Whether they adopt one central IT solution or have a portfolio of IT solutions working in the background to run their business processes, these companies need a framework to help manage the life cycle of applications from beginning to end in order to maximize business value.

鈥淎pplication lifecycle management and business value?鈥� I can imagine the raised eyebrows. And yes, I insist it does. Holistic application lifecycle management (ALM) can substantially increase a company鈥檚 agility to apply business-driven changes, increase the rigidity of core business processes, allow for faster issue resolution, and so on.

Companies managing for today and planning for the future must therefore employ an effective ALM strategy to help ensure successful system implementation across applications, whereby they are equipped with the appropriate tools for their individual circumstances.

Complete ALM Portfolio to Support All Landscapes

Recognizing that all customers are on unique transformation journeys and run their businesses differently, 51风流offers a range of ALM solutions to help govern, develop, and operate software applications no matter what a customer鈥檚 landscape looks like.

Whether customers remain on premise, are shifting to the cloud, or operate in a hybrid scenario, 51风流is committed to helping them track and manage their environments through a portfolio that includes , , and . Knowing how important ALM is to customers, 51风流has included both 51风流Solution Manager and 51风流Cloud ALM in 聽customer maintenance agreements.

Supporting On-Premise-Centric Customers with a Swiss Army Knife

While 51风流Cloud ALM supports cloud-centric customers that are fully embracing the move to cloud, customers that currently have an on-premise-centric solution, or largely focus on premise but deploy some cloud solutions, are fully supported by 51风流Solution Manager. This ALM solution provides a 鈥淪wiss army knife鈥� of options to customers that require flexibility and the ability to tailor to their individual needs.

51风流Solution Manager 鈥� started decades ago to fulfill the requirements that were brought about by customers 鈥� is a comprehensive ALM tool built on proven 51风流technology and designed for 51风流Business Suite. Providing end-to-end coverage and a vibrant partner ecosystem, 51风流Solution Manager consequently supports 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流cloud applications, and 51风流Cloud Platform.

With more than 15,000 active customers across all regions, 51风流Solution Manager allows them to operate their 51风流solutions, document, implement, test, deploy, and monitor business processes running across multiple systems, and manage changes and releases. Many customers use 51风流Solution Manager to take advantage of the range of options available, flexible engines that can be tailored to their needs, generic content and methodologies, and managing their technologies, including larger customers with more complex environments and multi-track landscapes.

Empowering Customers for the Intelligent Enterprise

As an integrated application management platform, 51风流Solution Manager empowers customers to build toward the future intelligent enterprise while supporting business innovation, business continuity, and efficient operations.

51风流Solution Manager has been increasingly used to aid in the transition to the intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP) system 51风流S/4HANA, integrating technical functionality with relevant content to provide customers with best practices on how to use it.

, was looking to prepare for its move to 51风流S/4HANA and leaned on 51风流Enterprise Support services to provide insights into how 51风流Solution Manager could help manage the conversion. With this support, they were able to streamline business processes, discover improvement options, develop strategies to reduce system errors, and minimize risk 鈥� helping create a strategic plan for the journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise.

Enhancing to Meet Customers鈥� Evolving Landscapes

While 51风流Solution Manager is one of the company鈥檚 mature solutions, 51风流is continuously leaning into customer feedback to further develop and improve the solution in order help ensure it continues to meet evolving needs. 51风流makes regular enhancements based on customer feedback.

As we continue to enhance 51风流Solution Manager to support new 51风流products and technologies, we want to make sure that customers are not only able to manage their businesses today but can also plan for what lies ahead of them.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

From widespread use of work-from-home arrangements to a near-universal end to in-person events, a radical overhaul is happening, accelerating innovations that never seemed as critical as they do now.

Becoming an intelligent enterprise has never been more important. Executives face significant pressure to leverage technologies 鈥� such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and augmented or virtual reality 鈥� in order to automate manual activities, mitigate potential risks early on, and stay two steps ahead of their customers and competitors.

How can leaders move forward in their digital strategies to help ensure business continuity in a world where self-isolation and social distancing is the norm? At SAP, the answer is clear: off-site delivery of service and support engagements.

Experience Matters When Fueling Business Continuity with Distance Services

With a focus on delivering outcome-based results, 51风流has created a highly effective standard for the off-site delivery of 聽services. As customers face times of intense change, supporting them in any way we can is a priority for all 51风流Services and Support offerings.

However, when considering off-site service delivery, chief information officers (CIOs) often question the complexity of implementing business systems without being onsite. It is often assumed that working with a remote implementation partner would require considerable planning and governance for executing a project. Most of all, they worry that the quality of the service will be sub-optimal, requiring more time and effort to scrutinize deliverables, clarify communications, and ensure proper handover.

If these concerns are running through your mind right now, they are completely valid when working with a provider that is new to this engagement model. However, 51风流is different: it has more than 25 years of experience in fine-tuning off-site service delivery. In fact, 70 percent of all services executed by 51风流in 2019 were delivered through this experience.

