Unlocking business value through RISE with SAP

RISE with SAP, Transcend with PwC

PwC has an unparalleled history with business transformation: We’ve been helping SAP clients transform their enterprises for more than 30 years. With RISE with SAP, our focus remains the same as ever, to help them maximize business value and safeguard their transformation journey.

In 2020, PwC studied thousands of companies undergoing digital transformation and identified a group we defined as “Transcenders.”^{1 2} Transcenders are companies that consistently generate payback and significant value from their digital investments — including business growth, profits, improved customer experience, better insights and more. We found that Transcendent companies are more likely to take a long-term view of transformation: 96% have a clear direction for their digital projects, and they have invested accordingly in them, compared to just 74% of non-Transcendent companies.

PwC’s goal is to help companies maximize the value of their SAP S/4HANA Cloud business transformation and set a direction for long-term digital success. We bring direct expertise in SAP S/4HANA, industry and business function value frameworks and a clear vision designed to supplement RISE with SAP with our proven approach. We strive to enable organizations to go beyond transformation and become Transcenders. We call our approach Transcend with PwC.

Transcend with PwC is structured in four phases.

1. Business Cloud Strategy

Every part of a business can benefit from migrating to the cloud, and those benefits shouldn’t be confined to SAP applications. We help companies expand their horizons by designing a holistic cloud strategy that spans both their SAP and non-SAP environments. Through our strong alliances with top hyperscalers, we can help clients choose the right cloud platforms and build an architecture that works as a foundation for the most effective and efficient RISE with SAP transformation.

2. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Planning

A successful business transformation requires expert planning and smart up-front analysis. For RISE with SAP, PwC uses deep process mining expertise and our S/4 Journey Guide to support organizations in choosing the right target SAP S/4HANA Cloud architecture to meet their business needs. With a series of accelerators and a survey-based assessment, our approach helps clients quickly determine how they can effectively use SAP S/4HANA to reimagine their operating model and drive value help creation. As well, our preconfigured Industry Edge model solutions allow clients to customize their implementation based on their specific industry.

Our clients are able to put all of these pieces together using our award-winning BXT approach, which combines business, experience and technology teams. As well, our PwC S/4 Journey Navigator provides a digital platform that helps companies quantify the cost and value of transformation initiatives. Building a strong business case can confirm accurate expectations, transparent communication and strong alignment of business and IT stakeholders from the outset.

3. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Transformation

As clients embark on their cloud transformation, we can help them accelerate and safeguard their migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, delivering long-term business value through established PwC methods and assets alongside tools from SAP and market-leading third parties. Our teams are experienced in implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud whether the chosen approach is greenfield, brownfield or a hybrid of the two. Whatever the approach, we take the results from the planning phase and carry them through as accelerators for the solution implementation phase.

In cases where existing system investments are identified as unique value propositions, our approach folds in highly technical tasks such as selective custom code conversion and data migration. In other cases where an organization is struggling to disentangle multiple ERPs, we are able to use SAP S/4HANA CFIN as a stepping stone to a full finance and digital transformation. Network adoption is also a fundamental aspect of our approach, as we help our customers integrate their supplier network technically and strategically. Finally, across all of these scenarios, we bring the required governance and change management tools needed to confirm a full, successful S/4HANA Cloud business transformation.

4. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Innovation

The journey doesn’t stop when organizations go live with SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Our next-generation application management services help clients drive innovation throughout the cloud lifecycle. This is especially important when businesses are running faster than ever on the cloud. We help companies meet ever-changing customer demands by continuously evolving their businesses and creating new business models using emerging strategies and technologies. Additionally, we can enable quarterly or annual enhancements to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Fiori applications and the SAP Business Technology Platform.

By combining RISE with SAP and Transcend with PwC, organizations can reap further  value from the move to the cloud and do it in a safeguarded way.

If you would like to learn more about how PwC can help you unlock more value as you implement RISE with SAP, please get in touch.

<sup><sub>1. Source: 2020 GLOBAL DIGITAL IQ Survey: Buckle up. Uncertainty is back. https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/digital-iq.html
2. Source: PwC Vice Chair Mohamed Kande On Keys To Digital Transformation: 3 May 2021, Forbes.</sub></sup>