Author: Tom Fountain
Many mid-market businesses are facing a critical decision – do I upgrade my current SAP ECC solution to S/4, extend my current ECC solution with various bolt-ons, consider an alternative ERP platform, or simply defer the decision until End-of-Life considerations force a decision?
Here are some of the most critical considerations for determining your best ERP strategy:
Business Situation
- Where is your business in the business cycle? What is the best timing for an ERP-caliber Program considering availability and focus of key executives, functional leaders, process experts, and End Users?
- Can you establish a clear business case and TCO analysis for your chosen direction? Does that business case clearly state the impact on how your business meets key customer needs, the ability to respond to shorter and more dynamic business cycles, or other strategic considerations beyond purely financial measures?
- Can you identify a strong sponsor who can rally the business to support a long, complex, and disruptive program by successfully positioning the business imperatives to the entire workforce?
Business Process Needs & Opportunities
- Cataloging the most pressing business process challenges and opportunities will ensure focus and alignment on critical functionality, automation, speed, or other key business needs to not only show sponsors that key needs will be addressed but that your platform selection, integrator support, and other program elements will be keenly focused on what is most important.
Application Strategy
- Evaluate your current SAP ECC support timeline since SAP has extended mainstream maintenance for core ECC 6.0 applications until 2027, with optional extended maintenance until 2030 (at additional cost). Understand your timeline constraints.
- Consider the ERP alternatives and score each along criteria that balance business-facing functionality, TCO, supportability, flexibility etc. to present business decision-makers with an objective recommendation among the alternatives considered
- Assess technical debt in your current system, including custom code optimization and system cleanup.
- Review your integration landscape and how a non-S/4 decision may affect currently connected systems.
- Assess the licensing implications for any existing SAP products and/or new platforms to fully characterize the 1x and Run costs
Data Management
- Develop a data management strategy for any legacy data including extraction, cleansing, re-mapping, and governing to ensure a successful ERP Program and preparation for strategic analytics and AI opportunities
People Strategy
- Create a targeted skills retention plan for your current SAP environment (especially if moving away from SAP) and a development/acquisition plan for skills required for your target platform
Carefully considering, documenting, and trading off between these key criteria will improve every phase of your program – from selecting the right strategy, robustly engaging the business, selecting the right integrator, and most importantly improving your business competitiveness and ability to serve the business over the longer term.
