprise. The future-ready ERP comes with built-in intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, advanced analytics, and a modern user experience.

More importantly, 51����S/4HANA can be deployed and used with flexibility and control. Our customers can choose one of three deployment options:

• Private cloud: Benefit from a subscription-based, cloud implementation that safeguards pre-existing investments in legacy ERP customizations, configurations, and partner add-ons.�� into a pure software-as-a-service (SaaS) landscape is supported by software, support, technical managed services, and infrastructure made available through one point of contact with one set of service-level agreement terms.
• Public cloud: Reimagine business processes and take advantage of standardized best practices without converting legacy ERP processes and configurations. This complete, modern, and native SaaS ERP solution provides the fastest path to innovation and the lowest total cost of ownership.
• On premise: Gain complete control and ownership of your applications and data landscape to manage unique, customer-specific needs that cannot be addressed in the cloud. Organizations can leverage existing IT departments, infrastructure, budget, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) vendor agreements while remaining compliant with industry- and country-specific regulations.

Moving Closer to Becoming an Intelligent Enterprise

With the assistance of the 51����Enterprise Support value maps, our customers can determine the deployment option and transformation path that best fit their needs, so they can orchestrate their move with confidence. More importantly, they can adopt and run scenarios with guided enablement – ranging from lifecycle management and extensibility to data security and analytics – to help secure the changes needed to achieve the expected transformation.

The value maps empower our customers to control their transformation, with 51����S/4HANA at the center. We provide knowledge transfer, analysis and recommendations, and guidance, including:

• Comparison of each edition:��Determine which edition can support a transformation that benefits the organization the most.
• Content on transition options: Explore possible transition paths, such as new implementation, system conversion, or selective data transition.
• Readiness checks and planning:��Get guidance on planning and preparation activities for moving to 51����S/4HANA, then define a straightforward process of structured and solution-specific practices to adopt and extend new and differentiating capabilities.
• Continuous quality check services:��Provide an expert analysis of the customer landscape and deliver best practice improvement recommendations to help ensure a smooth go-live and rapid user adoption.
• Insight on extending value: Explore the benefits of 51����Fiori apps, embedded analytics, and other innovation possibilities to get the most benefit from the deployment of 51����S/4HANA.

Accessing the Core Essentials for a Self-Paced Transformation Journey

The outcomes that our customers are achieving are proof of the power of choice, guided learning, and expertise during an ERP migration experience. Some businesses through expert training and support services to uphold a vision of brand excellence and trusted consumer experiences. Other organizations to minimize risk and help ensure an efficient transition without disrupting operations. And many more companies and optimize their database to prepare for a smooth move to the cloud.

Remember, there isn’t one right way to becoming an intelligent enterprise. But the 51����Enterprise Support value maps for 51����S/4HANA, 51����S/4HANA Cloud, and 51����S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, could undoubtedly make your path clearer by helping you ensure your success in adopting and running an intelligent ERP.

Stay in the conversation by following 51����Services and Support on
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Ami Patel is global program lead for 51����Enterprise Support Value Maps at SAP.

Most businesses depend on an agile environment to run their operations on a global scale. In most cases, a complex landscape of highly customized, configurable applications manages everything from forecast planning and material management to production. Meanwhile, cost control remains elusive because financial management capabilities are outside the scope of their legacy ERP system.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. According to Guido Schlief, senior vice president and head of Services in Middle and Eastern Europe at SAP, our team of services and support experts regularly encounter organizations that rely on self-managed, on-premise solutions. “Whether or not they have an internal IT department or self-managed technology infrastructure, they all reach a point where the desire for usability improvements and digital innovation signals a shift to the cloud,” he observes.

51����S/4HANA Cloud is increasingly the ERP software of choice for 51����customers looking to resolve such a dilemma. Regarded as a starting point for next-generation process optimization and digital innovation, organizations are reaping the benefits of an integrated system of accelerators, cloud data, and infrastructure services delivered through 51����Business Technology Platform.

Implementing Core Business Requirements

During the initial phase of adopting 51����S/4HANA Cloud, most 51����customers want to implement every capability that enables them to build the technology assets they need at the moment. This goal is achieved by setting up production orders and routing rules through solution design and configuration, typically taking less than two months.

Once all stakeholders are satisfied with the workflows, processes, best practices, and automation that the intelligent cloud-based ERP supports, the rollout process begins – first with a pilot, then a sequential global go-live in three steps. Customers can have 51����S/4HANA Cloud up and running throughout their business within less than six months.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the implementation experience is the ability of 51����services and support experts to deliver critical customer expectations, specifically:

• Fast implementation executed with significant ease
• Innovation that replaces individual, non-integrated tools such as spreadsheets, e-mails, and siloed collaboration applications

By releasing customers from overly customized solutions rarely compatible with future digital innovation, 51����S/4HANA Cloud helps evolve existing business processes and enable the adoption of new ones by following 51����best practices. 51����experts also further support stabilization measures, including training users on 51����standards, gathering user feedback to improve user experiences, and establishing a communication platform for stakeholder buy-in.

Extending the Full Value of 51����S/4HANA Cloud Company-Wide

After setting an agile digital foundation and establishing core business processes and innovation assets, organizations should consider extending the cloud ERP to close process gaps often prevalent in legacy integrations. This next adoption phase improves the user experience and global adoption of nonstandard functionalities and process automation.

Generally speaking, cloud technology – including 51����S/4HANA Cloud – may seem limited with respect to customization and enhancements. But with 51����Business Technology Platform, customers can integrate ERP with 51����and third-party solutions and develop their own intelligent applications. Furthermore, workflow management and intelligent robotic process automation could be added to their solution architecture.

By following this path to digital innovation with 51����S/4HANA Cloud, organizations can facilitate critical capabilities such as:

• Reporting and monitoring of the innovation build process
• Cross-department work and simplify routing
• On-premise purchase and asset management capabilities

When extending 51����S/4HANA Cloud, there are many aspects to consider. While on-top solutions or functionalities require customer-managed maintenance, a wide range of integration options are available. Plus, a regular release cycle of upgrades and new capabilities takes advantage of the inherent nature of rapid implementation and innovation in the cloud.

Resources to Run an Enhanced, Agile Business

Cloud is the solution for bringing businesses and IT to the next level in their digital innovation journey. 51����S/4HANA Cloud is our response to that opportunity.

With access to the right data models, platform, and services and support, 51����customers can enhance and integrate their IT ecosystem without disruption. But most importantly, they have the foundation they need to drive meaningful global change now and for years to come.

Accelerate your digital transformation journey with 51����S/4HANA Cloud, essential edition. Learn more about .

Stay in the conversation by following the 51����Services and Support offerings on
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Matthias Uhrig is a principal business consultant for Business Transformation Services in the Consumer Product Goods and Retail Industries at SAP.

Thinking about the technical and business challenges that executives face every day, two conclusions come to mind. First and foremost, ERP systems are fundamental platforms for digital transformation. And secondly, modernizing the technology to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving market dynamics is a time-consuming, complex, and sustaining commitment.

When companies are prepared to move their legacy processes to our intelligent ERP, , a wide variety of challenges inevitably arise. All organizations may not share the same goals. Shifting from a fully flexible model to one rooted in standardization may lead to confusion about the ability to adapt and modify the technology as needed. Complex discussions on integration, extensibility, data migration and management, regulatory compliance, and the cloud provider’s role may fall to the wayside among some business leaders.

The offering enables our customers to productively overcome these challenges with targeted recommendations for optimizing and maximizing the value of their investment in 51����S/4HANA Cloud. The offering helps customers fully adopt the cloud mindset necessary for deployment and rapidly plan ongoing adoption of capabilities that bring specific value to their line-of-business priorities and align with their overall business goals.

Trusted Guide to Agility and Intelligence

By aligning expectations for 51����S/4HANA Cloud with desired business outcomes early in the life cycle, our customers can map their transition to the cloud and understand the importance of standardization with some adaptation of existing processes.

But this standardization should also be liberating. This foundational concept simplifies support for operational processes and focuses the implementation on the capabilities and functions that truly differentiate our customers from their competitors. The initial phase of 51����Preferred Success allows our customers to fully understand how the modern ERP model fills existing gaps and continues to scale at the same pace that organizational change happens.

More importantly, our customers can further build out their digital strategy by considering new capabilities and tools available that they didn’t know existed. For example, live virtual events and expert-led sessions give insight into a range of intelligent technologies embedded in 51����S/4HANA Cloud, including robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). This targeted content uncovers the connection between what 51����S/4HANA Cloud provides and what can be achieved as their ultimate vision.

Although these experiences with 51����Preferred Success are early in the overall implementation of 51����S/4HANA Cloud, the information provided can be an eye-opener that impacts the entire digital transformation journey for years to come. Executives are better prepared to lead their workforce through every change along the path to go-live while knowing how to minimize costs and risk and focusing on value.

Unlike some offerings, 51����Preferred Success stays engaged with 51����customers throughout the life of their deployment of 51����S/4HANA Cloud. Dedicated customer success managers help steer organizations through quarterly updates, determining which new capabilities are needed to further their digital strategy and address unique business needs. They recommend the capabilities that customers should consider enhancing or adopting and assist in the creation and completion of a minimally disruptive plan to implement relevant innovations. Adoption planning sessions are offered to dive into these new ideas, weigh their viability, and choose the best options to deliver a better technology or process experience.

Continuous Support for Scaled Digital Transformation

Many businesses are digitally transforming themselves with impressive speed. However, speed alone is not the key to a successful digital transformation. What’s needed is an agile and intelligent foundation that unlocks their true potential – whether navigating economic uncertainty, exploring new business models, ramping up toward a recovery, or paving the way to growth.

While change doesn’t come without risks, 51����Preferred Success helps prepare 51����customers to navigate them all – with the agility and intelligence of 51����S/4HANA Cloud.

For more real-life insights on 51����Preferred Success, read the rest of the series, “Heading to the Cloud with 51����Preferred Success” and discover how your entire company can accelerate cloud adoption and business outcomes with insight-driven, prescriptive, and personalized guidance and support.

Chris Lewis is global director and product manager for 51����Preferred Success, 51����S/4HANA Cloud at SAP.

Delivering clean water to billions across the globe is no easy feat. According to the , 700 million people worldwide could be displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030. De Nora is on the front lines of these environmental problems, developing and distributing mission-critical water treatment technologies to fight water scarcity. De Nora also provides solutions that support a shift from fossil fuels to the hydrogen economy, or the use of hydrogen as low-carbon energy.

Enabling the technology to build and deliver these solutions is something that happens quietly behind the scenes with complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which track every transaction. These ERP systems are often many years or even decades old. Replacing old ERP with a new system is a major project, especially for a global enterprise. Add a global pandemic and the challenge is multiplied.

Bianca Madotta and Monique Pietropaoli, IT project leaders from Milan-based De Nora Group, have done it.

They led a massive global ERP implementation of 51����S/4HANA for De Nora Water Technologies, which will enable predictive, proactive maintenance to customers and enable them to focus on what matters: clean water.

