Business data has become a commodity, which makes investing in the right technology a critical part of any successful business strategy, says Dr Setumo Mohapi, Chief Go-to-Market Officer from Dimension Data.

The strategic application of technology has become a business necessity. It is the enabler of productivity and agility, the driver of scale and mobility, and the tool that can support the organisation in fully realising scale, opportunity and functionality.

In the evolving digital landscape, organisations can leverage technology as a service, as a tool that allows for scale up or down on demand, and as a platform from which to launch additional services and solutions.

However, the consistent evolution of technology to support improved processes and capabilities does introduce significant change, and the upcoming end-of-support deadline for Â鶹ԭ´´ customers is a change that will impact business-critical processes for numerous organisations globally. In 2027, Â鶹ԭ´´ finally says goodbye to its stalwart ERP system, ECC6 and Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA becomes the new normal.

It’s not a sudden move. Â鶹ԭ´´ has had the deadline on the cards for quite some time, but the goalposts are now set in stone and the next five years should see organisations focus on strategies that will allow them to make the move to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA with minimum disruption.

All Â鶹ԭ´´ customers have to migrate their systems across to the new platform and this requires significant planning to overcome some of the biggest challenges that organisations face when it comes to making such a disruptive move – skills to manage the process; optimising processes and applications; and managing risk.

Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA migration challenges

As can be expected, there are numerous challenges when changing a critical business system like Â鶹ԭ´´ ERP, but three challenges stand out and require the business to take note of.

Firstly, the organisation has to ensure a deep understanding of its existing operating environment to identify risks and potential pitfalls and to manage these appropriately. A lack of visibility of existing business processes and infrastructure can end up costing the business serious time and money when making the move to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA, and these are two resources that organisations usually have in short supply.

The second challenge is that the move to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4 HANA is not a simple lift and shift and the six years left to deadline is not as long as it sounds, especially if you consider how many boxes need to be checked, i’s dotted and t’s crossed. You can’t just replace the existing infrastructure and systems; migration likely needs either a full Â鶹ԭ´´ ERP re-implementation or a significant data shift and this has to take the requisite end-user training and process optimisation into account. This introduces another challenge: skills. There are not enough people with the right skillsets to help every business make the right move at speed. This skills crisis was already existent due to geopolitical challenges and limitations, but has been made even more complex and challenging thanks to the pandemic.

The last challenge is optimisation. What’s more important than meeting the Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4 HANA deadline is using the opportunity to optimise existing processes and functionality to align to modern data processing methods and get the most business value from Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA. This move is an opportunity to refine the capabilities of the business and fully realise the potential of the new platform, but it is equally the time to draw a hard line under legacy approaches, applications and models. Don’t lift old problems into a new architecture.

The business benefit of Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA running in the cloud

Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4 HANA comes with numerous business benefits, especially when deployed on a hyper-scaler cloud platform like Microsoft Azure. If managed properly, cloud technology can help the organisation to scale up or down at speed to accommodate changing computing demands and other business drivers like mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

Benefits like access to multiple application and data management services and improved functional capacity; reduced risk; transformation of the total cost of ownership and delivery of measurable cost benefits to the business; and utilising the myriad benefits that come with the as a service business model. As stated before, the move to the new platform introduces several challenges that have to be overcome to realise the business benefits. The challenges, however, do not need to be faced alone, Dimension Data has the experience to migrate and operate a next-generation, mission-critical ERP landscape that delivers unparalleled uptime, solid service delivery, application innovation, all at a significant scale

The post When End of Life Meets Business-Critical appeared first on Â鶹ԭ´´ Africa News Center.

If you’re running Â鶹ԭ´´ ECC6, you are probably already aware that you will need to move to the more powerful Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA before ECC6 support ends in 2030. But did you know that many of our UVARs members are already supporting ECC6 customers to move?

Our United VARs members have reported that the top three reasons for their customers to start migrating now from ECC to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA are:

• Needing to innovate to remain competitive and grow their business.
• The availability of fixed price, fixed timeline conversion packages via the UVARs members and network.
• Wanting to ‘beat the rush’ and complete the move to S/4HANA before too many other Â鶹ԭ´´ customers compete for the available global consultants and technical expertise.

Don’t leave it too late to innovate

The official ECC to S/4HANA migration deadline might feel like a long way away right now. But Â鶹ԭ´´ is no longer creating innovations on the ECC system. This means your business could go many years without benefiting from the latest technologies.

It is not enough any more to do ‘business as usual’. Companies with streamlined, automated processes and an advanced ERP platform built for innovation are the only ones who can thrive in this increasingly data-focused, digital world.

Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4 HANA users can adapt and innovate quickly to meet ever-changing customer needs with a speed and flexibility not seen in legacy ERP environments. The transactional core, such as finance and ordering, remains stable so you can create point solutions easily around the edge.

De-risk your move with UVARs S/4 conversion packages

You can minimise project risk by preparing well in advance. If you take the first step in your journey to S/4HANA now, you will have plenty of time to find out what needs to be done. It makes sense to get your master data in order well before migrating, to make sure the project doesn’t get derailed at a later stage. You can get help from a United VARs member to assess your current IT landscape and understand exactly what you need to work on before the move.

We now have a proven methodology to support all Â鶹ԭ´´ ECC customers to have a faster, cost-effective transition to S/4HANA. United VARs members have tailored packages which enable you to migrate for a fixed scope, timeline and price. As the first step in your journey to S/4, United VARs members provide assessment packages prior to the technical conversion, training and other essential services for your move.

United VARs members’ standardised package offerings combine the in-depth knowledge of local requirements and resources in the countries your offices are based in, with the ability to deliver remote tasks globally in a nearshore or offshore environment.

It is essential you get the best advice on all the local requirements for tax and legal reasons. Which is why a blend of front-end ‘on the ground’ expertise and back-end conversion via United VARs and Â鶹ԭ´´ certified packages delivered by our members are the fastest, most cost-effective way for you to upgrade to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA.

UVARs Conversion Factory Network for a faster, more cost-effective transition

As part of these conversion packages, members also have access to our worldwide network of UVARs Conversion Factories. This means they can do the technical aspects of your conversion remotely. Our Conversion Factories take care of the standardised, repetitive executions which the same for each customer, which keeps costs down.
All certified UVARs Conversion Factories are specialists in ECC to S/4 conversions, so you can be sure your technical conversion is being done by experts.

The right partner for a smooth move to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA

UVARs is a huge community with advanced, global capabilities. We are working together to support our customers’ transition from ECC to S/4HANA. Here are a few reasons why we are the natural choice for your move to S/4:

• With 90+ countries covered by our 50+ members, you can be sure that wherever you need us, we’re already there.
• We all deliver standardised services and technical capabilities on a constantly repeated basis so we are efficient and capable, having already gone through the learning curve.
• As a network, we have done many conversions and so the outcomes and results are predictable. We can tell you each step of the way how much each phase will cost and how long it will take.
• We can also make the results clear to you in advance. Our global conversion factory network is available in each region of the world for every customer.
•  Standardized conversion packages offer you the opportunity to have fixed-price projects with predictable outcomes.
• By leveraging labour advantages in near-shore or off-shore UVARS Conversion Factories, we can reduce your financial investment.

The post How Factories and Packages can Ease your Move to Â鶹ԭ´´ S/4HANA appeared first on Â鶹ԭ´´ Africa News Center.