Today’s exceptionally competitive business environment is requiring businesses to automate their operations to establish an advantage over competitors that don’t. Many business leaders see RISE with SAP as the right tool to support a digital transformation that will improve the company’s efficiency, agility, and ability to innovate.
Experience has shown that using RISE with SAP to migrate to SAP S/4HANA can be a complex undertaking. Companies that don’t do it well never realize the benefits the migration to RISE offers and get left behind in the competitive race. Companies that do it well recognize the challenges and put plans in place to address them successfully to benefit from their new modern platform.
What is RISE with SAP?
The SAP definition of RISE with SAP is “A complete offering of SAP S/4HANA Subscription licenses, cloud solutions, infrastructure, and services that helps migrate your SAP ERP and empowers you to thrive in the cloud.” It bundles existing SAP assets to provide Business Transformation-as-a-Service (BTaaS), and consists of a number of components, including:
- Embedded tools and services to facilitate the migration process, and a learning hub to help educate the workforce.
- SAP business process intelligence to facilitate process redesign.
- An SAP business technology platform.
- An SAP business network.
RISE with SAP can be deployed on a SAP S/4HANA public or private cloud. It can run on Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). There is one contract that governs SLAs, operations, and issue management without the need for separate contracts for each component.
Different features are available for different types of users. There is no single way to utilize RISE with SAP, and that presents some unique challenges.
Top 5 Migration Challenges
The need to migrate to RISE with SAP is well defined, along with the advantages a business can expect after a successful migration. Therefore, it’s worth the effort to overcome the five critical challenges most companies face to achieve success.
1. Developing the Business Case
When migrating to RISE with SAP, the business case is an important first step. The project team and extended partners need to understand RISE with SAP in enough detail to identify opportunities for implementing it and the potential benefits. Without a vision of what the business will look like after implementing RISE with SAP, there are no solid goals to aim for. It’s important to define the company’s future state and provide justification for the project.
2. Identifying the Best Commercial Structure
Choosing the right commercial structure isn’t always straightforward. SAP offers several versions of its commercial package of SAP S/4HANA licenses:
- Private Edition. This edition has three tiers: Base, Premium, and Premium Plus. Each tier has a unique set of features.
- Public Edition. This edition has two tiers: Base and Premium. Each of these tiers also comes with a unique set of features.
It’s critical to choose the right one for a specific RISE project.
3. Developing a Roadmap
Because ERP systems are such a critical part of running any business, developing a roadmap isn’t as easy as defining one for a single-purpose application in a slow-moving marketplace. ERP technology and ERP requirements change rapidly. A roadmap needs to look to the future to predict what requirements and opportunities are developing.
AI is a prime example of the speed with which technology is changing. As generative AI is becoming more widely used, businesses are seeing more and more applications to use it to help their companies grow. A RISE with SAP roadmap needs to address emerging technologies and anticipated SAP product announcements that a company may need to integrate into various business processes.
4. Developing a Migration Plan
The many moving parts in a migration of this type make developing a solid plan even more essential than usual. This is just a short list of the components that may need to be addressed:
- Managing change
- Maintaining two systems
- Managing the interdependencies among the SAP S/4HANA technology stack
- Upgrading the ECC installation before migrating
- SAP S/4HANA upgrades
5. Choosing the Right Operating Model
SAP customers have the choice of four different operating models: SAP S/4HANA on Premises, RISE with SAP Private Cloud Edition, RISE with SAP Public Cloud Edition as well as the more recently launched, RISE on PE-CDC. Determining which operating model will serve a company the best over time requires analyzing a long list of considerations.
Partners are the Key to Overcoming RISE with SAP Migration Challenges
Many SAP experts believe that the key to a successful migration is the partner you add to your migration team. And there are good reasons for that.
- The ongoing IT labor shortage is making it difficult to find the talent needed for regular operations, but hiring SAP migration experts is even more problematic. There is also the problem of what to do with those experts after the migration is completed.
- Most company’s IT experts will participate in an SAP migration a limited number of times in their careers with each migration being unique. It’s not a skill internal IT teams can develop over multiple projects.
- While some companies have established IT teams experienced in managing SAP in the Cloud, many don’t. Attempting a migration without experts in managing the outcome can be devastating.
A collaborative effort between internal IT teams and external partners is the answer. The company teams know their business intimately, and migration partners have the experience and expertise to ensure a smooth migration. The right partner can help a business address all five key challenges, and many more.
Lemongrass and RISE with SAP
If you’re looking for a migration partner, Lemongrass should be on your list. We have a long-standing and synergistic relationship with SAP. We’ve been a Service Partner since 2009, an SAP Development partner since 2012, and we’re a certified RISE with SAP partner. In addition, Lemongrass has a large, highly certified SAP team with over a decade of SAP on Cloud skills.
Working together, we can ensure that you succeed in migrating using RISE on SAP and reap the benefits that will grow your business and improve profitability. Depending on your needs, we have a complete portfolio of services that can assist you including Advisory Services, Migration Services, Operational Services and Innovation Services.
However you decide to migrate using RISE with SAP, you have a sometimes daunting but laudable task ahead of you. If you need additional insight, experience, and expertise to round out your migration team, we’re here to help.