Founded in 1923, De Nora is a pioneer in electrochemical technology and the world’s largest manufacturer of insoluble electrodes for almost every electrochemical process. De Nora continues its leadership by pressing forward with a multi-year digital transformation that began in 2013 when the company implemented 51����ERP with the goal of harmonizing business processes. De Nora experienced significant growth in 2015, driven by a series of acquisitions to consolidate its water treatment technologies business, which then led to the need to consolidate ERP onto 51����S/4HANA.

Pietropaoli, Project Management Professional and 51����Business Manager for De Nora Water Technologies, explained how the company managed such a large project: “We used a phased approach, with the first being the upgrade of the existing businesses onto 51����S/4HANA, followed by a full configuration and implementation in three U.S. locations.”

While the 51����S/4HANA upgrade was fully completed in Italy for the Corporate and the Electrode Technologies companies around the world, the U.S. phase for De Nora Water Technologies began in Texas and Pennsylvania locations. The team included 36 in the U.S., 20 in Milan, and 20 more from partner Capgemini. De Nora originally planned to have a team from Italy on the ground in the U.S. as they approached their go-live date in April 2020, but the pandemic prevented this. With the project already underway, Pietropaoli and Madotta recommended pushing forward with the team working remotely.

As Madotta, corporate head of Demand Management and Business Applications, explained, “COVID-19 exploded while we were approaching our training and test phase, which we planned to do on-site with the users. We considered postponing the go-live date, but considering the impacts on all the other upcoming activities and the frustration this would cause, we stuck to our plan — a challenge that was considered doable given the good preparation and the dedication of the whole team.”

Pietropaoli admits there was concern about the schedule falling behind. “I was very concerned about training and the large amount of knowledge transfer that needed to take place for our key users to be ready. We knew that a lot of time would be lost working remotely. Everything was at the mercy of connection issues, late arrivals, and audio or video difficulties. So we completely changed the approach. We brought in a third-party online training system to provide a predefined, standard 51����S/4HANA curriculum. We doubled the training time provided by our consultant, Capgemini, and recorded all training sessions so everyone had 24/7 access.”

With the remote execution plan underway, both leaders faced another set of challenges: juggling home and work life and the seven-hour time-zone difference. “Working longer than eight hours per day is quite normal for our technology team, especially during the final stages of a project, but usually those activities are carried out onsite and do not affect families. Working in this way is not easy for children and spouses,” Madotta shared.

“Meetings were always entertaining because everyone was dealing with the same home situation,” Pietropaoli added. “I would be on calls and hear family in the background and babies crying. My husband and children were very supportive and often brought meals to me.”

Despite all the challenges they faced, Madotta and Pietropaoli led their teams to a successful go-live with no time lost from their original timeline. De Nora Water Technologies CEO Mirka Wilderer stated, “Even when faced with a global pandemic that sent everyone home and forced major changes to our execution plans, everyone demonstrated resilience and we were able to surge through to success. This truly showcases the ability of the team to rise to the challenge and drive innovative approaches to solve problems.”

De Nora will continue its phased implementation plan across the remaining Water Technologies companies and geographies armed with the lessons learned from this phase of the project. Madotta explained that this will change how they approach training in the future. “Good training for De Nora end users is not a mere technical user manual, but must also include a deep explanation of best practices and procedures.”

With nine De Nora companies now using 51����S/4HANA, the company is seeing some early benefits, including helping eliminate the manual effort required to reconcile the financials between business units every month. This has accelerated closings by reducing the steps required by a third.

“Implementing 51����S/4HANA during these extraordinarily difficult times required everyone to step up,” Wilderer said. “And thanks to the fantastic efforts of the entire team involved, we are already streamlining operations and improving customer outcomes.”

“W���� COVID-19 and the lockdowns took the headlines, we at 51����naturally gave it a lot of thought,” says Uwe Grigoleit, senior vice president and general manager for 51����S/4HANA. “How would our customers cope with it? What would that mean for ongoing implementation projects with 51����S/4HANA?”

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.

“Many 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,” Grigoleit says.

51����and its partners are well prepared for this. Every implementation project and go-live of 51����solutions can be supported and executed remotely. It therefore came as no surprise that 75 percent of all 51����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����customer with 51����S/4HANA every hour of every business day.

More Resilience and Innovation Through the Cloud

While the on-premise edition of 51����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����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 – capital expenses or CAPEX – in equipment, software, and a workforce to run and maintain everything. 51����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����customers can choose between public and private cloud or hybrid models with 51����S/4HANA. 51����can serve hybrid, or two-tier, ERP scenarios from one common code base and one single semantic model. This allows 51����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����offers custom-made , which create perspectives and inspiration for process optimization and innovation. Proven best practices of 51����customers illustrate what can be achieved with 51����S/4HANA, namely making companies more resilient and fit for the future.

Oliver Schoenborn is interim head of 51����S/4HANA Cloud Product Marketing.

Intelligent enterprise resource planning (), such as 51����S/4HANA, is ready for the challenge.

The current economic and societal turbulence has unquestionably affected us all. But we have faced similar economic challenges before, ��even though, in technology terms, it happened almost an eternity ago. So much as changed since the Great Recession of 2007.

Any best practice, cost-alignment strategy, or technology used to navigate uncertainty back then are no match for today’s challenges. The workforce is dynamically adjusting to a new world of ��remote work, life-balance changes, new income models, activism, and rising pressure to run sustainable and responsible operations. Meanwhile, traditional requirements still need to be addressed, including keeping costs low and efficiency high, which may seem counterproductive.

How can companies transform in ways that fulfill today’s social expectations and drive the speed and agility to handle economic uncertainty without adding risk? According to��, the answer is turning to intelligent digital tools and advanced analytics – such as those found in intelligent ERP – to bolster productivity and boost growth.

Evolving the Mindset on Digital Transformation

For a long time, companies have implemented various technologies to increase their speed and agility by focusing on one or more of the following:

• Internally focused ERP capabilities for financial operations
• Point applications that serve specific functions, such as customer resource management (CRM) and human resources (HR)
• Business intelligence tools
• Custom solutions designed to enable unique industry and regional processes
• Business networks to manage procurement processes and contingency labor
• EDI and connectivity engines
• Support of multiple databases
• System of spreadsheet, email, and productivity technologies
• Security processes and software

These elements have served businesses well. However, the world has changed dramatically since 2007, and a fragmented architecture cannot provide the speed, agility, and tight and seamless integration needed to remain competitive today. A multi-vendor road map and ongoing maintenance upkeep, testing, and integration can create a series of system delays and inconsistent capabilities that make the application landscape rigid, fragile, and high risk.

Competitive differentiation happens only when the technology framework supports continuous innovation, always-on availability, and consistent processes across internal and external systems and provides the intelligence and insight to seize opportunities. While this goal may appear lofty, businesses can acquire the demanding depth of digital capabilities across a wide variety of disciplines, working together harmoniously.

Delivering a Much-Needed Edge with Intelligent ERP

Intelligent ERP solutions such as are designed to provide a holistic approach to unite the entire system infrastructure with integrity, innovation, integrated data, and security. Organizations benefit from a simplified architecture, end-to-end processes, and industry and business model innovation — all enabled by seamless, out-of-the-box integration and a built-in intelligence platform.

The seamless and consistent experience of intelligent ERP gives a harmonized, 360-degree view of the business and its customers. Users benefit from instant insights and a range of automated planning, forecasting, and simulation capabilities. Real-time analytics are embedded along every step of the decision-making process. Leveraging advancements such as predictive and artificial intelligence within an in-memory database provides decision-makers with the means to respond and adapt flexibly to evolving organizational needs.

The more decision-makers rely on intelligent ERP, the greater the need and urgency for data security and integrity. But a business intelligence chain is only as strong as its weakest link. By focusing on points of integration and making them consistent and part of the ongoing road map, companies can help ensure the integrity of their current system landscape as well as future evolution.

For example, 51����S/4HANA runs on the 51����HANA in-memory database. It is a complete ERP and equipped to extend integrated cloud solutions and out-of-the-box integrations, which unlocks the enterprise’s intelligent IT backbone. Analytics capabilities immediately pull real-time insights from Big Data, tapping into embedded machine learning and artificial intelligence. Then, with process automation, that knowledge becomes action across the value chain. Furthermore, deployment in the cloud provides the secure setup and operations needed to manage tasks, a consistent business model architecture, and central identity provisioning and authentication.

Building Resilience by Redefining Intelligence and Transformation

Companies that evolve and value business intelligence are often well-positioned to emerge stronger from any degree of economic uncertainty. They are the ones that rely on a highly connected intelligent ERP — especially 51����S/4HANA — to extend coveted digital capabilities beyond the enterprise and enable a competitive edge with speed and agility.

By delivering competitive differentiation through the system integrity of intelligent ERP, organizations can help ensure every point of integration is no longer limited to the technical exchange of data. The entire enterprise landscape can share a single source of information and consistent user experience that matches the way people work, harmonizing every resource serving employees, customers, and supporting network operations.

Discover how can help you build secure and maintain a system platform that strengthens a company’s resilience to navigate turbulent times and plan for whatever comes next. Read “,” from the Harvard Business Review and explore intelligent ERP solutions, including .

David Sweetman is senior director of Cloud Global Marketing at SAP.

According to��, combining core competence with financial levers such as balance sheet optimization is the key to building resilience in preparation for the recession or recovery.

Gaining this competitive edge requires intelligent insights that come from technology framework with integrity. By deeply integrating systems and common data, businesses can leverage the speed and agility of in-memory tools to unlock hidden patterns and perspectives. This capability allows businesses to shore up operations, retain customer intimacy, develop dynamic supply chain agility, and manage resources in a more synchronized manner.

Finding Resilience in Real-Time ERP Data and Intelligent Connectedness

While legacy systems may still automate different parts of business operations, they still cannot provide real-time insights needed to overcome excess inventory or offer in-the-moment customer service. All too often, decisions are based on historical transactional models that are less than customer-centric and too rigid to entertain out-of-the-box thinking to adapt and orchestrate across the enterprise.

As soon as the company moves to intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP), a platform for recovery, growth, and resilience comes to life. Realizing this power is tremendously welcome in this age of uncertainty. But first, executives must select and implement an ERP solution that delivers quantifiable benefits enterprise-wide – from customer service, sales, and inventory to the management of working capital and the cost of material, labor, and overhead.

Consider . The size of its impact is less about company size and industry and more related to instituting a comprehensive and unified IT system that all employees can adopt and understand intuitively. It ties external and third-party processes directly with internal processes and data structures – consistently and flexibly enough to make intelligent insights quickly accessible, visible, and actionable.��

With greater visibility, deep forecasting tools, and real-time insights across internal and external partners, businesses can drastically decrease, for instance, their inventory costs and improve their inventory turnover rate by more than . But this is not a one-time reduction; it is ongoing and extended to lower overhead spend in transport, warehousing, handling, obsolescence, insurance, taxes, damage, and shrinkage. Even in times of lower interest rates, companies can cut their carrying costs.

