A business may undergo a transformation for a variety of reasons. It could be the result of new technology, market shifts, low profit and turnover resulting in cost cutting, or a merger and acquisition. These factors are critical for a company's success, necessitating a change in the business ecosystem.

Introduction

Business transformation is a change management strategy that encompasses any shift, realignment, or adjustment in a company's operations. The goal is to improve the company's alignment with its business strategy and vision by changing processes, people, or systems (technology) in accordance to the type of change being brought over.

What is Business Transformation?

Business transformation is divided into four categories: <ul><li>business process, </li><li>business model, </li><li>domain, and </li><li>cultural/organizational.</li></ul>

Types of Business Transformation

Businesses nowadays are focusing a lot on business processes. Data, analytics, APIs, machine learning, and other new technologies provide businesses with useful new opportunities to reinvent processes. Process transformation may add tremendous value, and technology adoption in many areas is quickly becoming a must.

Business Process Transformation

Businesses are in persuasion of digital technologies in order to change traditional business paradigms. Business process transformation focusses on a business, whereas, business model transformations focus on the fundamental building blocks of a business answering the question of how value is delivered in a company. Corporations that achieve business model transformation open up huge new prospects for growth in the market.

Business Model Transformation

Domain transformation covers the portion where a business can entirely change its business goals with respect to its focus in the market. Technological advances are redefining products and services. Many executives are unaware of the very real potential for these new technologies to open up entirely new markets for their firms and it is frequently this type of transformation that provides the most opportunity to generate new value.

Domain Transformation

A very long and unending digital transformation requires the employees to work together with the right mindset to cope up with the digital world. Certified B2B enterprises recognize that digital requires agile workflows, more interests in testing and learning, decentralized decision-making, and a greater reliance on business ecosystems.

Cultural Transformation

A business may undergo a transformation for a variety of reasons. It could be the result of new technology, market shifts, low profit and turnover resulting in cost cutting, or a merger and acquisition. These factors are critical for a company's success, necessitating a change in the business ecosystem.

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Every Business needs to update its technology and adapt to the changing needs and market conditions along with it are the challenges in moving to the new SAP S/4HANA Product Suite. The Idea focuses on how SAP ECC Systems can be transformed and the key steps involved during the transformation.

<ul><li>Start by creating a high-level plan</li><li>Understand your current landscape</li><li>Identify different ways of moving to S/4HANA</li><li>Conduct a feasibility analysis</li><li>Are all the solutions and solutions available on ECC also available on S/4HANA?</li><li>Identify the advantages of moving to S/4HANA</li></ul>

How to get started

<ol><li>What is your current SAP system landscape?</li><li>How many systems do you have?</li><li>How many users do you have?</li><li>Which version of SAP are you currently running?</li><li>Do you have any custom developments in place?</li></ol>

Answer key Questions

<ol><li>What are your key user applications?</li><li>Which parts of your application landscape will be affected by this migration and what will be the impact on business processes in these areas?</li><li>Are there any processes that use non-SAP systems or data sources (e.g., Unix jobs, mainframe files)?</li><li>What are your current resources for supporting the existing systems and how will this change after migration to S/4HANA?</li><li>Are there any upcoming projects that would need to be integrated with the new system (e.g., CRM, BI)?</li></ol>

Identify Potential Challenges & Risks

<ol><li>Reviewing business process flows;</li><li>Identifying pain points;</li><li>Understanding critical success factors;</li><li>Determining key process improvement opportunities;</li><li>Collecting requirements for future capabilities needed;</li><li>Discussing required changes or extensions to standard functionality based on regulatory or other requirements</li></ol>

Focus on Design Thinking Workshops

There are two options: New implementation and System Conversion which are opted by the industries worldwide. While there is also a Bluefield Approach which involves Selective Data Transition. I would like to focus more on the below 2 approaches in this articles

Know different ways of Moving to S/4HANA

The first option is called New Implementation. This is where you start from scratch and decide on the level of functionality that you want to implement in your organization. There are up to three different levels-SAP Best Practice, SAP Activate or a Customized Project for example. You will also have the opportunity to activate various S/4HANA modules and applications as well as preconfigured business processes based on Best Practices from SAP. I will go into more detail about this methodology at a later stage of this blog series.

New Implementation

The second option is called System Conversion and involves converting an existing ECC system to S/4HANA (on premise or cloud). You can choose between In-Place conversion or Landscape Transformation which I will explain in further detail later in this blog series.

System Conversion

In order to address challenges in knowing your business impacts and the stakeholders involved, <a href="https://ktern.com/">KTern.AI </a>helps with its <a href="https://ktern.com/digital-maps/business-process-mining">process mining </a>that helps with providing detailed insights of your current landscape.

