Four Benefits of SAP ECC to S/4HANA migration

Application modernisation is a critical element of any effort to optimise business processes. With the cloud becoming ingrained into enterprise IT infrastructure, business applications must be realigned to achieve optimum performance. The lifeblood of your business, ERP, cannot be left behind in your application modernisation journey. Having served enterprises and streamlined their resource management for years, SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) has had a long track record of performance, but with digital evolution taking precedence, it’s time enterprises refresh their SAP environment to gain more capabilities and yield greater outcomes.

Currently, in its sunset phase, support for SAP ECC will discontinue in 2027, but your business needs can’t wait until then. No new advancements are happening in this previous generation of ERP applications as SAP is phasing out ECC and moving its customers to S/4HANA. Realising the needs of the new-generation business environment and users with focus on agility, flexibility, simplicity and optimisation, a substantial base of enterprises has already completed the S/4HANA migration journey or are in various phases of completion.

The primary and biggest differentiator of S/4HANA is in-memory processing, which allows it to process huge volumes of real-time data at the database level. In addition, its inbuilt capabilities further help enterprises reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO), increase application performance and enable new applications to run in a real-time environment.

Key differentiators:

• Simplified data structure: SAP S/4HANA’s in-memory computing capabilities ensure that data remains in the main RAM, enabling faster data processing vis-à-vis other database types that fetch data from the hard disk.
• New-age technologies: The new generation of SAP environment is delivered with Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and embedded real-time predictive analytics, conversational UI, and other capabilities that provide access to a whole new world of Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT).
• Mobility: Amidst a fast-paced business environment, your employees need easy access to critical data and resources from anywhere, on any device. Mobility is one of the major ways how S/4HANA better equips your workforce, allowing them access to the ERP application from their mobile devices in a secure way.
• Intuitive front-end with Fiori apps: SAP S/4HANA offers better personalisation tools for front-end users to deliver superior and simplified user experiences.
• Forward and backward adaptability: It enables easy, seamless integration with your existing SAP applications portfolio. While improving the business processes, it delivers a competitive advantage by simplifying your ERP setup.

Here’s how enterprises can reap a host of business benefits by migrating to SAP S/4HANA.

Power to do more with your data

SAP S/4HANA allows businesses to harness the maximum potential of their data. With its ability to process and analyse large data sets in real-time, your business can be assured of rich insights to help you make data-driven decisions. Furthermore, in a marketplace defined by customer experience, an ERP environment that allows your teams to make sense of data seamlessly helps deliver personalised experiences to your end consumers. Equipped with ML and advanced analytics, SAP S/4HANA leverages data at the granular level to provide meaningful insights.

Greater flexibility and integration

With S/4HANA’s compatibility with a range of databases and ability to integrate seamlessly with the existing IT infrastructure and applications, enterprises gain more flexibility to run analytics without phasing out existing components of your ERP environment. It allows your teams to equip legacy systems with new analytical capabilities, thus holistically revamping your systems.

Freedom to scale when needed

Markets are dynamic, and customer needs evolve rapidly. Your digital environment must respond and adapt to these changes quickly. As your business grows, so do your IT needs. SAP S/4HANA gives you the freedom to scale your ERP environment within predictable timelines to ensure that your business remains unaffected. The solution also offers inbuilt storage optimisation through dynamic tiering, which keeps frequently accessed data in memory. At the same time, seldom-used data is moved automatically to disk when storage space runs low. In addition, its columnar storage and high-efficiency compression substantially reduce your data footprint.

Enabling innovation

Emerging technologies are making bigger inroads into enterprises’ digital strategies. Businesses today are constantly innovating to keep pace with the changing digital landscape. Enabling you to do just that, S/4HANA gives your business a competitive edge with the ability to deploy AI, ML and a plethora of new workloads within no time without affecting the performance of existing applications.

The future is HANA

As mentioned at the start of this blog, ECC will become obsolete in 2027, and customers will need to make the transition sooner or later. The sooner businesses start running on SAP HANA, the more they stand to gain in an ever-changing competitive marketplace. Therefore, the decision should be considered with a structured migration approach. Holistic planning, thus, becomes critical to ensure your business gets the best from your SAP S/4HANA deployment and leveraging the expertise of an SAP-certified partner helps achieve it seamlessly.

Key SAP S/4HANA innovations at a glance

• Analytics took a big turn, adapting to the new era of visual representations with the use of AI and ML techniques with ease in each business use case
• Another game-changer is Process Orchestration (PO), which made hopping and connecting any technology and platform with SAP a real-time possibility
• CFO solutions, Universal Journal and Digital Board room, add an extra mile into the real arena of Finance Analytics
• Material Requirement Planning (MRP LIVE), Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) and Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PPDS) have added the right mix of information analytics that make SAP more productive and conducive to business needs.

Click here to learn how your business can make this transition with Yotta