For Successful Digital Transformation,  Each Organization Must Find Its Own, Utterly Unique Path

For Successful Digital Transformation, Each Organization Must Find Its Own, Utterly Unique Path

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Meet the Experts

By Ami Patel, Global Program Lead, SAP Enterprise Support value maps, SAP

Virtually every business throughout all industries is undergoing a digital transformation today. Each has its own reasons — and its own challenges. Consider the following examples.

Bristow Group Inc., an industrial aviation company that provides helicopter transportation, search-and-rescue, and aircraft support services to government and civil organizations was in the middle of expanding globally amid fierce competition. Then COVID-19 hit. The company was in the process of transitioning to SAP S/4HANA on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and was anxious to safeguard the conversion and go live even during these unprecedented times.

Acesco Colombia S.A.S., a leading Colombian steel maker was experiencing exponential growth, and realized it was time to digitally transform operations to unify its financials, procurement, and logistics functions. It decided to move processes and data to a single, central platform, SAP S/4HANA. But company leaders worried about the vast scope of the initiative, fearing excessive downtime, delays, and cost overruns.

Infinitus (China) Company Ltd., a maker of Chinese herbal health and skincare products and one of China’s most valuable brands, was intent on digitizing its operations and moving to the cloud, with the primary goal of empowering employees to deliver better customer experiences. The firm knew it needed to upskill its employees to master modern technologies. But it was concerned about establishing a clear roadmap for its digital transformation to SAP S/4HANA for its workers.

Each of these companies — and hundreds more — has been helped by an SAP Enterprise Support offering called value maps. A global empowerment and support program, value maps provide guidance and empowerment to help you adopt intelligent technologies and get the most from your SAP solutions. They are designed to align to your specific business challenges — whatever those might be.

For example, Bristow Group Inc. was able to safeguard its operations and successfully go live with SAP S/4HANA despite the limitations on movement and personnel because of the pandemic, thanks to personalized help and recommendations from the value map for SAP S/4HANA.

Acesco Colombia S.A.S. was able to plan and prepare for a migration from the SAP ERP application to SAP S/4HANA with help from SAP Enterprise support value maps. The firm received step-by-step guidance from the data-volume management value map experts, who helped to identify that 41% of the firm’s data didn’t have to be migrated. Downtime and costs were dramatically slashed.

And for Infinitus, in the middle of preparing its business to transition to SAP S/4HANA and SAP Analytics solutions, the value maps program was fundamental for advancing its digital transformation journey. The company took advantage of SAP Enterprise Support value maps to get access to one-to-one sessions with experts who provided guidance and best practices on the solutions, including how to set up system monitoring, basic configuration of SAP Solution Manager, and how the change control-management scenario supports the transition to SAP S/4HANA.

In this article, I’ll walk you through what the SAP Enterprise Support value maps program is and the benefits it offers. I’ll also highlight our newest offering, our value map for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition designed to help businesses like yours successfully move to an intelligent ERP system as a key element of RISE with SAP.

What Are SAP Enterprise Support Value Maps?

We first introduced value maps in 2011. More than 8,100 members of our community are currently active in the program. More join every day because of the particular challenges raised by the move to the cloud and subsequent journeys to become intelligent enterprises.

To date, we offer 13 value maps, with our latest offering providing help for customers that want to take advantage of RISE with SAP and make the move to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud. This new value map will guide you from the discovery stage of your journey through the planning, implementation, and run phases of your project.

Because each of our customers is unique, our value maps support all deployment scenarios: traditional on-premise customers; hybrid customers that have a mix of both on-premise and cloud solutions; and also pure cloud customers.

For example, your business might need help adopting and running SAP Customer Experience and SAP Analytics solutions, deploying SAP SuccessFactors for a recently acquired company, or perhaps improving business processes within your current SAP environment. To learn about the value maps we offer for each of those and more, see the list of available value maps.

And because value maps come with your SAP Enterprise Support offering, you can boost your digital skills without incurring any additional costs. The key features of value maps include:

Prescriptive guidance

SAP experts provide prescriptive guidance based upon your business goals, your particular deployment model, and your current priorities. By following the recommended steps of the value map that is right for you, you have a model for achieving your objectives.

Self-paced e-learning

We’ve created a large variety of high-impact enablement assets to help expand your knowledge and boost your digital skills on a broad range of topics. Our goal is to help you maximize your return on investment in SAP by leveraging the rich array of resources available to you.

Access to SAP experts

We’ve also found through experience that our customers particularly benefit from receiving direct advice from our experts. This differentiates value maps because it’s more than just a customer community for peers to exchange information. You have four ways to reach out to SAP experts:

  • Ask questions directly. You can ask questions and get fast, accurate advice from a genuine SAP expert by posting in a forum. The value maps team monitors the forums and will answer your specific questions.
  • Attend events. SAP experts are also available through live webcasts where Q&A sessions allow you to ask about your particular topic.
  • Schedule a call. You always have the option of requesting a call to get an expert recommendation tailored to your needs.
  • Read thought leadership postings. Experts publish thought leadership articles every week on the value maps blog that offer both strategic and tactical advice.

Value Maps: Fastest Way to Unlock Growth

With the right value map for your digital transformation journey, you can plan your move to SAP S/4HANA, adopt and run cloud solutions from SAP, prepare your custom code, and get ready to migrate your transactional and master data to the cloud, while learning how to do application and business process monitoring to ensure ongoing deployment and operational excellence.

To get started, sign up for the SAP Enterprise Support value maps by requesting access to the SAP Learning Hub or join the SAP Enterprise Support Value Maps Learning Room if you already have access.

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