I recently had the privilege to attend and co-sponsor AFSUG’s SAPHILA 2023 conference. It was the first time in 4 years the user community had been able to meet in person due to COVID and the atmosphere was alive with excitement and reunions of friends, colleagues, customers and partners who have all missed this tribal event of the “Kotla” ~ as Reg Barry Vice Chairman of AFSUG says.
The opening keynote address was given by our very own Vusi Tembekwayo , global award winning speaker, author and investor who gave us a 30 000 foot perspective on how the world has changed over the last 4 years linking macroeconomic and geopolitical forces to the current state of the African Economy. The response could only be described as eternal African positivity that despite the current outlook of cost containment, high inflationary pressure, lower Gross Profit return and a global Tech skills shortage Africa continues to find ways to use Technology to innovate and progress.
With over 700 production SAP ECC systems in operation across Africa (1) and the time to end of life support running out (2027) the question on everyone’s mind was, what’s the roadmap to S/4HANA and how do I get there. Getting there both from a technology platform perspective as well as the capital investment required to fund the journey.
Companies who have had the luxury to move ahead and migrated to SAP’s cloud first core have seen that even with the funding, correct resourcing and planning the journey is not without its challenges. A recent survey carried out with the USA and German SAP User Groups shows many pain points experienced during the execution phase of the migration program, combine this with a staggering statistic that over 60% of SAP implementations fail. User group members were here to find out how to plan better, execute faster and come out the other side with a platform that will support the next 5-10 years of growth for their organisations.
*Source data taken from AFSUG DSAG
So it seems Legacy SAP customers are left with a choice, bit the bullet – hold off on modernization of current core business processes and migrate or wait to find ways to drive cost reduction strategies to fund a future SAP migration but what if there was another way to allow the business to keep innovating, support new business models, build agility into the business process that drive customer interactions…
Say hello to ServiceNow EPR Modernisation
With both cost and time to value being on the lips of every CxO, ServiceNow – the intelligent platform for digital business presents a compelling alternative to this traditional view, allowing you to understand your current risk and exposure to customisation and non S4 compatible code on ECC while providing a modern lo-code platform to house these supporting business processes along with consumer grade service experiences on their Employee Centre (Your one stop shop for help across any function).
ServiceNow has over the last few years been investing heavily into process optimisation and deep in platform assessment capability which allows you to scan and find all code issues related to HANA with its latest acquisition of Gekkobrain.
So What?
The combination of these capabilities provided on a single platform provide opportunity to rethink the future SAP architecture required to support the Agile Enterprise.
The image above represents a typical activity flow across the lifecycle of a process, the steps that are covered in your ERP and the steps that happen outside of the process in Excel / Email and other unaudited engagements. ServiceNow’s Creator Workflows provides a unique opportunity to re-platform custom code as Low Code applications and process flows, removing your highly customised SAP code from the core and allowing you to gain a modern user centric experience while ensuring your target state on S/4HANA has a clean core.
Removing supporting process flows and custom code from your SAP deployment will significantly improve your time to value and speed. Adopting this new architecture has been proven to save more than 90% of the manual work involved in a Business Suite on HANA migration and helps you minimise the scope of an S/4HANA migration by up to 80%.
Can you afford not to think differently about your Service Architecture?
ServiceNow’s Clean Core approach offers you the ability to shift these non-core SAP process flows to their low-code platform. This radically reduces risk, speeds up migration time.
- Dr Uwe Grigoleit – Senior Vice President, SAP Customer Evolution Germany
About Quintica:
Quintica is a Technology Consulting company based in African and the UAE with a focus on transforming work that creates moments that matter. A ServiceNow Elite Partner, Quintica helps large, complex companies get the most out of their platform investments. Their 3 step Engage, Transform and Operate model has been the backbone of some of the most successful digital transformation journey’s globally.
Speak to our ERP Modernisation team to unlock the full potential of your EPR investments.
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