Other benefits of using 51����S/4HANA to optimize the balance sheet include:

1. High-performance operations
Capabilities of intelligent ERP solutions enable businesses to manufacture and purchase the products or services they need and deliver them when and where required. And it is achieved with the agility to adjust operational plans and practices to meet customer expectations.

The predictive capabilities of 51����S/4HANA can help evolve material requirements planning quickly with real-time data. They take the guesswork out of managing internal business operations and minimizing work-in-process and finished-product inventories optimally and accurately.

2. Enhanced supplier network collaboration
Improved procurement practices often lead to better vendor negotiations, resulting in cost reductions and higher efficiency of input raw material purchases. Tight vendor integration and collaboration elevate the business’s ability to schedule changes, negotiate, and deepen quality assurance with greater ease and impact on the customer’s last-mile experience.

51����S/4HANA can assist in the identification and elimination of bottlenecks in supply chain processes and respond to demand changes. Operational managers use this insight to adjust product quantities and delivery times, allowing their vendors to meet their obligations better with visibility into consumer requirements and pass any resulting savings to the sale price.

3. Labor optimization
With higher predictability and orchestration, fewer shortages and interruptions arise. These outcomes allow more predictable management of resources; better quality and training; less time spent on rush orders, expedited rework, and employee overtime; and fewer stress-induced expectation mismatches.

With 51����S/4HANA, businesses gain greater visibility into changing priorities. They can automate their communications with customers and vendors and accurately promise delivery dates, which are critical for building customer loyalty.

4. Well-governed finance operations
With greater automation in the delivery and receipt experience and well-negotiated customer and vendor contracts, organizations can optimize their financial strength in ways that increase working capital.

51����S/4HANA sets a foundation to automate collection and cash management with machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). In return, the number of days of outstanding receivables can decrease and billing times can shrink by more than , while limiting fraud and providing additional available cash. Plus, automated three-way matching accelerates supplier discounting, cash planning, and financial forecasting to optimize capital on hand.

5. Consistent and profitable customer service and sales
By understanding customers with the assistance of experiential and operational data, companies can run business models that are targeted and differentiated. For example, pricing models that match customer needs creatively may support vendor-managed inventory, usage-based billing, unique product configurations, and other longer-term integration strategies.

By tightly tying customer needs to sales and production, 51����S/4HANA empowers businesses to offer more predictable and differentiated customer service that increases sales revenue and brand loyalty. Improvements in customer relationship management result in on-time delivery as promised. Returns and rework are also avoided, no matter how unique the product.

Emerging Stronger With an Optimized Balance Sheet

Economically speaking, CFOs are reaching a point where their priorities go beyond finance. In addition to managing cash flow, days sales outstanding, receivables, and payables to optimize cash flow, they guide organizational efforts to improve business processes and intelligence company-wide. More importantly, their balance sheets and income statements reveal new strategies for overcoming today’s uncertain landscape.

This approach to finance leadership puts businesses in a better position to differentiate themselves and boost market penetration organically, while reducing accounts receivables and inventory, optimizing inventory material and labor, and growing sales volume. And the more resilient companies become with 51����S/4HANA, the better their financial position – stock prices rise, profits increase, and revenue is more predictable.

Discover how 51����S/4HANA can help build a balance sheet that strengthens a company’s resilience to navigate turbulent times and plan for whatever comes next. Read “” from the Harvard Business Review, and .

As businesses undertake rapid change, executives must also pay attention and act on a wide variety of risks to remain resilient and steadfast. Effective short- and midterm steps are often created to navigate financial, operational, and competitive threats with control, visibility, and oversight. But they also require the presence of people to oversee it all.

Is it possible to have too much human intervention, even in processes where governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) are non-negotiable? By adopting��, businesses are answering this question as they redefine their GRC initiatives.

Finding Agility in Risk Mitigation Across Three Lines of Defense

Today’s pandemic-induced economic turbulence brings challenges beyond the traditional line of simple financial and IT risk. Credit is deteriorating and raising solvency issues. Meanwhile, bilateral trade tensions are escalating worldwide and job insecurity is inhibiting a recovery in consumer spending.

Mitigating such a wide range of risks requires comprehensive GRC programs. Doing so allows businesses to identify risks and handle them across multiple topics and lines of business. GRC programs must also be agile enough to quickly generate critical insights and reports in real time and include inherent qualities such as usability, scalability, and flexibility to act on that intelligence.

But here is the secret to delivering such a transformational result: addressing the three lines of defense.

• Operational management: Cover business functions that own the responsibility of managing operations and are accountable for directly assessing, controlling, and mitigating risks.
• Corporate risk and compliance: Enable areas that monitor and facilitate the implementation of effective risk management practices and assist risk owners in the adequate reporting of risk-related information up and down the organization.
• Independent assurance: Take care of organizations that provide independent assurance beyond the internal audit, encompassing all elements of the risk management framework – from risk identification, assessment, and response to the communication of risk-related information. This exercise also includes an honest evaluation of the strategy, ethics, operations, reporting, and compliance.

Automating Critical Processes with Digital Platforms

For many 51����customers, aligning GRC processes to strategic priorities enables a level of agility that covers three lines of defense through intelligent automation, better assurance, and higher visibility. This trend is helping businesses move beyond manual, sample-based audits and assessments of systems and processes that occur every few months or annually.

Automation enables continuous monitoring of processes and data in real time and across in-scope processes and transactions, for example:

• Monitoring key risk indicators that exceed pre-established thresholds
• Recognizing risks in new or existing business relationships or partnerships
• Flagging potentially fraudulent or unusual financial transactions
• Notifying process owners of changes to crucial configuration settings that control vital business processes such as robotic process automation
• Prioritizing essential areas of access risk, particularly when managing a remote workforce
• Reporting the status of cross-border shipments that qualify for preferential duty treatment or require specific licensing
• Normalizing and communicating potential security events at the application layer
• Reporting on data protection and privacy requirements and processes

According to McKinsey partners Kevin Laczkowski and Mihir Mysore, companies that are successfully overcoming recessionary conditions have the digital tools to bolster productivity and position themselves for future growth. “Some companies are already using advanced analytics to reduce the risk of quality issues and error rates,” they observed in their����article. “Other businesses are using digital platforms to enable self-service options for customers and simplify the purchasing process.”

But first, two critical obstacles need to be conquered to set the stage for this level of digitalization across GRC activities:

• Outdated information maintained in individual spreadsheets and stored in random silos
• Lack of transparency when validating the effectiveness of operational performance, controls, and key performance indicators

By tapping into the intelligent infrastructure of 51����S/4HANA, customers can capture, process, and analyze transactional and experiential data in real time. Integrating safety process controls, rules, and mechanisms in the suite also helps ensure requirements are fulfilled, while authorized access to information is safeguarded and secure.

Furthermore, related organizations – such as procurement, human resources (HR), sales, marketing, services, and supply chain – can be included in the process. The business can assign scenario-based rules that enforce compliance, align strategies, and build operational resilience. Focusing on the cycle of monitoring critical changes and master data updates helps ensure 51����S/4HANA reports exceptions, identifies outliers in real time, and directs them to the appropriate expert for resolution.

Using Auditing as a Platform for a Global, On-Demand Ecosystem

With this approach, 51����customers can transform their processes with automated controls, which enhances business continuity. Executive decision-makers, employees, and stakeholders can be confident that all activities are executed compliantly and governed continuously with minimal risk, time, and effort. More importantly, every organization can work together proactively and deliver more strategic outcomes.

Consider��. With subsidiaries that offer everything on demand from kitty litter to pizza in 44 countries, the multinational online food-delivery service needed to monitor its GRC performance closely. This capability became especially urgent when deliveries became an important part of its business model and expansion plans during the onset of the pandemic.

After implementing 51����S/4HANA, Delivery Hero integrated the intelligent ERP with other 51����applications, including cloud-based analytics and��, as well as��. This landscape became the foundation of a����– giving executives the visibility and insight to stay on top of internal audits, ensure compliance with global reporting and accounting requirements, and pinpoint risks early.

Managing Risk and Compliance as a Priority, Not an Afterthought

By completing the digital picture of GRC operations with 51����S/4HANA, businesses can evolve their processes to adapt and safeguard their bottom line and reputation.

Embedding controls and checks into the fabric of the enterprise system incorporates risk management capabilities throughout the operational lifecycle. But most importantly, GRC activities become a trusted part of protecting the company from the burdensome penalties of noncompliance, while emerging as a potential revenue generator for the business.

Discover how 51����S/4HANA can boost the resilience of risk mitigation and compliance initiatives while navigating turbulent times and planning for whatever comes next with the following resources:

• Solution value calculators:
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Bruce Romney is senior director of Product Marketing for GRC and Security Solutions at SAP.
David Sweetman is senior director of 51����S/4HANA Global Marketing at SAP.

After lockdowns took hold around the world and people’s everyday behavior changed overnight, many companies found their revenues shrank to near zero. For some — including household names from all industries — this meant filing for bankruptcy and citing the pandemic as a key reason for their demise. Many will already have had less-than-healthy balance sheets even before the spread of the virus brought such sudden change to their operations.

While adaptability is by no means a magical remedy, many of the companies weathering the economic downturn best are those that have evolved and diversified their business model over the years, staying closest to the pulse of their customers and the market as a whole.

Keys to Success

What helps a company to stay ahead of change and to be more resilient to sudden changes in the market? Insight and understanding – of every aspect of a business,�� customers, partners, and in fact the entire network in which it operates – are key. State-of-the-art software 51����S/4HANA is designed for this, providing unrivaled tools to manage a company’s finances along with its manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, sales, and service operations. As a system at the heart of the business, 51����S/4HANA enables users to:

• Deepen value chains and develop new business models
• Enhance and optimize existing business processes leveraging intelligent capabilities
• Transform business to become a sustainable and intelligent enterprise

ERP itself has adapted enormously since the early days: If you are still using tools that were cutting-edge a decade or two ago, you will struggle to keep up — let alone lead the way.

Introducing 51����S/4HANA Cloud Release 2008

51����has just released the latest update to its . Offering functional and usability enhancements across all industries and lines of business, the August 2020 release of 51����S/4HANA Cloud (release 2008) focuses on increasing efficiency, and specifically on helping to evolve business models for the future.

As business models in all industries are transforming rapidly, companies look to augment their product portfolio and grow revenue streams with more sustainable billable services, subscriptions, and solutions. Solution order management, enhanced in this release, enables the management of such business scenarios that offer a hybrid combination of sales and (often higher-margin) services with products into a single order. This provides a single view of all items of a solution: physical products and one-time and recurring services. Orchestration and monitoring capabilities are provided to manage the processing of such solution orders and automated creation of a solution order is supported through an API. Similarly, the work of service teams working on in-house repairs is simplified by decision support capabilities, automatic notifications when exceptions occur, and the ability to verify and release items from repair to billing without navigation to a different app. New capabilities for service quotation will increase the use of service quotes, from which service orders can be generated leading to greater process efficiency.

