Unpacking the Strategic Imperative for SAP S/4HANA – Part 1

For seasoned SAP professionals, an upgrade can sometimes feel like another project with technical headaches and uncertain return on investment (ROI). However, the shift to SAP S/4HANA is fundamentally different as it is a strategic fork in the road demanding a re-evaluation of how businesses operate and innovate. Businesses seeking to migrate to SAP S/4HANA are now faced with the imperative question: Why are they making this transformative journey instead of a technical lift-and-shift?

To explore this issue, we connected with Bill Carr, Director, SAP, at Resolve Tech Solutions (RTS), a veteran in large-scale SAP transformations. Carr, who joined RTS recently and manages its commercial and public sector accounts on the East Coast, shared his immediate draw to the company, citing long-standing relationships with the leadership and their proven ability to deeply understand client needs, a crucial factor often underestimated in large SAP projects.

“One of our key areas this year is an increased focus on ERP transformation, and we are driving many of our sales cycles around this overall ERP transformation initiative,” Carr told SAPinsider in the first of this two-part interview.

Perceptible Change Management Outcomes

He elaborated on tangible, upfront investments RTS makes to achieve this goal. They include workshops designed to help clients build a robust business case for SAP S/4HANA.

Getting executive buy-in often hinges on articulating value beyond IT. Carr explained that these workshops deliver concrete outputs: a rough order of magnitude estimate, a high-level SAP S/4HANA architecture perspective versus the current ECC, and a document outlining key business objectives.

Carr highlighted, “In one day, we’re providing a lot of good content to help organizations think about their path forward.” This upfront clarity is gold for internal teams trying to champion transformation.

Key Drivers for SAP S/4HANA Adoption

Diving into the core drivers for SAP S/4HANA adoption beyond the technical mandate, Carr emphasized that organizations pursuing this path aim to be industry leaders. The technical leap from ECC to SAP S/4HANA enables fundamental business improvements that resonate with SAP professionals who understand the limitations of older architectures. “When you’re looking at the SAP S/4HANA capabilities versus where many systems are today from an ECC perspective, the advantages are clear: you can take advantage of the cloud, the in-memory capability of SAP S/4HANA, and the overall simplification,” Carr explained.

He pointed specifically to the Universal Journal, a technical simplification in SAP S/4HANA with profound business implications. For finance professionals and the SAP teams supporting them, the Universal Journal dramatically simplifies reporting and data structures compared to the complex aggregate tables of ECC.

“The Universal Journal has tremendous advantages compared to the original accounting structure within SAP ECC,” Carr noted. Moreover, SAP S/4HANA provides a technical platform that facilitates organizational simplification. It enables companies to consolidate instances and streamline complex corporate structures, like reducing 50+ company codes to less than five, a significant win for system administrators and business process owners.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Move away from technical debt with digital transformation. For SAPinsiders, the move to SAP S/4HANA represents an opportunity to move from managing complexity in ECC to leveraging a simplified, high-performance core. It’s a chance to enable real-time processes and provide integrated data insights that were previously difficult or impossible. The strategic imperative is clear: SAP S/4HANA is the platform for future business agility and innovation, and partners like RTS are focusing on providing the foundational clarity needed to make that case internally and embark on the journey successfully.

SAP S/4HANA’s capabilities provide a strong business case for migration. Market trends highlighted by SAPinsider research indicate that defining and understanding the business impact of SAP S/4HANA is a top priority for organizations building their case for digital transformation. RTS addresses this by providing upfront workshops that deliver tangible business case materials and architectural insights. For SAPinsiders, a clear business case clarifies the project’s objectives, helping you understand how the SAP S/4HANA migration supports your specific processes and how the new system will make your job easier and more effective by aligning technology changes with business goals.

SAPinsider research points to real-time analytics and simplified processes as key benefits. Carr emphasized SAP S/4HANA’s in-memory capabilities and the Universal Journal as technical foundations for this. Thus, real-time data means no more waiting for batch jobs or data loads for critical reports. Simplified financial structures make finding information faster. These technical shifts directly translate into quicker access to information, faster transaction processing, and less time spent reconciling data, improving your daily productivity and decision-making ability.

Stay tuned for the second and final part of this series, where Carr explains why prioritizing process, people, and the clean core are essential to the SAP S/4HANA journey.