Maximizing the ROI on Your SAP System
Implementing SAP ERP is a major investment for any enterprise, with implementation costs ranging anywhere from $20,000 to $500 million depending on scope and business size, according to one 2022 estimate.
The return on that investment (ROI) comes from the efficiency benefits of running the entire core business on a single platform, removing duplication, and breaking down functional and departmental silos. Forrester research found one composite organization achieved 269% three-year ROI through investing in SAP solutions.
But business is not static, and neither is the SAP platform. Running the business on a single platform provides a baseline for delivering sustainable growth, which is delivered by leveraging the power of the platform as it evolves in step with business needs.
Below, we outline how SAP’s growing capabilities in key areas such as analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) enable businesses to innovate to deliver sustainable, ongoing value.
FROM LINEAR TO DYNAMIC - HOW SAP HAS EVOLVED TO MEET THE CHANGING BUSINESS CHALLENGE
For most of its history, the SAP ERP platform has supported business processes that have been largely transactional, and follow a linear, reactive approach to business process improvement.
Transactions are executed, performance data is gathered and analyzed, then improvements are executed based on that analysis. All this takes place over relatively long cycle times of weeks or months because the improvement process is linear, and changes mostly call for specialist IT input to update systems. This approach is slow to realize ROI and carries a risk that, by the time an improvement is implemented, the business environment will have moved on.
The advent of digitalization is changing this model to one of dynamic, proactive business change and improvement supported by automation. The SAP platform has evolved in line with this change, harnessing analytics, AI, ML, and self-service capabilities, enabling enterprises to deliver proactive, dynamic innovation and improvement, powering sustainable growth, and maximizing return on their investment in SAP.
HOW SAP S/4HANA ENABLES SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud ERP moves SAP from the ECC platform it replaces and creates a powerful toolset for rapid innovation, dynamic process improvement, and business agility needed for sustainable growth.
Along with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and SAP Analytics Cloud, it offers a rich set of data management, analytics, AI, ML, and self-services, enabling enterprises to extract value from data through real-time dashboards and reports, apply machine intelligence to deliver insights, and act rapidly on those insights using self-service low-code and no-code application development capabilities.
HARNESSING THE POWER OF SAP S/4HANA
Having real-time information at your fingertips – like finding out what happened in the market today to cause a sales blip – no longer relies on a long cycle of analysis and reporting.
Embedded analytics can take historical data and make sense of it to create informed projections of where the business is going to be. Intelligence can help identify how much time is being spent on manual activities and where that can be automated with ML, AI, and self-service, freeing people to work on things that add value to the business.
SAP S4/HANA Cloud continues to move SAP away from the perceived monolithic design that has restricted its value for some enterprises, creating the ability to link seamlessly with best-of-breed solutions.
GETTING THE ROI ON YOUR ERP
One of the biggest decisions for the many enterprises still running SAP ECC is if and when to invest in migrating to SAP S/4 HANA to start unlocking its power to drive sustainable growth. Crescense leverages deep industry knowledge and years of proven SAP experience to help companies transform their business with SAP and see true ROI.
If your company is interested in enabling sustainable growth with SAP, contact our team today.
By Swati Patel