In 51����S/4HANA Cloud release 2008, new innovations powered by intelligent technologies help increase the efficiency of core business processes. In finance, additions to event-based revenue recognition help ensure support for selling projects assigned to sales order items. This can significantly reduce manual effort by providing real-time automatic revenue recognition, margin analysis, and clear audit trails for each posting, with a link to the reference document. Intercompany matching and reconciliation now leverages automated postings to help reduce manual effort and improve compliance. It streamlines the real-time reconciliation-to-elimination process and provides richer insights into detailed results.

Intelligent��situation��automation��for the physical inventory process automatically checks whether a recount should be triggered or if inventory discrepancies are tolerated. This helps increase both employee efficiency and inventory accuracy and transparency while enabling real-time reporting of warehouse stock.

Looking Beyond the Pandemic

Crisis is widely believed to be a catalyst for change. Across the world, COVID-19 forced us to change our ways immediately and to an extent that was previously unimaginable. As both individuals and entire industries adapt to their new realities, there is an opportunity to reset rather than resume old ways. Although global carbon emissions shrank as the pandemic took hold, this has only a minuscule impact on the more existential challenge of climate change. We have to fundamentally change our ways forever.

In June, 51����announced the first solution in its Climate 21 program to support enterprises trying to make their operations better prepared for the emerging business reality where sustainability is a strategic and economic imperative. Delivering product-specific carbon footprints and providing capabilities to optimize the carbon footprint based on real-time insights in industries such as consumer products, chemicals, and oil and gas can be very complex, involving analysis of multiple production sites and production steps. In doing so, 51����helps businesses to optimize not only their top and bottom line, but also their green line, enabling them to prepare for a change driven by consumer incentive and choice.

The 2020s are heralded as the decade of change and transformation. Let 51����help you to rise to the challenge and make the right changes.

For more details on the release, see by Sven Denecken.

Oliver Betz is senior vice president and head of Product Management for 51����S/4HANA.

Although the situation is evolving constantly and differently across geographies and industries, every business faces the same issue: the challenge of sensing every twist and turn and shaping core competencies to respond in kind quickly.

What will it take to compete going forward? According to��, companies should start as early as possible to assess potential exposure, identify core competencies to mitigate it, and establish a “nerve center” – such as intelligent enterprise resource planning () software like – to monitor progress. With a focus on what sets the business apart from competitors, they can avoid costly maintenance of operations that may dilute working capital and balance sheet reserves.

Delivering Core Competencies that Secure a Critical Competitive Edge��

Most implementations of 51����S/4HANA begin with a promise to enable core competencies that preserve business continuity, drive an exceptional customer or employee experience, and increase operational efficiency to create a competitive barrier. These capabilities may include anything from delivering unique or personalized products that are high quality and compliant to adapting to new requirements for differentiation.

Every pivot to seize opportunity and respond to change as it happens is, without question, critical. However, acquiring it can be slow and risky without an integrated technology platform. What’s required is a system that continuously revaluates itself based on the current norm, looks for new patterns, and adapts core competencies.

Core competencies grow stronger when employees quickly access insights from accurate, synchronized sources of real-time data, running on a technology platform that supports new business with considerable flexibility and responsiveness.

Setting the Stage for a Consistently Capable and Intelligent ERP

In the past, ERP systems were designed and optimized by taking on defined opportunities or overcoming challenges. For example, bidding out the shipping of products to a less-than-load (LTL) carrier makes sense when shipments have a certain weight, size, delivery date window, and destination. Determining which inventories should be shipped with this approach is best done by analyzing and defining business rules and building a routine to find products that meet the criteria and hand them over to an LTL carrier bidding process.

For these technologies to work, the architecture should include a broad data set of information and hold it in memory for continuous pattern searching. Intelligent systems for ERP, including 51����S/4HANA, need to tightly connect across the digital landscape and with business networks to access device data for deeper insights. In the end, businesses possess a highly capable system – complete with the connected, secure, analytical, and business process architecture necessary to drive an agile and fast business operation.

Take, for example, . The American luxury electric car automaker considers 51����S/4HANA as a critical part of revving up its transformation efforts to secure 100 percent customer satisfaction. The privately held manufacturer of world-class plug-in hybrid cars faced significant challenges in implementing a single system that would meet rigorous requirements at every level of the value chain.

By adding a mix of cloud solutions to a digital core of��, Karma runs fast, efficient, and flexible operations with clear visibility into customer interactions and vehicle performance – from design to manufacturing and delivery. The business simplified customer and dealer engagement by streamlining transactions such as vehicle order and warranty claims.

But perhaps the most rewarding outcome of this initiative is delivering a platform ready to carry out the expectations of its dealers and customers. According to Mikael Elley, vice president and CIO of Karma Automotive, “From order through delivery, we have one system of record, one version of the truth, and one platform to ensure 100 percent customer satisfaction.”

Matching your Core Competencies to Deep Technology Capabilities

Is your ERP architecture keeping every aspect of your business humming in unison? Or do you have delays in your systems and upgrades or inconsistent data models?

Let’s face it, running on data-driven technology alone is not enough to keep up with the competition. As Karma’s story proves, core competencies need to evolve – fueled by an ERP that converts data into a precise system of automation, split-second and informed decision-making, and real-time adaptation to market dynamics.

Discover 51����S/4HANA can boost business resilience while navigating turbulent times and planning for whatever comes next. Read the Harvard Business Review article, “,” and explore the intelligent ERP .

David Sweetman is senior director of Cloud Global Marketing at SAP.

During turbulent times, a clear understanding of how consumer behaviors and impending events affect demand and the ability to fulfill them is more important than ever before. According to a recent����of 1,000 supply chain executives, “Creating a customer-centric organization in 2020 is a lesson in managing complexity while maintaining resilience.”

How can organizations demonstrate customer centricity? It depends on their ability to rethink fundamental elements of their operations with an intelligent ERP, such as

Delivering on the Promises of Customer-Centric Resilience

Customer-centric companies operate with an empathetic mindset toward their customers and consumers. But first, they need the mechanisms and data-driven insights to sense why and when customers need to buy products in different channels, delivery processes, quantities, with varying frequency, and through new payment models. When they adapt quickly to those insights during unexpectedly challenging times, businesses inevitably emerge stronger and see better times as customers put a premium on reliability and trust that their unique needs will be met.

With 51����S/4HANA, this level of excellence in planning and coordination can be achieved by enabling six fundamental practices.

1. Listen to data and applied intelligence

Trading patterns and seasonal flows may hold less relevance when an economic shock occurs. Instead, leaders must “listen” for new pockets of opportunity and seize them immediately. By capturing, processing, mining, and managing data in real time with machine learning and artificial intelligence with 51����S/4HANA, businesses can focus on the main elements of an excellent, short-term customer experience:

• Amplify core strengths
• Increase delivery reliability
• Open new routes to market to innovate the buying experience
• Develop new trading models based on usage, subscription, and service

For example, an electronic motor company may see a new demand surge in a particular industry, customer persona, or use case that may not have gained much attention in the past. Once those areas are highlighted through more intelligent sensors and machine learning, the business knows how to quickly take advantage of the opportunity, diverting support from sectors of weaker demand to those that help ensure longer-term resilience.

2. Speak to customers and understand their needs

All too often, business systems are too internally focused so organizations cannot see past the next bend in the road. What’s missing is direct feedback from customers, which goes beyond the insights provided by operational data and transactional interactions.

With questionnaires and machine listening, 51����S/4HANA empowers businesses to systematically “hear” how future trends are shaping up. Consider this capability the organization’s night-vision goggles, enabling it to visualize every dark twist and turn that leads to each new opportunity.

3. Consider new product designs and use cases

Companies that adapt their products and services to use cases that customers want are the ones that will gain a definitive competitive advantage. 51����S/4HANA supports this capability by providing scenarios including product personalization, streamlined designs that are more affordable in lean times, and more durable offerings with a longer life span.

Whatever the specific need, companies that can adapt today are less likely to become a commoditized tomorrow. And in most cases, customers will consider the brand as their preferred vendor or partner of choice.

4. Develop novel buying alternatives

A focus on helping customers overcome their challenges and buying with greater ease can open the door to new business models and promotional offers, such as paying for a product based on usage.

Similar to a vending machine at a convenience store, capital-intensive equipment is purchased and retained based on a fee for each item dispensed. This model simplifies the transaction experience for both the seller and the buyer. Other buying alternatives may include more detailed contractual arrangements such as vendor-managed inventory or annual contracts.

This flexibility on the customer-facing side of business operations also benefits the supply chain. Internet of Things (IoT) sensors capture critical data on product usage and is consolidated into 51����S/4HANA so decision-makers can derive deep insight into a customer’s behavior and service and maintenance needs. Furthermore, this intelligence can detect when a customer may be ready for a future cross-sell or up-sell opportunity.

5. Stand apart on service

As software components – including 51����S/4HANA and mobile apps or IoT-based listening devices – become a typical feature in many offerings, businesses can opt to increase customer service. This strategic move often requires a portfolio of complementary products and services aimed at targeted customer needs.

For example, a bank offering mortgages may provide seamless insurance that may be provided by another company in an integrated model. But for a product-based brand, it could create an opportunity for a smooth transition from a sales transaction to aftermarket service and maintenance.

6. Differentiate with speed

Faster services or sales experiences can bring a significant advantage, especially when product cost is unencumbered by high volumes of production switchovers or expedited deliveries. A synchronized and orchestrated supply chain system enables businesses to provide accurate available-to-promise dates to customers. Furthermore, planning cycles are accelerated, which helps ensure optimal customer service levels.

The backbone of this capability is an intelligent software system that is deeply connected and collaborative. Unfortunately, internal-focused ERP systems cannot keep up with the massive volumes of data that need to be captured and processed and the fast pace of changes happening in the marketplace. Instead, a more powerful alternative built on an intelligent platform, such as 51����S/4HANA, is needed to unlock new business models, plan dynamically, and support seamless operations across the value chain.

The Value of Customer Centricity: Trust and Partnerships

A customer-centric organization is not just a matter of setting a company strategy or being generally aware of rising demand for certain kinds of products. It’s also about using intelligent technology, such as 51����S/4HANA, to access real-time data into what customers want and act on those insights as soon as possible.

When you consider that consumers are placing a higher value on buying local and supporting their communities, the marketplace is ready for more trusted, resilient partners that are customer centric. Your customers and partners will appreciate your genuine interest in their success. More importantly, your business will form stronger bonds with consumers that will last for years to come.

Discover how your business can find resilience in customer centricity to navigate through turbulent times and plan for whatever comes next. Explore the intelligent ERP��.

David Sweetman is senior director of Cloud Global Marketing at SAP.

Demand on global supply chains has undeniably reached a whole new level over the last few months. Between the mechanisms used to trigger production and the relationships needed to deliver finished products, people are keenly aware of the complexity and delicate nature of this complex, highly connected business function.