Process Discovery tools like KTern.AI

<ol><li>Transitioning to S/4HANA requires a lot of planning and testing</li><li>The timeline depends on the size of the company and the industry</li><li>Planning should be done in stages</li><li>You need to check for compatibility of your existing solutions with S/4HANA</li></ol>

Recommended Timeline

<ol><li>First, learn about S/4HANA capabilities.</li><li>Next, identify what aspects of your current system won't work well and need improvement.</li><li>Then, decide which business processes are most important to transition first (i.e., what systems do you need up and running immediately after the move?).</li><li>As part of this third stage, you should also conduct compatibility checks on all your existing solutions to make sure they will still run smoothly when integrated with S/4HANA Cloud and other new tools you want to add to the mix during the transition phase</li></ol>

Conduct Feasibility Analysis

<ol><li>System Discovery : Locate all instances of your SAP landscape and connect them with KTern.AI's Digital Maps</li><li>Process Analysis : Identify high-risk areas where changes will need to be made - such as the finance or supply chain modules - by analyzing your current business processes.</li><li>Functional Mapping : Test how your existing solutions integrate with S/4HANA, and identify gaps so you know which ones to replace.</li></ol>

Steps in Feasibility Study

<ol><li>Improvements to the user experience</li><li>Simplified data model</li><li>Integration of data from multiple sources</li><li>Ability to create custom apps</li><li>Increased business agility</li><li>Improved data security</li><li>Reduced hardware costs</li></ol>

Key Advantages of S/4HANA

Every Business needs to update its technology and adapt to the changing needs and market conditions along with it are the challenges in moving to the new SAP S/4HANA Product Suite. The article focuses on how SAP ECC Systems can be transformed and the key steps involved during the transformation. Source Article : https://ktern.com/article/how-sap-ecc-systems-can-be-migrated-to-s-4hana-and-challenges-faced-by-a-cio-during-a-digital-transformation/

Every Business needs to update their technology and adapt to the changing needs and market conditions with it are the key steps in moving to the new SAP S/4HANA Product Suite.

How SAP ECC Systems can be transformed to S/4HANA ?

In my previous article, I spoke about how ECC can be better transformed to S/4HANA and what are the key steps to look at before even starting it. In this article, we would deeper into the SAP transformation journey and focus more on how to start and prepare the baseline before embarking on the journey. We can also call this to be the Pre-Discover phase, where we set up the required baselines in order to achieve the transformation goals be it Greenfield Implementation or Brownfield Conversion.

While there are plenty of reasons to start your project early, also keep in mind that there may be things that will inevitably arise as you move through your project. For example, you may need to spend more time than expected on data migration or conversion. Or you may realize that it takes longer than anticipated to create and implement custom code for new business processes. Regardless of why projects slip, one thing’s for certain – with S/4HANA – it’s much harder (and more expensive) to re-plan later in the game if your initial timeline gets thrown off course.

Start Early

<ol><li>Determine how many users you’ll need by geography and by role;</li><li>Think about which modules and functions you want;</li><li>Decide what kind of hardware platform best suits your needs;</li><li>Consider whether or not an SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud solution makes sense for your business;</li><li>Make sure you have a plan for post-implementation support costs;</li><li>Set a realistic target date for your SAP S/4 HANA project.</li><li>Identify the scope of your project to determine the functionality you want from your new system.</li><li>Define your organization’s business needs and goals and understand the business processes that will be affected</li></ol>

Checklist Before S/4HANA Transformation

<ol><li>Understand the SAP Activate Methodology so that you can have a clear expectation of the project and activities in place.</li><li>Learn about the Automation Platforms like <a href="https://ktern.com/">KTern.AI </a>that can make your life easier by providing automation for all tasks including <a href="https://ktern.com/digital-projects/digital-workspace">project workspace </a>, analysis, template generation, documentation, etc.</li><li>Understand the Readiness Check which will help in identifying gaps and reduce risks.</li><li>Try to get early access to the S/4HANA Cloud Sandbox if possible so that you can understand its capabilities and functionalities better</li></ol>

Find Tools and Automation

<ol><li>Make sure the steering committee is actively engaged</li><li>Make sure senior leaders are on the steering committee</li><li>Make sure the steering committee is empowered to make decisions</li></ol>

Have a Steering committee

<ol><li>Know what you want to get out of the project</li><li>Understand how your business processes work today</li><li>Understand how your business processes will work in the future</li><li>See what your competitors are doing</li><li>Use a business process modeling tool to model your future business processes</li></ol>

Understand Your Current Landscape

How ECC can be better transformed to S/4HANA and what are the key steps to look at before even starting it. In this ideas, we would deeper into the SAP transformation journey and focus more on how to start and prepare the baseline before embarking on the journey

A blog on the best practices while undergoing an SAP transformation project and how to stay ahead during an S/4HANA Transformation

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

KTern.AI DXaaS Transformation
@kternai

Accelerate your RISE with SAP Business Transformations using KTern.AI

How SAP ECC Systems can be transformed to S/4HANA ?

Best Practices to Stay Ahead of Your S/4HANA Transformation Project

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

KTern.AI DXaaS Transformation@kternai

Accelerate your RISE with SAP Business Transformations using KTern.AI

How SAP ECC Systems can be transformed to S/4HANA ?

Best Practices to Stay Ahead of Your S/4HANA Transformation Project

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

KTern.AI DXaaS Transformation
@kternai