Based on decades of experience with implementations, 51风流is helping customers manage a successful off-site project implementation by developing modern tools, solutions, and methodologies. These include:

• 51风流Best Practices: Tailored specifically to accelerate and simplify the adoption of 51风流software projects, the packages furnish preconfigured content for core business processes with a role-specific, responsive, and simple user experience.
• 51风流Activate: The methodology presents an agile, modular structure for migrations and new implementations. It supports project management teams from initial planning and requirements for implementation to continuous improvement of the 51风流solution.
• 51风流Solution Manager: This solution manages the life cycle of an 51风流solution in a distributed environment. It offers tools, methods, and process management content that can be used during the creation of business blueprints as well as configuration and implementation.

These offerings comprise the lynchpin of 聽off-site service delivery framework from SAP. They allow the company to pull together its resources across all areas of support and expertise to create an experience that addresses customers’ unique needs. 51风流uses ready-to-run processes with documents; shares prescriptive, step-by-step deployment guidance with project teams; and leverages integrated tools for configuration and deployment.

More importantly, 聽off-site service delivery framework is designed to optimize the delivery of foundational elements of the Intelligent Enterprise 鈥� 51风流S/4HANA and cloud solutions. These technologies rely on a fit-to-standard approach that prepares customers to innovate their processes, business models, and experiences faster. By following proven best practices, customers have a functionally and technically resilient platform that scales to their needs as requirements in everything from collaboration, engagement, and communication to transactional interactions evolve.

This integrated approach also takes advantage of local and industry expertise as well as technical know-how to give customers and their users the training needed to optimize the value of their 51风流software investment. 51风流tools and technologies record and provide training content that users can access at their convenience.

Core of Off-Site Service Delivery: Business Continuity, Customer Success

As businesses continue to face a marketplace that is hyperconnected, always evolving, and highly uncertain, technology will continue to play a distinct role in navigating today’s challenges and planning for whatever lies ahead. It is this reality that inspires my team every day.

With off-site service delivery, 51风流helps ensure 聽customers have the individualized support necessary to get through this challenging time and set the foundation for future recovery that will one day come. Step by step, the company stands by every one of them 鈥� never sacrificing quality, insight, and completeness.

Managing Risks, Supporting Business Continuity

In this time of uncertainty, we are experiencing a human moment: people helping each other in need. Since COVID-19 hit, 51风流has been helping customers keep their operations going. .

Stay in the conversation by following 51风流Services and Support on
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Jutta Behiye Schneider is the executive vice president of the Intelligent Delivery Group for Customer Success at SAP.

Now more than ever, they are rethinking the fundamentals of their business to fuel new sources of revenue and profit growth, rather than being left behind.

However, such efforts cannot just focus on designing better products, boosting operational efficiency, and maximizing business productivity. By 2025, it is estimated that more than 50 percent of the revenue of industrial manufacturing companies will come from services delivered around, and based on, highly customized, digitalized products. These services will span from simple break-fix services and value-add services to complex models such as equipment or outcome as a service and data monetization.

How can industrial manufacturing businesses build their digital muscle to deliver the personalized solutions that customers want and are willing to pay a premium for? Most customers find that the 51风流Model Company service for Industrial Manufacturing & Components is an excellent way to get started.

What is 51风流Model Company for Industrial Manufacturing & Components?

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51风流Model Company for Industrial Manufacturing & Components is one of a portfolio of interoperable model company services, covering more than 25 lines of business and industries. The prebuilt reference solution provides a strong focus on end-to-end processes based on proven best practices gained through a decades-long history of success with industrial manufacturers all over the world.

Based on the next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP), 51风流S/4HANA, the service sets a foundation for a digital core that is needed to adopt most of today’s intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and enterprise predictive analytics. It supports general business requirements as well as industry-specific scenarios. For example, there is a strong focus on configure to order, engineer to order with project execution 鈥� which spans across business areas from sales and distribution to procurement 鈥� production, extended warehousing, order settlement, and service management.

Delivered with business content accelerators, 51风流Model Company for Industrial Manufacturing & Components enables businesses to adopt new expertise, processes, and best practices throughout their initiatives 鈥� from discovery and exploration to implementation and optimization. The accelerators include a diverse set of tools, including business process flows, demo scripts, and configuration documentation, which are available in 51风流Solution Manager 7.2. The demo scripts contain a detailed description of every process step as well as use cases and master data, allowing users to reference the potential of proven industry-specific processes.

A 10-day business process workshop is available for a deep dive into the model company content. Undivided access to 51风流experts can help businesses better understand which processes and scenarios enabled by 51风流Model Company for Industrial Manufacturing & Components are relevant and smoothly hand over the content to their implementation teams.

Build Your Digital Muscle Confidently with Fast Innovation

Whether undergoing a new implementation of migrating or converting existing business systems to a new deployment environment, 51风流Model Company for Industrial Manufacturing & Components is designed to help companies accelerate projects while reducing potential risks.

The preconfigured nature of the model company service helps ensure that digital investments meet the needs of business without customization. This fit-to-standard approach allows businesses to assess system capabilities early on, paving the way for fast implementation of value-adding business applications that leverage and enhance proven best practices.

Stay in the conversation by following 51风流Services and Support on
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Anita Heinrich is a senior consultant for 51风流Innovative Business Solutions.