Demand patterns are highly volatile, surging and bottoming out at a moment’s notice. This reality is leaving supply chain leaders feeling the pressure to find better ways to accommodate drastic and sudden fluctuations. But when even the simplest products comprise components from a wide variety of sources from around the world, this take can be overwhelming without access to the right intelligent tools.

Managing Highly Volatile Demand��

The increasing speed and volatility of demand magnify the importance of trusted relationships between employees, suppliers, logistics, production operations and customers. When one party changes, the rest of the value chain must adjust just as quickly to ensure its integrity as a highly connected and dynamic supply chain.

While legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems help streamline and optimize internal operations, the technology is often ill-equipped to keep up with massive volumes of data being captured and the speed at which change happens.

It is now imperative to optimize network-based interactions with participants in critical processes, such as procurement, contingent labor and talent management, integrated business planning, and asset management. By uniting all these systems into an intelligent ERP, such as 51����S/4HANA, acting as a single source of data intelligence, supply chains can detect patterns early, orchestrate processes, and implement resource modifications as needed.

Synchronizing Supply Chains on a Global Scale

During times of global change, companies often form third-party supply chain partnerships, such as outsourced manufacturers, logistics providers, and design and research consultants. These arrangements can become increasingly complicated as businesses rely on their software systems more to help ensure all parts of the extended value chain run smoothly.

When elements of the product life cycle are orchestrated to take advantage of core competencies, resources, and cost advantages, businesses can benefit from advanced planning techniques from 51����S/4HANA. For example, predictive material requirements planning considers real-time capacity and material availability and provides detailed demand forecasts to help meet current and expected customer needs.

Achieving Differentiation Through Trusted Delivery

In uncertain times, customers place an extraordinarily high premium on brands that fulfill their promises consistently. This quality is the goal of a resilient supply chain.

Interconnected and reliant on deeply connected, real-time data and capabilities integrated in 51����S/4HANA, supply chain operations can quickly adapt to changing needs successfully. This approach is particularly useful when proper contingencies are built into the system’s workflow, such as alternative vendors, designs, and logistics providers, to fulfill the need.

Responding with Speed and Individualization

A fundamental part of establishing customer trust is providing products that meet unique needs. Such individualization requires a level of manufacturing and operational automation that has been adopted by leading companies over the last ten years and is now embedded into the 51����S/4HANA architecture.

51����S/4HANA helps manage product variants with greater ease, providing accurate availability to promise and synchronizing internal and external supply chain partners through deep connectivity to business networks. By moving to Industry 4.0 with integrated Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, businesses can automate orchestration and calibration across supply chain operations and processes with 51����S/4HANA at the core of the IT landscape.

Transforming Global Supply Chains to Take Charge of Change

In these challenging times, supply chains are at the forefront of digital transformation, and those companies that can build the new engine will seize the opportunity for growth and emerge stronger than ever.

By using 51����S/4HANA to focus on core competencies, build greater customer intimacy, and drive internal operational excellence, businesses will design and produce personalized products in novel ways to fulfill customer needs. More importantly, they increase trust across the entire value chain, proving themselves as partners committed to helping their customers differentiate themselves.

Read more in the “Building Resilience Against Business Turbulence” series.

Discover how your business can provide the supply chain resiliency you need to navigate through turbulent times and plan for whatever comes next. Read the Harvard Business Review article, “,” and explore the intelligent ERP, .

David Sweetman is senior director of Cloud Global Marketing at SAP.

The answer lies in building an intelligent enterprise.

When planning for a rapid shift, organizations often focus on three aspects of their operations: building up cash reserves, working with a different workforce landscape, and more diverse customer channels. But today’s economic disruption is proving such aspects are only part of the story.

According to McKinsey partners Kevin Laczkowski and Mihir Mysore, “To assure some measure of resiliency, [businesses] should start now to assess the degree of exposure they have to slow down, identify initiatives that can help to mitigate the exposure, and establish a ‘nerve center’ to monitor progress on those initiatives.”

And it seems that this approach is paying off for these resilient companies. In their ��Harvard Business Review article, “,” Laczkowski and Mysore revealed that “resilients” reduce their debt during a full-scale recession by more than US$1 for every $1 of total capital on their balance sheet. Meanwhile, “nonresilients” accrue $3 of additional debt from every dollar.

Seizing an Edge as an Intelligent Enterprise

By definition, an intelligent enterprise senses change quickly, connects deeply with business networks, and manages an evolving landscape of supply chains, business models, workforce dynamics, and capital constraints. More importantly, they can realign each of those aspects of their business with a level of excellence that meets new customer demand.

To become an intelligent enterprise, businesses need a new system – intelligent – that is structured for processing speed, business agility, and enterprise-wide visibility. This view, which is the opposite of the inward focus of traditional ERP, is natively integrated to deliver real-time insights and deep industry knowledge.

As change becomes more intense and disruptive, intelligent ERP enables businesses to listen intently, operate more intelligently, and stay connected to suppliers, customers, and employees. Doing so safeguards the business from missing out on unexpected demand spikes, much-needed investments, and evolving buying habits and preferences.

But resilient companies go a step further with this technology. They use this information – often captured, processes, and analyzed in intelligent ERP such as 51����S/4HANA – to focus on their core competencies and make investments that strengthen it. For example, Apple has diversified its revenue streams, offering value-added intelligence services and emerging as a high-traffic retailer. But its leadership team knows that most of their core competencies and long-term value comes from conceptualizing, selling, and marketing technology innovation, which is where most of their investments are now dedicated.

So, where do resilient companies invest their capital spend? Laczkowski and Mysore have identified seven critical areas:

• Enhance customer intimacy by creating new business models that resonate with ever-evolving buying habits and preferences
• Adopt artificial intelligence to automate repetitive processes and make decisions faster and more accurately
• Drive supply chain agility to get ahead of potential disruptions that can result in lost sales, lower stakeholder confidence, and escalating operational costs
• Focus on core competencies by relying on a network of third-party partners to manage secondary proficiencies such as production, logistics, sales, and services
• Mitigate risk and ensure compliance to avoid paying unnecessary costs and safeguard operations before, during, and after turbulent times
• Build the balance sheet to optimize spend to see the company through the recession and beyond
• Maintain and secure a systems platform to close any gaps in the data chain from capture and processing to reporting, analysis, and insights

While each of the areas mentioned may be overwhelming, 51����S/4HANA can enable a business to understand today’s challenges better, consider what matters most, and start the path to resiliency.

In the coming weeks, this series will cover how resilient companies leverage 51����S/4HANA to strengthen core competencies with seven areas of digital investment, and will offer insights as well as practical strategies to help keep a company running today while preparing for better times ahead.

David Sweetman is senior director of Cloud Global Marketing, SAP.

The recently published provides an overview of the strategy for the flagship product, but I would also like to share some of my thoughts on this here.

In the past, ERP systems were built during a time of stability; business strategy did not change as quickly as it does today, and market trends took longer to find their footing. This resulted in heavily customized, monolithic IT landscapes that no longer suit the rapidly changing business environment of today, nor can they keep up with future trends.

Whatever the size of a business, 51����believes that organizations cannot solve today’s challenges with yesterday’s tools and processes. Businesses need an where agility is the key differentiator. With nearly 50 years of experience in ERP, 51����is a trusted partner that recognizes the needs of its customers. By continuously evolving the ERP product line, we are meeting customer needs with solutions they can rely on to succeed as best-run businesses now and in the future.

Flexible, Predictive, Responsive

51����S/4HANA was launched as a purpose-built product for its underlying in-memory database 51����HANA. It is available in two flavors: a traditional on-premise solution and as a cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. 51����S/4HANA enables critical business processes for finance, human resources (HR), manufacturing, and supply chain, to name a few.

51����S/4HANA is changing the game regarding intelligent ERP. By leveraging advances in technology like predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), 51����S/4HANA helps businesses to be flexible, predictive, responsive, and adaptable to organizational growth. Because 51����S/4HANA has intelligent technologies embedded, it provides data-driven insights that allow organizations to continue to run operations at their highest efficiency so they can allocate precious employee effort to more mission-critical tasks.��This helps customers optimize their bottom line through increased automation while also helping grow the top-line by generating new data-driven insights and decisions.

By releasing many of the new 51����S/4HANA innovations cloud-first, 51����is helping ensure faster time to market for 51����S/4HANA Cloud customers, with on-premise options following once a year. By providing real-time insights, real-time planning, forecasting, and simulation, as well as embedded analytics at every step, customers can reimagine and redefine processes with greater ease. They also benefit from enriching industry-specific capabilities and deep integration into other 51����applications as well as open interfaces to integrate third-party applications for end-to-end business process support.

Sustainable, Viable

There is no doubt that the best-run businesses of tomorrow must run their operations efficiently and with highest flexibility in order to remain sustainable and viable. 51����S/4HANA helps businesses to be responsive and responsible because it can simulate and understand the viability of new business models while also managing a company’s impact on the earth, communities, and ecosystems, as well as on the employees and customers it serves.

51����S/4HANA is at the core of the company’s intelligent enterprise strategy. The integrated, industry-focused, and flexible intelligent ERP platform grows with a business and helps customers accelerate the deployment of new business models.

End-to-End Processes

Especially in the cloud, companies are looking for standardized services that cover end-to-end processes rather than individual capabilities. Our vision for 51����S/4HANA Cloud is to provide a business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS) ERP platform with out-of-the-box integration into other 51����solutions and open interfaces to third-party products.

Examples of our end-to-end processes include the recruit-to-retire scenario that provides a new simplified employee/employment integration in conjunction with 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central, our travel-to-reimburse scenario that supports the payment of travel expenses, and the source-to-pay scenario, which integrates the processes for sourcing, guided buying (including lean services), and supplier collaboration using Ariba Network.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Through nearly 50 years’ experience in ERP, 51����knows that businesses of different sizes have different requirements of their ERP solutions — one-size-fits-all is not a likely scenario for an ERP solution. A 10-person shop looks for something much different than a 200,0000-employee multinational conglomerate, and at 51����we are in the unique position to be able to offer something to both of these businesses — and everything in between. While 51����S/4HANA represents the core of our intelligent ERP offering, we provide additional solutions for small enterprises.

51����S/4HANA is aimed at large and upper midsize customers with more complex organizational structures and industry requirements. Available both on premise and , 51����S/4HANA is infused with intelligent technologies to automate processes and converges the world of analytics and transactions to drive unprecedented insights that help steer a company to achieve both operational excellence and top-line growth. 51����S/4HANA Cloud is a SaaS offering fully managed by SAP. With predefined business process content and best practices that allow customers a high degree of standardization and fast time to value, it is a true SaaS solution that allows customers to consume the latest application innovations on a regular basis.

For small and (lower) midsize enterprises (SMEs), 51����Business ByDesign is the available easy-to-use and fully integrated suite-in-a-box solution. While the business processes of SME customers do not differ much from those of large enterprise customers, they typically have less complex organizational structures, which means that an out-of-the-box solution can work well.

