SAP S/4HANA and Project “Embrace” - 2020 SAP FKOM Recap
At the beginning of each year, SAP® hosts a gathering of SAP executives, SAP field employees and partners for their Americas Field Kick-Off Meeting (FKOM). This was their first public event since Bill McDermott stepped down as CEO. FKOM was our first insight into the new SAP without McDermott at the helm. FKOM brings together SAP partners and sales teams from different industries to hear and learn from experts about direction and focus for the year ahead, to leverage best practices with SAP experts and other partners, to get specifics on new and expanded programs and to discover and preview the latest SAP solutions and SAP S/4HANA capabilities. Colleagues from across the globe gathered together in Las Vegas to gain and exchange the latest information on SAP’s strategy, sales methodology, best practices, and product innovations. Clarkston Consulting and Crescense are both proud to have long-standing histories as SAP partners and I was glad to be able to attend this event again this year.
The overarching theme for 2020 SAP FKOM was ‘Forward Together’. The event program included Global and Regional Keynotes, a Best-Run Forum that educates on the delivery of exceptional client experiences, a Partner Connection Hub with SAP staff on hand to answer questions from the SAP partner ecosystem, and Partner Enablement Sessions that include workshops. Technologies featured this year include SAP S/4HANA with customer success. SAP’s technology and the cloud continue to function as the core of the business and the foundation that companies can use to support their digital objectives with SAP S/4HANA. One of the highlights for many people in attendance was Adaire Fox Martin’s keynote outlining SAP’s clear focus for 2020 as it relates to partner success and how it starts with Their “super awesome people”. Fox-Martin is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, leading Global Customer Operations in 71 countries.
In late October 2019 SAP and Microsoft announced their partnership for a first-in-market cloud migration offering between the two, calling it Project “Embrace”. This will allow companies to accelerate and modernize customer transitions to SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure. Microsoft was quoted as saying that “SAP will lead with Microsoft Azure to move on-premise SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA customers to the cloud through industry-specific best practices, reference architectures and cloud-delivered services. This includes future deployment and migration of existing direct SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud customers leveraging hyperscaler infrastructure. However, SAP continues with its longstanding policy of supporting choice for those customers who request alternatives based on business requirements.” Project “Embrace” will provide customers with a simplified move from on-premise editions of SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA, collaborative support model for simplified resolution, and jointly developed market journeys to support customer needs.
While there were no major announcements at the conference despite the accelerated focus around the aforementioned SAP and Microsoft Azure partnership – project “Embrace”, there was a large understanding that enterprises are evolving to stay ahead of the curve in their respective industries, and digitally transforming their business using SAP’s digital technology footprint. The same goes for our every own Life Sciences, Consumer Products, and Retail clients. This technology journey includes simplifying things, listening to the customer, and specifically aligning by domains of expertise either within industry verticals or sub-verticals and the domain expertise on products and channels that exist. SAP also recognized that they are getting some heated pressure from the market within different cloud solutions and that they should be growing cloud numbers by acquisition, not just in the core ERP space. There was a strong emphasis on not forgetting what got SAP to where they are today. The focus on ERP is important to the foundation and core of SAP.
Throughout the conference, the presentations tied back to these messages and the ways that data management (both big and small) through the various SAP software offerings, can help companies achieve their strategic goals in 2020 and beyond. We are also looking forward to the customer success stories in the future with the SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Azure partnership that is Project “Embrace” kicking off this year.
To learn more about Crescense or our perspective on FKOM, contact us at info@crescenseinc.com.