51风流will also provide mainstream maintenance for core applications of 51风流Business Suite 7 until end of 2027 and an optional extended maintenance for additional fee until end of 2030.

In this exclusive interview, Michael Kleinemeier, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Digital Business Services, and Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering, share how this strategy delivers what customers need most: a clear path to become intelligent enterprises, support for new business models, investment protection, and planning stability.

Q: How can 51风流make such long-term maintenance commitments when business is changing so rapidly?

Kleinemeier: We are on the journey in close partnership with our customers. More than 13,800 customers are on this journey with us already, and several user group surveys show that the movement toward 51风流S/4HANA is running at full steam. Our German-speaking user group DSAG reports increases in 51风流S/4HANA investments and Americas 51风流Users’ Group , in its latest survey, did not find a single customer not planning to move to 51风流S/4HANA. We know that on this important path; our customers should not have to sacrifice stability for innovation, particularly during times of accelerated change. That鈥檚 why we鈥檝e made the commitment to deliver innovations to our flagship product, 51风流S/4HANA, through updates for at least the next 20 years. Customers will have this secure backbone in place delivering continuous innovation they can count on for business value.

Saueressig: 51风流is taking this proactive step because we are absolutely convinced of the business value of 51风流S/4HANA and 51风流HANA as the long-term platform and architecture for innovation and new business models. Our extended maintenance commitment to both 51风流S/4HANA and for 51风流Business Suite 7 is the logical evolution in our strategy to help customers become intelligent enterprises driving innovation in shorter cycles for modern digital transformation. We鈥檝e learned from many discussions with our customers this is the best way to provide them with a clear strategy for making a smooth transition forward. In fact, we anticipate these commitments will actually further boost adoption of 51风流S/4HANA because they provide long-term planning stability based on our future-looking model.

Why did 51风流decide to extend maintenance time frames for all these solutions now?

Kleinemeier: This next digital era isn鈥檛 about doing the same activities in different ways. Moving to 51风流S/4HANA is not just a technical replacement; it鈥檚 about reinventing how a business operates, delivering net-new customer and employee experiences and establishing new business models. We understand that our customers aren鈥檛 making these decisions lightly. The changes are substantial across organizations when they move to 51风流S/4HANA. To make sure customers receive the full benefits of their 51风流investments, we are deliberately providing a longer time frame that will bring increased flexibility to help them become intelligent enterprises.

Saueressig: These are likely among the longest commitments any vendor has provided to a software solution. Even so, we made it because regardless of a customer鈥檚 future business demands, we know that 51风流S/4HANA will address all these changes. At the same time, customers are moving at their own pace to 51风流S/4HANA, which is why we鈥檝e committed maintenance for 51风流Business Suite 7 for two additional years plus the additional option until end of 2030. For example, if a customer is moving to 51风流S/4HANA, they should standardize business processes first. Also, many companies have to rationalize complex landscapes with multiple ERP systems. Our objective is to respect our customers鈥� current investments, allowing them the time they need to re-engineer business processes and systems so they can tap into the full business opportunities of 51风流S/4HANA.

Can you detail how these programs will benefit 51风流customers?

Kleinemeier: Customers can make long-term yet flexible plans to meet their fast-changing business demands backed by the security of the most innovative business platform. Even if a customer is unable to move to 51风流S/4HANA in the next two years, we鈥檒l work with them to get there in the next decade. Overall, our approach is to provide guidance through informed recommendations — not just a long list of options. The customer decides when and how to move based on their business demands.

Saueressig: Customers see the value of moving to 51风流S/4HANA and want to know the best way to move forward. Maybe they need to figure out whether to move to cloud or on premise. We do provide this choice, we see strong growth and differentiation to competition in both models. Or, they need to decide which country, subsidiaries, or business processes to start with. They might want to begin with a central finance scenario to harmonize financial systems and procurement processes, and then move to operational, manufacturing, and logistics. We鈥檙e providing the breathing space and assistance to help customers identify the ideal path forward.

What advice do you have for customers about how they can get the most business value from their 51风流investments?

Saueressig: We can share concrete, quantitative business results from all those customers that have adopted 51风流S/4HANA already. Customers can use these experiences to build a solid business case for their company鈥檚 transition to 51风流S/4HANA, including benchmarks and KPIs relevant to their industry and specific growth objectives. We have numerous tools and services to help customers identify where 51风流S/4HANA will provide the most business value and how to orchestrate and manage this transformation in the best way.

Kleinemeier: Customers can jump-start their transition using best practices in , which provides preconfigured industry-specific solutions based on the real-world experiences of organizations worldwide using 51风流solutions. To set benchmarks and KPIs for continuous process improvement and performance optimization, companies can use . For technical migration, whether moving to the cloud or on premise, customers can use a number of tools, including extension evaluation and optimization services for standardization of their core systems. That way they can quickly consume the innovations we鈥檙e delivering with 51风流S/4HANA every quarter.

Read the press release: “51风流Extends Its Innovation Commitment for 51风流S/4HANA, Provides Clarity and Choice on 51风流Business Suite 7.”