In short, 51����is the provider that has coverage for a range of companies of all sizes. We can provide a solution that suits a customer’s needs and helps them grow into a successful, best-run, and sustainable business of tomorrow.

To find out more about 51����S/4HANA, or .

Jan Gilg is president of 51����S/4HANA.

It has also created fiercer competition among industry peers and growing expectations from customers. While most processes have become digitized and data has become abundant, the most successful organizations are the ones that know how to leverage this technology to drive real-time intelligence and insights that will not only meet customer expectations, but also fuel the transformation to the Intelligent Enterprise.

At the core of an intelligent enterprise is an intelligent . 51����understands the importance of a flexible and scalable cloud-based system and therefore has encouraged customers to make the move to 51����S/4HANA. The comprehensive intelligent ERP suite covers more than 25 industries and spans across capabilities including procurement, sales, supply chain, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), finance, service, and asset management.

51����S/4HANA helps customers unlock value for their businesses and enable better customer experiences in the age of intelligence. With intelligent insights and analysis, automation, and increased transparency across the business, 51����S/4HANA delivers an end-to-end view of the business that can drive intelligent decision-making and quick, informed actions. With real-time visibility into actual business results, organizations can move faster while making smarter decisions in order to forecast and plan with more accuracy. From supporting day-to-day processes to growth strategies and new business models, 51����S/4HANA aids business transformation across the board.

Making the Case for 51����S/4HANA

Over the past year, 51����has launched the 51����S/4HANA Movement program, aiming to encourage customers to make the move to next-generation ERP and provide them with the tools, assets, and services needed for an easy and seamless transformation. Just in 2019, the company has conducted and supported approximately 170 events dedicated to partners and customers, held numerous webinars, and developed extensive white papers comprising all best practices for 51����S/4HANA implementation projects – all with the objective to mentor and guide customers on their journey to 51����S/4HANA. 51����has also set up and deployed various collaboration and engagement models across user groups to maintain a constant stream of communication and help field any questions or concerns.

As with any business decision, the move to 51����S/4HANA is not one that is taken lightly. Beyond educating customers on the benefits of this intelligent ERP, the company has created personalized tools that can help IT and business executives deliver a comprehensive business case and technical deployment plan to executive leadership.

Customers can build their business case with , by identifying the organization’s existing business processes that can be improved and transformed with 51����S/4HANA. The report also compares an organization’s legacy ERP system to industry peers and offers additional recommendations on how to enhance productivity. In combination with 51����Transformation Navigator, which allows customers to access the new 51����product portfolio and license models, it provides the business and IT perspective on 51����S/4HANA transformation.

Along with these recommendations, 51����has developed and introduced , a free virtual six-week course delivered by an 51����expert that takes place within a classroom setting. The course provides customers and partners with clear and prescriptive guidance and support in the design and development of a road map for the move to 51����S/4HANA. Participants can gain access to decision-making tools as well as peer-to-peer knowledge from other 51����customers in an immersive and collaborative setting. Individual guidance can also be provided through 51����S/4HANA Value Discovery Engagement or Premium Engagements.

The tool for 51����S/4HANA also provides customers with the information and technical requirements they need to convert their systems to 51����S/4HANA.

Making the Move to 51����S/4HANA

In order to account for the different customer business objectives, 51����extended the standardized 51����S/4HANA framework and added three different scenarios, with services, assets, and tools optimized and focused on the expected outcome:

• New Enterprise Core: For customers looking for functional and technical upgrades to their existing ERP system with minimal business disruption, this tool allows them to simplify business and IT operations and establish platforms for innovation and growth.
• Extended Enterprise Core: For customers looking to automate or improve the efficiency of existing processes to meet the latest industry needs.
• Enterprise Transformation: A complete end-to-end ERP transformation to enable business change while reacting to evolving markets and competitors, or to offer a new customer engagement model.

While transforming a legacy ERP system may seem daunting, 51����has made it easy for all ��customers, whether they choose an 51����deployment or a partner-led deployment. To help ��partners, the company has created the 51����S/4HANA , a go-to-market framework that helps simplify project engagements, reduce deployment risks, and accelerate time-to-value while also promoting the key strengths of each partner and SAP.

51����has also developed a range of supporting tools to help plan and deliver ��customers’ migrations. These tools include functional and technical assessments, maintenance planning, an updated analytics interface and custom coding creation, migration cockpit (the migration of business operations data to a new system), software updates, and business-to-business and application-to-application integration.

Helping Customers Along Their Journey

Since launching the 51����S/4HANA Movement program, 51����has seen a significant acceleration in adoption. With over 14,100 51����S/4HANA customers, ��more than 6,700 are already live and over 7,000 ��are currently in the process of implementing the application.

51����has already seen great success with customers that finished the journey. Naturipe Farms migrated to 51����S/4HANA to innovate its supply chain and is now benefitting from modern technologies that help support a digital supply chain. Pladis, a global confectionary, is using insights to understand consumer needs, which helps inform the company on how to develop and deliver its products and services.

As 51����continues to invest in the tools and services required for a fast and simple transformation, we are also excited about the feedback and results given by partners and customers concerning the positive impact of our assets on programs and business growth and the innovation and continuous improvements achieved with, and after, go live.

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With the right connections, clarity, and community collaboration, people can sort through new problems, work in new environments, and adapt their skillsets with resilience and perseverance.

Business leaders that address these realities are the ones building their culture around human experience management (HXM). By continuously listening to their workforce to find and understand gaps, they redesign experiences, processes, and technologies in ways that matter to every end user – from candidates and new hires to recruiters, workers, contractors, and managers.

For many customers, 51����Solution Extensions have been a critical enabler that reveals the full potential of the human experience of everyday work. Customers are creating environments that are safe, healthy, engaging, and productive. More importantly, human resources (HR) is becoming their employees’ best ally as they work together to ensure business continuity.

Building Up Employee Capabilities with Resourcefulness��

Whether facing disruption or preparing for one in the future, HR teams must continuously develop their workforce to help ensure the right skills are in place and critical roles are filled. They must ensure employee needs – as well as business requirements – are addressed quickly with ease and clarity.

Consider the painstaking efforts that HR managers must take to help ensure customer service expectations are met by the right shift workers with the right skills working at the right time. The enables customers to deliver on that promise by intelligently forecasting workforce demand and creating schedules that align with business drivers. By integrating this application with 51����or non-51����business systems, this approach can not only reduce over- and understaffing, but also strengthen compliance with local labor laws.

While the forecasting and scheduling application provides tremendous advantages that the entire workforce and customer base can see, minor experiences can also create an impact. For example, the digitalizes the traditionally manual process of signing paperwork for job candidates, new hires, and promoted employees. Now, documents can be signed in a matter of hours from any device, anywhere in the world. The application securely automates the workflow of processing documents, collects information for the HR system, and obtains legally binding signatures.

Creating a User Experience for Business Continuity

When it comes to business continuity, enabling an agile, engaged workforce is essential. Working in new ways from new locations requires systems and services that are efficient and accessible enough to support employees who are expected to quickly deliver impactful outcomes.

With the , many customers are helping their employees interact with core business applications, which is optimizing user performance and satisfaction. The application provides the data and insight organizations need to identify and replicate best practices as well as locate and remedy process inefficiencies that can inhibit employee engagement or business agility.

Extending Human Experiences Throughout All HR Interactions

Like user experience, HR interactions should become more human-centered when adapting to contingencies and new policies. Employees certainly want to feel safe and equipped to do their jobs well. With the right digital resources in place, HR organizations can help ensure that continuity plans are effective, employees are supported, and organizations remain flexible in the face of unforeseen demands.

For example, the infuses intelligence into HR operations by a streamlining and unifying time and attendance processes business-wide. This approach fosters compliance of labor and payroll regulations while the business mitigates risks and reduces costs without sacrificing critical talent and skills.

The provides a complete view of employee labor activities. This information empowers business leaders to make informed decisions when reducing employee costs, supporting compliance with labor policies, accelerating business execution, and improving the bottom line.

Knowing that life changes in the workforce happen 365 days a year, many 51����customers are also relying on the to oversee such events for U.S.-based employees. The application smoothly integrates with a core HR system of record and providers’ systems, giving employees access to their information without delay and errors.

The is further simplifying the process of making necessary changes for an employee or the entire team. With a central digital employee record, enabled by secure document storage, file synchronization, and document generation, HR leaders are integrating HR document management across the enterprise to ensure processes remain compliant – saving time, improving transparency, and better engaging employees.

Shaping the Future of Work with Valuable Learning Opportunities

With the degree of change happening in the current landscape, employees must be ready to tackle the new risks and opportunities that lie ahead. Unfortunately, they typically have less than a half-hour per week available to focus on reskilling, upskilling, and organizational transformation.

Business leaders can overcome this hurdle by providing targeted, high-quality content that can be consumed without disturbing the flow of daily work. In fact, they can give their learners access to more than 500 curated learning paths that have been developed based on the latest brain science to maximize engagement.

provides an intelligent digital experience platform that offers personalized learning experiences with curated, top-quality content, such as productivity, collaboration, leadership, digital transformation, business essentials, and technology development. Additionally, a����is available to help employees better understand the use of virtual teams and community-based collaboration and acquire the operational resilience to overcome the implications of the recent pandemic.

Taking Charge of Change Calls for a Human Experience

At the core of every employee experience is the desire for interactions that are profoundly human and personal. No matter what is happening in their business, employees want to know that they are protected, productive, and assured that their work has purpose and impact.

Understanding this social contract with the modern workforce, 51����is always inspired to innovate and delivers applications that equip customers with the capabilities they need to keep moving forward while taking care of the people that define their success.

The next article will explore how 51����Solution Extensions can help ensure investment in intelligent ERP, uniting business intelligence into one source of truth while reducing data entry and processing costs.

Learn more about 51����Solution Extensions at��.

Today, a mere three months later, we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, a crisis quite unlike any we have ever known. While the circumstances have changed dramatically, the sentiment on which I closed last time remains true: 51����continues to roll out innovations that help our customers change people’s lives for the better.

The focus has shifted, but with quicker and easier implementations that lead to faster time to value, customers are well positioned to weather this storm.

During recent weeks, watching industries’ rapid responses to the wide-scale disruptions to supply chain, finance, and manufacturing has been inspiring. The innovative responses – companies large and small around the world pivoting from their traditional business to provide a product or service to address an immediate need – demonstrate that necessity truly is the mother of invention. What becomes clear is that having smooth, worry-free processes at the heart of your operations helps ensure the ability to turn things around swiftly.

Keeping operations running worry-free is our job, supporting our customers in focusing on new challenges and opportunities. We continually strive to improve how we do that, and the May 2020 51����S/4HANA Cloud 2005 release is a case in point. Building on the previous 2002 and 1911 releases, release 2005 continues to advance intelligent as the cornerstone of the Intelligent Enterprise, doubling down on integration and efficiency, and providing significant functional enhancements in key lines of business.

