The future has a name: S/4HANA

By José Carlos Pimentel, Commercial Director at Homine

The question today is not IF companies will migrate from SAP ECC to S/4HANA – but WHEN. Of course, no one can force the company to leave SAP ECC, although the end of support for this version is planned for 2025.

CEOs, CIOs and CFOs have two paths: they can continue to use the system they have invested time and money in deploying, customizing and improving; or they can convert this technology and adopt new practices with the most modern ERP.

I ask: is keeping pre-S/4HANA versions the best decision for companies? The answer is not simple and we cannot generalize. The conversion to S/4HANA requires a particular analysis of each company's scenario. However, if you are looking for innovation, automation and cutting-edge technology, then the answer is yes.

In the long term, the adoption of S/4HANA is inevitable. It's the future. The sooner the company adheres to the new ERP, the better it will be for its business, connecting it to the era of Experience Economy. It's a path of no return.

However, in these more than 25 years serving SAP customers, I realize that this technological conversion requires a change of mindset of the stakeholders. Although the directors defend the culture data driven, most of them rely on o-date, operational and structured, transactional or intangible data that can be extracted from your ERPs.

The S/4HANA revolution proposes to go much further than that, towards the X-Date, from data based on feedbacks, feelings and emotions of customers. That is, business will be conducted in real time, combining O-Data and X-Data and exploring new functionalities that technology will add to the organization's services and products.

It is worth remembering that SAP is committed to reducing human work in routines and transactions by up to 50% in the next 3 years. This obviously involves the adoption of S/4HANA, since ECC 6 will require the hiring of AI, RPA and other technologies to achieve the same goal.

And what do we hear from the market? According to the report SAP Customers on the Move to SAP W/4HANA, managers who migrated their systems to S/4HANA were looking to advance their digital strategy, have a more agile ERP, innovate and scale their operations. Another interesting argument is to make IT a provider of innovations, adding value to the business.

From my point of view, the biggest fear of decision makers is to lose what they have already achieved in the current version of SAP when converting the system. Many are also unclear about the gains that S/4HANA brings to the business.

Of course, consultancies such as homine have a delivery team, specialized in SAP, which customizes S/4HANA according to the company's objectives and is available to answer questions about ERP migration.

The key question is: when to migrate? Of course, whoever takes the lead reaps the rewards sooner, following in the same footsteps as the market, business and society. But it is also important to establish the optimal point for this migration in view of the investments already made, to be made and the business objectives.

What are your company's plans? Share with me your impressions, expectations and doubts about this migration to S/4HANA. You can comment by contacting us here through the website or sending an email to comercial@homine.tech. I would love to be able to help!