RISE with SAP brings together the applications, platforms, tools, and services that an organization needs to update essential business solutions and achieve their transformation goals in a cloud environment. This allows them to innovate and achieve their transformation goals on their terms and on their timeline, becoming an intelligent enterprise. At the core of RISE with SAP is SAP S/4HANA Cloud, a cloud ERP that is managed and optimized by SAP. SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides advanced functionality that helps organizations innovate and transform. This includes embedded artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, and intelligent process automation. An in-memory database, SAP HANA Cloud, delivers exceptional performance while the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is a foundation for innovation. The consumer-grade user experience is redesigned and enhanced, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud also includes industry-specific capabilities and best practices.
However, organizations moving to RISE with SAP may be unsure of where to start their move. With many existing SAP ERP customers having complex landscapes this can lead to confusion about whether it makes more sense to start with data preparation, business process transformation, or custom code analysis. Another challenge may be the need to complete the project as quickly as possible while still leveraging RISE with SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud to achieve organizational transformation goals.
To help optimize the move, SAP offers solutions to help customers in each of the three phases of their journey with RISE with SAP - preparing for the move, accelerating the move once organizations start their deployment, and running RISE with SAP while continuously innovating. Additionally, SAP offers solution extensions that prepare data, handle documents, and simplify finance operations throughout these three phases. These solution extensions optimize software quality assurance and testing that makes the move to RISE with SAP faster.
Preparing for the Move to RISE with SAP
For those moving to RISE with SAP
one of the biggest challenges involved in the move are the complexity of the existing data landscape. Most organizations today have landscapes that combine SAP and non-SAP solutions which makes their journey to the cloud riskier and more complex. In addition, many organizations struggle with educating internal resources on the changes that a move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud brings, as well as freeing up internal resources to work on the transformation to derive the maximum benefit from the move.
SAP Solution Extensions for RISE with SAP help organizations put in place the right resources so that they can be fully prepared for the move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This includes extensions for data migration, document access and archiving, and simplifying financial operations during the preparation phase of the move.
Data preparation is a key part of the move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. With many changes happening behind the scenes, plus an imperative to ensure data is ready for using AI in the new solution, having the right tools is crucial.
SAP Advanced Data Migration and Management by Syniti helps organizations ensure their data is ready for SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
SAP Advanced Data Migration and Management builds on the benefits offered in RISE with SAP to help control costs by reducing the need for manual intervention and simplifying the migration processes using a built-in methodology and best practices. The solution helps with Increasing visibility into activities such as creating data definitions and rules reveals insights that enable continuous improvement. Facilitating learning and reusing content leverages wisdom acquired from earlier efforts, speeding, time to value and improving quality and consistency. By tapping into powerful cloud-based functionality and artificial intelligence (AI), users can streamline data migrations, foster collaboration and decision making, and spur innovation while accommodating growth and acquisitions.
According to research commissioned by SAP, organizations utilizing SAP Advanced Data Migration and Management have seen up to a 38% reduction in migration costs. The same research also showed a 46% faster move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This makes the solution a key consideration for organizations planning a move to RISE with SAP.
Just as important as data preparation is document access and archiving as part of the business process. Every business today uses documents to enhance productivity and efficiency. But it is particularly important for organizations moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud need to understand how they will store, archive, and retrieve the documents that are used in their existing systems once they move to the new system while maintain the business context.
SAP Archiving and Document Access by OpenText helps achieve these goals for all types of documents.
No matter whether they originated inside or outside an SAP system, are structured or unstructured, SAP Archiving and Document Access helps those moving to RISE with SAP reduce risk by improving compliance processes, and access archived, integrated content from almost anywhere. This helps streamline the decommissioning of legacy systems once organizations have moved to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and helps accelerate upgrades and migrations while minimizing downtime.
Using SAP Archiving and Document Access has demonstrated significant benefits for users. This includes completing document migrations 35% faster, a 25% improvement in making vendor payments, accounts payable teams being 37% more efficient, and a 16% improvement in compliance team efficiency. In addition, organizations reported 191 additional hours of productivity per year per 100 users, and a $5.36 million savings in invoicing and accounts payable per year per organization.