Integration and Efficiency Drive Agility and Flexibility

Integration has long been a strong suit for 51����and in turn, a significant strategic advantage for our customers, and the ensuing efficiency is key to adaptability. This release continues to build out our integration advantage, most notably in the areas of compliance management, finance, and human resources (HR) connectivity.

51����Global Trade Services (51����GTS) compliance management is now fully integrated with 51����S/4HANA Cloud. With only minimal new configuration, customers can utilize existing investments in 51����GTS 11 for a best-of-breed deployment of an international trade solution to help ensure compliance with international trade regulations.

Similarly, customers with existing 51����SuccessFactors software investments will benefit from an evolution of the integration between 51����S/4HANA Cloud and 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central. Customers can achieve faster onboarding of new employees or contingent workers thanks to automated user and role provisioning. Simplified integration setup and minimized replication errors further smooth HR processes.

Customers employing 51����S/4HANA Cloud for finance will appreciate the enhanced integration with 51����Analytics Cloud, which enables integrated financial planning and budgeting. Processes such as profit and loss planning and balance sheet planning can now leverage the full analytical capabilities of 51����Analytics Cloud, and important key figures can be seen at a glance.

Companies using 51����S/4HANA for enterprise portfolio and project management have been eagerly anticipating the integration of enterprise projects with sales orders. This update provides customers with a direct flow of revenues to projects, simplifying margin analysis. Actual costs and revenues can be captured in the project, allowing real-time project profitability analysis.

In the line of business sourcing and procurement, we have tightened the integration of 51����S/4HANA Cloud and 51����Ariba software, resulting in more efficient procurement processes. Enhancements include the automatic transfer of attachments between systems, and the ability to integrate 51����Ariba Contracts with central procurement using a single back end.

Key Line-of-Business Highlights

The list of new features in the 2005 release is extensive and exceeds the scope of this article, so I’m highlighting a handful that are real game changers in their respective lines of business.

• 51����S/4HANA Cloud for supply chain: Managing inventory in the supply chain is the eternal balancing act, and rarely has that been more apparent in day-to-day life than in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. This release introduces situation handling – physical inventory monitoring to increase the accuracy of monitoring physical warehouse stocks.
• 51����S/4HANA Cloud for manufacturing: The 51����Fiori kanban board app can help customers constantly monitor control cycles and their circulating kanban containers. Visual alerts identify and help eliminate errors quickly while reducing manual effort. Tailored perspectives are supported for different roles in lean manufacturing.
• 51����S/4HANA Cloud for sales: The new order-to-cash dashboard for sales and service, a one-stop shop for sales and after-sales reporting, provides insights into sales volume, profit margin, and incoming sales and service orders across different dimensions.
• 51����S/4HANA Cloud for service: New service order enhancements help customers achieve higher revenue potential. Combining service bundles with fixed-price order items and time and material items in the same service order greatly increases the flexibility of handling service orders and the coverage of service processes.
• 51����S/4HANA Cloud for finance: This release introduces advanced payment management for approving and monitoring payments from 51����or non-51����systems. Advanced payment management is seamlessly integrated with cash management and bank account management, giving a single source of truth for payments and related cash position. Notably, advanced payment management brings increased visibility of all cash flows, as well as improved cash forecast accuracy. In turbulent economic times, more than ever, understanding cash flow is at the fore of any chief financial officer’s mind. We could not possibly have known what state the world would be in as we release advanced payment management to customers, but its launch is timely.

Only a few months into 2020, we have already delivered two of our quarterly releases for 51����S/4HANA Cloud. Innovation is happening fast and steadily as we continue to advance the vision of intelligent ERP as the efficient engine of a company, running smoothly no matter what the terrain.

In these extraordinary times, just as in previous periods of economic downturn, companies that continue to focus on efficiency and innovation will be better positioned to come out of this crisis stronger. 51����remains committed to delivering intelligent and flexible innovations that keep businesses running and equip them to thrive as we come out the other side of this global crisis.

For more details on the release, see .

Oliver Betz is senior vice president and head of Product Management for 51����S/4HANA at 51����SE.

51����was founded nearly 50 years ago with a very clear purpose: to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Now more than ever, you can count on us to help. In fact, just last month 51����supported the .

But this crisis is affecting all aspects of our lives — health, society, economy. To survive, companies will have to define and focus on their core competence, drive deeper customer relationships, develop new business models, adapt their supply chains, streamline their operations, and manage their finances. Those that have an intelligent backbone to support their business functions will be able to do this quickly and will emerge stronger.

I am proud to see how we are all working together as well as the care that 51����customers are showing in this crisis. They are rapidly changing supply chains to cater for emergency supplies, changing production lines to produce products that are in need, altering work patterns, and doing whatever it takes to deliver the services and products that their customers need.�� This means changing business focus quickly and includes a renewed reliance on data and business insights to rapidly take the pulse on business and react effectively. In short, we are helping our customers ensure business continuity and deliver results in these challenging times.

Business Continuity: Trust and Reliability

No matter what the situation, 51����has always been trusted to keep business running. Above all, this means protecting operations and managing change safely and quickly. 51����stands ready, by your side, to help as your business changes. We can help rapidly implement solutions, turn on existing functionality, and help ensure that it is all managed with long-term digital transformation in mind.

We understand the challenge of business disruption and remote work that all organizations are facing, and we support changes in business focus. This demands environments that are secure, accessible, and controlled to ensure business continues to run while also adapting to new needs.

As employees are asked to work from home, managing both internal processes and external customer and vendor relationships remotely presents a changed management structure that puts technology in the center. This is where 51����can help; for example, with cloud deployments, access to free to stay informed. We have also to help buyers and suppliers connect amid the global supply chain disruption.

Keep Running and Adapt Quickly

Just as we see manufacturing companies take on new production lines to adapt to a changing landscape, others are refocusing on their core competence of design or innovation, using subcontract supply, production, and logistics to deliver product. This puts greater importance on being able to operate in a dynamic, virtual world with access to business networks and solutions such as Ariba Network for suppliers and 51����Fieldglass solutions for contingent labor. These solutions can be turned on quickly as extension of an intelligent ERP solution.

And as organizations change, so too, do their employees. Using intelligent technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotic process automation (RPA) to act based on rapidly changing, data-driven insights allows organizations to continue to have operations run smoothly and allocate precious employee effort to more mission-critical tasks.

In addition, companies keep adopting new business models; for example, by offering value-added services in addition to products. This requires uniting business processes end-to-end with the real world and a deep domain expertise by line of business and industry.

51����provides that scope of tools, the line-of-business coverage, and the industry expertise needed to carry you forward.

At the core of 51����is 51����S/4HANA, with 13,800 customers by the end of 2019. ��51����and partners are supporting the acceleration of the move to 51����S/4HANA with rapid return on investment and high value returns in short times.

Together, Our Values Will Define the New Normal

I am proud to be part of 51����and know we can play our role in helping ensure your business continues, adapts, and thrives in this challenging environment. Never has speed, agility, and depth of service been more important.

51����is committed to partner with you as we work together to make the world run better and improve people’s lives.

Jan Gilg is president of 51����S/4HANA.

But that mindset is only a small part of the bigger evolution story. It is also about digitalizing processes end to end to fundamentally change employee and customer experiences.

The rise of intelligent technologies – from artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and digital twins to augmented reality and the Internet of Things (IoT) – has its advantages. However, businesses cannot discount the potential for additional complexity to be introduced into the IT landscape and rising volumes of data scattered across the enterprise.

Do not be fooled: Overcoming such challenges along the way to becoming an intelligent enterprise has little to do with the variety of technologies being implemented. What matters, first and foremost, is having a business technology platform that serves as a center of gravity for all digital investments and enterprise data.

For 51����customers, the answer to helping ensure that their business technology platform can deliver on that promise is 51����Solution Extensions. The diverse portfolio provides solutions that are specially designed for the four pillars of a trusted, complete, and relevant IT landscape: enterprise content management, data management, data protection, and process mining and optimization.

Intelligent Management and Extension of Valuable Business Content

By extending����capabilities across the company, the business technology platform can address the entire information life cycle – from document and records management to information retrieval and collaboration. Additionally, rigorous information security and support are used to facilitate compliance with data privacy and protection regulations.

Connecting e-mails, documents, and other content to core business processes drives significant changes across a variety of organizations, such as:

Human Resources

Create a digitized and centralized employee document management environment that helps reduce costs and increase internal efficiencies. Businesses can improve their employee experience and productivity by deepening collaboration within project teams and eliminating the handover of information throughout the workforce life cycle – from recruiting and onboarding to compliance with regulatory requirements such as multiple document-retention policies.

Marketing, Sales, and Support

Create more unified and personalized customers experiences across in-store or online channels with consistent brand content. For example, customized promotions and communications can be provided during one channel interaction, then cascaded across the omnichannel customer experience – from brick-and-mortar stores to ecommerce storefronts.

Supply Chain

Lower procurement costs by capturing, scanning, and storing all incoming supply chain content, including unstructured information in delivery notes and e-mails. This information can be used to optimize order-to-procure processes and negotiate better deals with suppliers, compare past prices with real-time invoice information, and uncover more opportunities for dynamic discounting.

Strong Governance Across the Master Data Life Cycle

As long as data-driven business models continue to be created and evolve,�� and ��will remain critical to the operation of an intelligent enterprise. Moving intelligence from one application to another across the business technology platform requires considerable visibility into everything from data volume and relevance to connectivity.

AI and machine learning models help deliver migrations that are fast, hyper-efficient, and affordable. The migration process can be automated by capturing and sharing expertise, context, and insights – setting a valuable springboard for decisions on definition, protection, and security as well as business rules and access authorization. Then, data assets can be intelligently reused while traditional information siloes are obliterated.

Data governance capabilities can then be applied to help ensure data quality and readiness before the new solution – such as – goes into production. As a result, businesses can mitigate deployment and operational risks while gaining experience with a controlled, nonproductive digital twin of the solution. In addition, they can switch to central governance before or in parallel with the deployment to keep data clean for the long term.

With a single view of their data, businesses can drive information consistency company-wide – whether the business is handling (EAM) for their facilities or streamlining . The speed and accuracy of processes and analytics increase with the automation of maintaining and distributing master data, integrating it more tightly, and controlling quality and standards. Additionally, compliance with data protection and security regulations strengthens through governed mechanisms for traceable auditing and change management.

Reliable Data Mapping and Protection

Data is an integral part of business operations in the digital economy. Intelligent enterprises fuel success by optimizing the use of data across all interactions with their customers, employees, and ecosystem partners. With capabilities, businesses can use data to spur innovation, help ensure data compliance, mitigate risk, and build trusted relationships.

Data mapping and protection enable decision-makers to better leverage data from diverse sources, both structured and unstructured. This approach strengthens the transparency and power of data analytics, instilling stakeholder trust and confidence in the accuracy, timeliness, security, and compliance of the data used.

