Maximizing SAP RISE Benefits with OpenText Solutions

⇨ The journey towards an intelligent enterprise under the SAP RISE program should be marked by a structured approach encompassing preparation, migration, and the ultimate run phase.

⇨ OpenText™, in collaboration with SAP, offers strategic solutions designed to effectively navigate and overcome the challenges encountered during the transition to cloud environments.

⇨ OpenText's collaboration with SAP through the RISE program significantly benefits organizations by accelerating the migration to SAP S/4HANA, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), increasing return on investment (ROI), simplifying compliance, minimizing risk, and enhancing scalability.

As a growing number of enterprises migrate their operations to cloud-based platforms, many are increasingly migrating their operations to cloud-based platforms. A significant aspect of this transition involves upgrading and consolidating SAP applications to the more advanced SAP S/4HANA, a move that promises enhanced efficiency, agility, and insight for businesses. However, the journey towards an intelligent enterprise under the SAP RISE program should be marked by a structured approach encompassing preparation, migration, and the ultimate run phase.

OpenText™, in collaboration with SAP, offers strategic solutions designed to effectively navigate and overcome the challenges encountered during the transition to cloud environments. With OpenText productivity solutions for SAP S/4HANA, organizations can gain a range of benefits before, during and after their move. These include:

A streamlined transition to SAP S/4HANA: Starting the move with thorough data archiving that significantly declutters enterprise environment. Organizations migrating to SAP S/4HANA can achieve a reduced database size upwards of 75%, streamlining the migration process while concurrently reducing both cost and risk.

Scalability through automation: Leveraging cutting-edge technology for the bulk of the operational workload, thereby enabling real-time adaptability to shift in processes or demands.

Synergy and productivity among users and systems: Facilitate immediate access for users to all pertinent documents within the precise context and timing of their business activities, eliminating the inefficiency of navigating between multiple systems in search of information.

Managing Multiple Legacy Applications

The shift towards cloud adoption and the full exploitation of its capabilities also requires an initial evaluation of how to manage a multitude of legacy applications and their associated data, a process that can introduce operational hurdles such as increased costs. Legacy SAP applications often present a complex challenge for organizations, characterized by high maintenance costs, poor access, low compliance, inefficient retention management, and increased legal risks.

The task of securely and compliantly consolidating these legacy applications, while ensuring cost-efficiency and adherence to regulatory standards, calls for an innovative approach and thorough planning. During the process of migrating to cloud-based environments, it is imperative to ensure that only the most current and pertinent data to business operations are integrated into SAP systems. The question then arises regarding the disposition of all other residual applications, data, and content. A considerable portion of this archival data must remain retrievable for reasons of regulatory compliance, or due to its necessity for daily operational tasks, reporting, or data analysis endeavors. Nonetheless, the continued operation of these applications in a live environment can accrue significant expenses over time.

OpenText‘s solutions address these challenges by transforming the management of both structured and unstructured data. By employing tools like OpenText’s InfoArchive, businesses can ensure data integrity, secure lifecycle management, and compliant access, thereby facilitating a smoother transition to SAP S/4HANA. OpenText™ InfoArchive presents a cloud-based archiving solution scalable for both structured and unstructured data, ensuring compliance and efficient information retrieval through role-specific views. This minimizes the productivity impact commonly seen with generic archiving systems. It stands out for facilitating application decommissioning and meeting various archiving needs. The decommissioning process involves seven key steps: extracting schema and data, analyzing legacy data structures, building storage and access applications through configuration (not coding), archiving both structured and unstructured data, validating the archive with a “chain of custody” report, and ultimately decommissioning the legacy application. Data extraction and archiving utilize an ETL toolset, ensuring data integrity, privacy, and compliance with records management standards.

Case in Point – A Global CPG Organization

A global CPG organization faced challenges related to coexisting multiple SAP systems across different regions, leading to operational inefficiencies and increased maintenance costs, complex and lengthy retention management requirements that varied across regions, adding to the administrative burden.

Older SAP instances that had accumulated from past upgrades, which had not been successfully decommissioned, cluttering the IT landscape and complicating data management, multiple SAP systems in each of four geographic regions, complex and long retention management requirements, and additional older SAP instances left from earlier upgrades and failed decom attempts.

The objectives were to consolidate and upgrade all corporate SAP applications to SAP S/4HANA, decommission older instances of SAP for datacenter simplification and cost reduction, and improve retention management and compliance capabilities. Utilizing OpenText’s InfoArchive, the organization successfully archived and fully decommissioned 13 SAP applications, demonstrating the efficacy of OpenText’s approach in maintaining data integrity, ensuring secure access, and managing the data lifecycle.

The successful decommissioning of applications hinges on critical components like data security, privacy, lifecycle management, and integrity, a process OpenText expertly navigates by emphasizing audit trails, data immutability, intricate retention policies, and strict access controls. This comprehensive approach ensures a flexible and robust decommissioning process capable of handling diverse data types and meeting stringent compliance standards. OpenText’s collaboration with SAP through the RISE program significantly benefits organizations by accelerating the migration to SAP S/4HANA, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), increasing return on investment (ROI), simplifying compliance, minimizing risk, and enhancing scalability. These outcomes not only showcase OpenText’s technical acumen but also highlight its strategic role in facilitating a seamless transition to SAP S/4HANA for enterprises.