Those who have moved to SAP S/4HANA Cloud have found that being able to include their business teams in the preparation phase has made the overall move more successful. But these are critical resources who have limited time to be engaged in a large project. Having a solution that helps streamline and simplify financial operations can offer major benefits in this regard.
SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by Blackline addresses this challenge by replacing traditional financial practices with leading practices. The solution provides automated closing features which free up key personnel and saves time, money, and resources. The solution extensions help optimize account reconciliation with standardized templates, automation, and workflows. They also maximize the efficiency of financial close processes by using automated reconciliation features. SAP Account Substantiation and Automation provides users with real-time variance analysis and maintains continuity and transparency between new and legacy systems.
Companies that have used SAP Account Substantiation and Automation have reported a 28% increase in efficiency in accounting teams, 18% more efficient auditing teams, and a 17% reduction in period-close reporting. This has allowed organizations to be much better prepared for their move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Accelerating the Move to RISE with SAP
Preparation for the move to RISE with SAP is key, but once organizations are fully prepared it is important to ensure that the move itself goes as smoothly as possible. One of the primary ways to achieve this goal is to ensure that application testing is properly assessed, designed, and optimized. This is because effective testing helps organizations move quickly to a new landscape or deploy new solutions more rapidly.
SAP application testing solutions by Tricentis help organizations simplify and cost effectively optimize their testing processes. This is achieved through answering four questions: Is the data correct? What do we need to test? Does the application work? And does the application perform? SAP Solution Extensions by Tricentis provide solutions that address each of these questions, and help customers accelerate their innovation and release cycles, reduce risk in critical business processes, increase support for real-time insights, and lower costs by reducing manual testing efforts.
Bolstering Data Accuracy
One of the most important parts of any business solution is data accuracy. If the data is not correct, the business cannot function.
SAP Enterprise Data Integrity Testing by Tricentis ensures that data remains accurate wherever it travels and whatever processes impact it.
SAP Change Impact Analysis by Tricentis analyzes the impact of software changes, updates, and upgrades across complex SAP business processes. This allows organizations to identify risks to business processes when making changes to SAP software.
SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing by Tricentis allows organizations to create better testing processes for SAP and third-party solutions using advanced automation, AI, and risk-based testing plans. This accelerates transformation by reducing risk associated with application changes. Finally,
SAP Enterprise Performance Testing by Tricentis makes cloud-based testing available and helps ensure applications perform under heavy loads, more effectively supporting digital transformation.
Together, companies that have used these solution extensions from Tricentis can realize significant benefits. This includes 51% faster testing lifecycles, 51% less time addressing errors in production processes, 36% more efficient QA teams, 33% more efficient testing of development processes, and 51% fewer helpdesk tickets. These benefits combine to support a significantly accelerated move to RISE with SAP.
Continuous Innovation in RISE with SAP
RISE with SAP allows organizations to transform their business models and business processes and provides a platform for the future. This means that, once organizations have moved to RISE with SAP, their innovation journey does not end. SAP Solution Extensions for use with RISE with SAP facilitate continuous innovation so that organizations can build on their success in four key areas: information management, application testing, financial transformation, and revenue management.
Information is the optimized capture, storage, retrieval and use of information, all critical tasks for the daily operations of SAP systems. Without effective information management SAP systems would be significantly less effective and users would struggle with finding the information they need to do their jobs.
Enterprise Content Management
To help address these information management challenges, SAP offers five key solution extensions from
OpenText for enterprise content management. These solutions help organizations work more effectively across processes while creating innovation and content management platform that is integrated and connected.
SAP Invoice Management which digitalizes and automates the accounts payable process so that organizations can manage and accelerate invoice processing and workflows compliance with regional and global regulations. There is also
SAP Information Capture, which modernizes and automates the capture of incoming business documents allowing organizations to extract and process key information from invoices and related documents, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management allows organizations to manage very large volumes of enterprise content efficiently. Also,
SAP Document Presentment maximizes the impact of customer communications by creating personalized documents for each customer.
SAP Archiving and Document Access can store, archive, and retrieve all types of documents used in SAP processes and applications.