Gaining new value from personal and sensitive business data, while helping to ensure its security and permitted use, allows businesses to serve trusted and protected data for actionable insights throughout organizations and with ecosystem partners.

Continuous Optimization of Business Processes

Intelligent enterprises depend on mission-critical processes that are fast, profitable, and agile. By providing greater transparency into process execution,����capabilities help organizations understand existing processes better – from how they work and where they need improvement to which best practices are most effective.

Sophisticated discovery, analysis, and documentation foster data-based, continuous improvement. Companies can leverage prebuilt content, analytics configurations, and data connectors from line-of-business applications to the business technology platform in order to monitor performance, identify previously unrecognized process weaknesses, and improve process efficiency, quality, and reliability.

Shape Your Future with Simplicity, Speed, and Integrated Intelligence

When combined with 51����Solution Extensions, a business technology platform can help companies connect processes and experiences in ways that allow employees to act with integrity and confidence and gives customers a reason to keep coming back.

But more importantly, this approach establishes the connected and intelligent foundation needed to support flexible, agile innovation practices that are tremendously essential to succeeding in the experience economy.

Learn more about 51����Solution Extensions at��.

Next week’s installment will consider how 51����Solution Extensions can take customer experience to the next level by stimulating differentiation and growth.

The demand for high-quality products has given way to pleas for better convenience, more sustainable operations, and faster delivery. Now more than ever, exceptionally curated and trusted experiences are the expectation, as consumer demands evolve with the day and time, demographics, and personal life events.

Staying competitive in today’s fluid and fast-moving experience economy is no easy task. But when 51����customers have artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and other intelligent technologies in their digital arsenal, they become intelligent enterprises that can accurately pinpoint nuanced opportunities for capturing consumer attention and loyalty.

As 10,000 51����customers already know, adopting these leading-edge digital capabilities is never as easy as picking and plugging in a single solution and walking away. There are multiple layers of complexity across the existing IT infrastructure that must be first simplified. And in every case, this step is worth the wait, thanks to outcomes such as lower risk, accelerated transformation, and future-proofed technology investments.

Next-Level Experiences with a Choice of Complete 51����Solution Extensions��

With access to more than 90 solutions, over 50 million people have trusted 51����Solution Extensions to advance and realize the full potential of every stage of their company’s digital transformation. 51����integrates these strategic, third-party solutions with 51����software to complement existing digital capabilities.

Qualified, tested, validated, approved, and supported, 51����Solution Extensions are thoroughly vetted by 51����to help ensure they exactly meet standards for security, accessibility, functional correctness, performance, and scalability. This level of commitment helps ensure that every line-of-business and industry-specific functionality helps connect experiences and operations with intelligence.

For intelligent enterprises, 51����Solution Extensions provide much-needed peace of mind. They can connect experiences with operations in ways that drive significant value throughout the consumer, product, brand, and employee experience by elevating the performance of fundamental aspects of leading-edge digital landscapes.

• Business Technology Platform:��Accelerate business operations by digitalizing processes end to end with extensions for enterprise content management, data management, data mapping and protection, application deployment readiness, low-code rapid application development, and business process mining and optimization.
• Customer Experience:��Stimulate differentiation and growth with continuous process innovation and delivery of exceptional customer experiences. 51����Solution Extensions support relevant capabilities, including incentive administration, paybacks and chargebacks, centralized knowledge base, enterprise resource planning (ERP) data maintenance, and data mediation, as well as management of the commerce marketplace and omnichannel customer experience.
• Intelligent ERP:��Unite business intelligence into one source of enterprise-wide truth while reducing data entry and processing costs. Businesses can digitalize and streamline standard financial management shared services — such as order to cash, financial close, central finance, and transaction replication — while demonstrating compliance with safeguarded data security, access, and interactions enterprise-wide.
• People Engagement: Engage employees through an exceptional experience of meaningful human resources (HR) interactions. 51����Solution Extensions can be integrated with existing HR applications — from HR document and records management to benefits optimization, learning, and e-signatures — in order to attract, develop, and keep the right talent.
• Digital Supply Chain and Intelligent Spend Management:��Realize the competitive edge of intelligently connecting people, things, and assets to form a core ecosystem of intelligence. Supply chains and finance operations can take advantage of capabilities based on the Internet of Things (IoT), including digital twinning, as well as capabilities for enterprise asset management and procure to pay.
• Industry-Specific Needs: Address needs that are very much unique to the business and impact operations differently than any other business inside and outside an industry. 51����Solution Extensions addresses a broad range of processes and requirements for industries — from agribusiness, retail, and industrial manufacturing to energy and natural resources, financial services, and public services.

In the coming weeks, this series will demonstrate how 51����Solution Extensions can help strengthen each of these foundational elements of a digital strategy for delivering experience that employees and consumers will love.

Next week’s installment will offer a deep dive into 51����Solution Extensions for business technology platforms.

Learn more about the solutions at .

Now, with the addition of a next-generation strategy, their partners can too.

Every new digital innovation promises to help business operations run faster, more productively, and with more scalability and impact. But getting the most value from those technologies is not always clear – especially when avoiding business disruption.

Take, for example, 51����customers that choose to migrate their legacy to . Very quickly, they realize that the traditional model for ERP implementations cannot keep up with the dynamic nature of intelligent ERP. Everything from extensive customizations, IT-dependent decision-making, and complex user experiences to incomplete and inconsistent integrations does not match the promises of process standardization, experience management, and data trust that customers expect.

At first, 51����offered the innovation adoption process to provide a transparent method of structured and solution-specific practices carried out in a standardized environment. Even though the self-service offering puts business users in the driver’s seat during the implementation, something was still missing – the collective strengths of IT know-how and business process expertise.

Challenge the ERP Status Quo with Control, Innovation, Partnership

Enter , an integral part of 51����Activate in different phases within the implementation of 51����S/4HANA. But just like the technology it supports, the serviceis always evolving.

51����Model Company initially encompassed prepackaged, ready-to-use, end-to-end reference solutions for industries or lines of business – all aimed at simplifying and increasing the speed of 51����S/4HANA implementations. As customers became more mature digital innovators and strategists, the services were restructured on an interoperable architecture that empowered customers to combine line-of-business and industry model companies as they require.

Meanwhile, customers still wanted the freedom to work with their preferred 51����partners. This growing expectation inspired the creation of 51����Integrated Delivery Framework. In return, customers enjoyed having the best of both worlds: their partners and 51����experts carefully aligned and integrated across delivery roles, methodologies, and services. This simplified engagement framework not only helped reduce delivery inefficiencies, risk, and costs, but also helped increase the speed and certainty of expected outcomes.

Embrace a New Era of Partner Collaboration with 51����Model Company

The evolution of 51����Model Company has now reached a point of tremendous opportunity for customers and partners. All line-of-business and industry-specific systems designed, interoperable capabilities introduced, and the integrated delivery framework 51����enables have converged together, allowing partners to apply the services’ standard methodology when implementing 51����S/4HANA.

This next-generation model-company strategy qualifies partners on two levels:

• Solution level: Partners are committing to use 51����Model Company as a foundation for solution development and innovation efforts. They gain access to the partner development environment and go-to-market strategy for 51����Model Company and 51����Value Assurance service packages. Intellectual property (IP) developed by partners in this environment is eligible to get 51����Model Company certified.
• Qualification level: Partners gain access to the go-to-market strategy for 51����Model Company and 51����Value Assurance service packages. They can take advantage of the available education and enablement program and content. Partners entering the qualification program are eligible be named “qualified partner for 51����Model Company and 51����Value Assurance services.”

51����partners are encouraged to be certified for both levels to gain the full market potential of 51����Model Company. All enablement materials are available on the and sites.

Set the Foundation for Continuous Success with 51����S/4HANA

We live in dynamic times where digitalization is everywhere. Businesses are looking for their partners to remove every technology, process, and organizational obstacle to help them stay ahead of their competition.

With the next-generation partner strategy for 51����Model Company, it is easier than ever for 51����partners to guide their customers in the right direction. Partners in all areas of expertise can deliver strategic services that are aligned with standard best practices, supported by the latest technology, and carried out quickly – no matter how turbulent and intense our increasingly digital world becomes.

and take on the opportunity of our next-generation partner strategy for 51����Model Company.

Dr. Engelbert Quack is chief consultant for BTS Advisory Services at SAP.

Thomas Kesl is lead of Partner Stream for the 51����Model Company program and EMEA head of Energy and Natural Resources at SAP.

There’s no substitute for just getting on with the task at hand, whether training for the first leg of the Tour Du France or crossing the actual finish line. But getting on with it also requires preparation and planning, including the benefit of advice, insight, and experience. It is the same when plotting a digital transformation journey.

Like any multi-stage event, each of us will take our own route, change gears at our own pace, and make pit stops along the way based on our own specific circumstances and environments.

In the same way that there are multiple stages and routes to get each of us across our own finish line, the multi-stage journey to 51����S/4HANA is unique to each company.

This is why 51����has been running a comprehensive , outlining the step-by-step map for transitioning to the modern digital platform of 51����S/4HANA ��at your own pace.

Leading authorities on making the move to 51����S/4HANA came together to help ensure each transition is as straight-forward as possible, regardless of IT landscape or legacy overheads. This five-part series shows how to make the transition with less risk and at a higher speed, as well as the best ways to tackle common issues around data quality and data migration, carrying over custom code and business partner conversion — all within budget and timeline constraints.

The data transformation requirements that help get data clean — including data preparation, quality, and migration — before you go live with 51����S/4HANA are explained in depth, as well as how to keep data clean in day-to-day activities and operations through master data management once live.

Protecting and moving customizations, integrating the landscape, and managing extensions and innovations in the cloud with low code development are all looked at. And the series shows how to modernize a data strategy and platform, factoring in the data lake, as well as reporting directly from within applications.

To grease the digital wheels of business automation, new ways of integrating enterprise data with disparate types of Big Data across different data stores are mapped out, while preserving data security, integrity, and consistency.

But 51����knows there is no substitute for customer experience. So three customers — all at different stages of their own digital journey toward 51����S/4 HANA — share their experiences, tips, and advice.

• Tetra Pak outlined its successful data Transformation journey around mastering automation and data efficiencies, which is now the foundation for the next stage.
• Neste discussed how it is becoming an intelligent enterprise through real-time analytics and automated business processes.
• Vinci Energies showed how it has embraced data-driven innovations in 51����S/4HANA, such as robotic process automation, next-generation analytics, and mobile business processes.

The response from customers who have watched the webinars and implemented the advice has been hugely positive. If you did not catch the full series the first time, you can .

In addition to how-to steps from 51����experts, partners, and customers, you can also see just how easy it is to create intelligent, mobile-ready applications to better serve customers, modernize business processes, and compete more effectively.

When the world is busy transforming around you, it’s never too late to start but it’s always too late to wait. Have a great journey!

Gerd Danner is vice president of the EMEA Center of Excellence for Information Management and Intelligent Suite Surround lead at SAP.