SAP S/4HANA

An ERP solution for all business cases

S/4HANA is the latest IT solution from the pioneering enterprise resource planning (ERP) firm SAP. Running on an in-memory database, this intelligent and integrated system allows you to make business-critical decisions with access to real-time information across your business.

As a future-ready ERP system with built-in intelligent technologies, including AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics. Leveraging the Cloud Editon can deliver the latest industry best practices and innovations into your integrated business functions.

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Hosting S/4HANA - What Are Your Options?

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As a ready-to-run public cloud ERP system, SAP S/4HANA delivers the latest industry best practices and continuous innovation for finance and procurement. This preconfigured solution allows you to connect your disparate business assets efficiently, swiftly, and affordably without adding extraneous complexity. Customers can quickly troubleshoot potential issues because of the preinstalled Software as a Service (SaaS) functionality. What’s more, options for ongoing support with a partner are readily available should that better suit your business case. This edition was built to allow a broad range of customers to get the most out of their cloud ERP owing to its simplified UI and agile software. Accordingly, this makes SAP S/4HANA an ideal choice for engaging workforces.

The Public Cloud Edition can come as part of a GROW package, an offering from SAP that helps small to midsize enterprises (SMEs) use cloud ERP in an efficient and user-friendly way. Deployment is quick and flexible due to its utilisation of AI and best practices, allowing customers to enjoy the benefits of a cloud-native ERP solution. It also allows customers to integrate and customise their apps and processes with SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Icon representing the private cloud edition of SAP S/4HANA; a cloud with padlock

A cloud ERP solution that adapts to your needs and protects your SAP ERP investment. It supports SAP S/4HANA software with 25 industry processes, though some features may be limited. Furthermore, you can use RISE with SAP to move to the cloud quickly and get extensive ERP functionality. This edition lets you extend and modify your system with biennial SAP upgrades.

Icon representing the on-premise edition of SAP S/4HANA; a cloud with padlock

On-Premise

This is a self-hosted ERP solution with full functionality, real-time analytics, and financial accuracy. Therefore, it integrates with SAP marketing, collaboration, and network tools and supports service management. Microsoft Azure can host this solution, hence allowing for solid infrastructure, connectivity, VMs, storage, and event integration.

Your SAP S/4HANA implementation: Where to Start?

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Button for a Brownfield Implementation of SAP S/4HANA

Frequently Asked Questions

Whilst SAP S/4HANA is designed to tackle a business’ finance and procurement needs out of the box, additional functionalities can be configured by installing other specialised modules. These modules collectively cover a broad suite of business cases including data analytics, HR & payroll, and oil and gas logistics among others. Whilst an implementation of any of these modules individually is technically possible, setting them up as part of a larger S/4HANA project will allow users to leverage their full capabilities.

Like with any system upgrade, SAP have nipped and tucked various functionalities as well as adding and removing some. The main difference between the SAP S/4HANA and ECC is the type of database they use. ECC can operate on any database, including third-party and, more recently, HANA. On the other hand, S/4HANA runs only on the HANA database, which is an in-memory database developed and tuned by SAP for faster performance and real-time reporting.

S/4HANA presents a simplified UI for SAP Fiori, which is different from the classical SAP GUI UI in ECC. This not only makes some value propositions of SAP S/4HANA very tangible but also offers end users an impression of the new user experience.

Please note that the transition from SAP ERP 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA is a significant undertaking that involves changes to business processes, data migration, and potential re-training for some end users. Whilst there are undoubtedly transferable skills between the two versions, it’s still recommended to carefully plan this transition considering the specific needs and context of your organisation as well the fast approaching 2025 deadline.

SAP has built S/4HANA with SMEs in mind, meaning the solution is well-equipped for their unique business needs. In fact, SAP estimates that 80% of their current user base are SMEs.

Despite the software’s handiness for SMEs, S/4HANA is fully up to the task for larger organisations too.

S/4HANA uses AI to enhance business processes, analyse data, and give predictive insights. SAP hopes to further consolidate this AI functionality in 2024 with the introduction of Joule, an AI assistant integrated into SAP’s cloud-based platforms that aims to provide various business solutions via generative AI that is relevant, reliable, and responsible. The assistant can analyse data from SAP and third-party sources to provide critical business insights from across different domains, such as HR, finance, supply chain, procurement, and customer experience.

SAP Joule is already available in SuccessFactors, and will be deployed across the rest of S/4HANA throughout 2024.

The date of which SAP will end Maintenance for SAP ERP customers has always been driven by the deadline for conversion.

In February 2020, SAP announced an extension of mainstream maintenance for ERP 6.0 customers on EHP 6, 7 and 8.

Maintenance for these customers has been extended up until the end of 2027, with further extended maintenance options through to 2030.

We advise you to start building your business case for S/4HANA as the industry is gearing up for this shift. Absoft is well-versed in S/4HANA migrations and our teams have the skills, knowledge and track record. Speak to our S/4HANA migration experts to review your options and journey.

Resources

RISE With SAP S/4HANA: Private Cloud Edition – Your Questions Answered

[Webinar Replay] Lessons Learned from SAP S/4HANA Cloud and RISE with SAP: How do you prepare your technical team?

Case Study – Marshall Trailers’ digital transformation and growth with ADIMA

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Get In Touch

Greenfield

A Greenfield implementation is a new implementation of an S/4HANA system, starting from the very beginning. This approach can be used by companies who are completely new to SAP, but it’s popular among existing SAP customers who would like to use this as an opportunity to re-engineer their processes and who would like to start using best practice processes for their industry.

Brownfield

A Brownfield implementation is a conversion of the existing SAP ERP system into an S/4HANA system. Retaining the existing configuration and data, brownfield conversions are a great choice for customers with an existing implementation that meets their needs with mostly optimal business processes and data structure.