The key benefits of these solutions by OpenText include reinventing processes across the enterprise, personalizing customer experiences, improving productivity, enabling smarter purchasing, increasing uptime, and responding faster to changing compliance requirements. By using these solutions, organizations reported they were 25% faster making vendor payments, accounts payable teams were 37% more efficient, compliance teams were 16% more efficient, and organizations averaged $5.36 million in invoicing and accounts payable savings per year.
Just as application testing is important for accelerating the move to RISE with SAP, ongoing testing is a vital part of ongoing innovation. Each time a business process is changed or new solutions deployed, testing needs to be completed. The same four application extensions from Tricentis that accelerate the move to RISE with SAP support the testing needed for continuous innovation. This includes
SAP Change Impact Analysis,
SAP Enterprise Performance Testing,
SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing, and
SAP Enterprise Data Integrity Testing.
Organizations that leverage these solution extensions as part of their ongoing use of RISE with SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud are able to realize significant benefits. This includes 51% faster testing lifecycles, 51% less time addressing errors in production processes, 36% more efficient QA teams, 33% more efficient testing of development processes, and 51% fewer helpdesk tickets and an average revenue increase of $2.4 million per organization.
Financial transformation is an important part of the process of preparing for the move to RISE with SAP, but it is also a part of the continuous improvement. Not every organization has the opportunity to complete business and process transformation prior to the move to RISE with SAP. This makes it possible for organizations to perform continuous financial transformation and accounting to help close books faster on an ongoing basis.
SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by Blackline and
SAP Intercompany Governance by Blackline help organizations realize these goals.
Additionally, SAP Account Substantiation and Automation standardizes and streamlines financial closing processes post the move to RISE with SAP as it did in preparation for the move. SAP Intercompany Governance helps organizations manage volatility, support mergers and acquisitions, and encourage accounting compliance. The solution allows customers to simplify and connect accounting tasks for increased transparency, streamline and automate intercompany processes, improve intercompany controls and processes, enhance global visibility into intercompany transactions, foster compliance in complex regulatory environments, and promote operational excellence.
By combining the capabilities of SAP Account Substantiation and Automation and SAP Intercompany Governance, SAP customers can continue to enhance and improve their financial processes as the business develops ensuring that their RISE with SAP deployment supports their needs no matter how their financial requirements change.
For organizations today, revenue management is essential for success. If organizations do not understand how to predict demand and adjust pricing, they will be unable to maximize revenue and may struggle to remain competitive. However, by developing innovative processes for tracking rebates, handling reimbursements, and better managing intellectual property it is possible to improve margins and profits.
SAP offers three solution extensions from Vistex that help automate revenue management processes. Further,
SAP Data Maintenance for SAP ERP reduces risk by improving the accuracy and reliability of pricing data, accelerates revenue by updating buy-side costs and sell-side prices and publishing prices quickly, and protecting margins by analyzing performance, optimizing channels, and simulating changes. Users can also rely on
SAP Paybacks and Chargebacks to help administer, model, report and analyze contracts and chargeback agreements while preventing errors and profit leakage.
SAP Incentive Administration provides financial accrual, settlement processing measurement, and analysis of revenues and costs of incentive programs.
Because revenue management is so important, organizations leveraging these solution extensions can realize significant benefits. This can include a 50% reduction in credits and rebills to customers, a 49% reduction in chargeback days outstand, a savings of over $1 million through more efficient credit and rebilling processes, and an ability to onboard processes for new businesses in less than 30 days.
Conclusion
The move to RISE with SAP empowers organizations by providing the means to achieve transformation and build a platform for the future. Despite the benefits that RISE with SAP offers, being fully prepared for the transition can ensure the success of that move. Similarly, putting the right testing tools in place can help accelerate the move to RISE with SAP. Most importantly, once organizations have completed the move using the right capabilities can reduce costs, allow for faster solution deployment, streamline operations, enhance compliance, and improve both top line and bottom line KPIs.
SAP Solution Extensions help organizations extend their products with offerings that are specifically targeted to transform and enhance their business in the cloud as they embark on their RISE with SAP journey.
