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In recent years, the digitization of businesses has accelerated significantly, highlighting the increasing number of organizations embracing cloud technology and soaring demand for automating complex workflows through "no-code" or "low-code" solutions. SAP has played a transformative role in this and has become integral to many organizations, supporting critical functions such as finance, HR, and supply chain management

However, while SAP is a dependable ERP solution, it is not without its limitations, particularly in areas like customization and upgrade costs. SAP's robust technology and industry-focused solutions, which provide standardized implementation frameworks, enable customers to manage their core business processes swiftly; however, its tools for development and extensibility are predominantly SAP-centric and may not as effectively support mixed vendor environments. Significant challenges arise as multiple customers within an industry seek to differentiate themselves. They often have unique, customer-specific requirements that are not fully addressed by the standard SAP system. This often hinders transformation efforts, given the specialized and costly resources required for such tasks.

Given the unique and evolving needs of organizations, SAP environments must be continuously customized to address specific requirements. This continuous adaptation poses significant challenges, as various processes, employee roles, and devices across the organization demand tailored solutions. Often, SAP-related tasks are incomplete and require manual interventions, such as using paper, exporting data to Excel, or emailing screenshots to function properly. These manual methods are inefficient, increase the risk of data inaccuracies and compliance issues, and compromise the user experience. Consequently, the ability to swiftly develop simple apps and automation to bridge these gaps becomes crucial.

Challenges with SAP extensibility

SAP extensibility presents challenges that affect its integration and operational efficiency across external business applications. While the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is adept at managing internal processes, tasks such as developing mobile experiences or integrating SAP data into external platforms like Microsoft Teams often demand substantial effort and specialized expertise. Moreover, to prevent operational disruptions during upgrades, extensions must be developed to function independently from the core SAP system, ensuring stability and compatibility with future updates. Despite SAP's comprehensive platform capabilities, the limitations in its processes occasionally compel users to rely on unofficial tools like Excel and shared mailboxes, raising significant security and compliance concerns.

For example, Frontline workers (FLWs) require the most straightforward methods to complete their tasks, often utilizing mobile apps designed for specific functions, such as inspections. Yet, many processes centered around SAP systems face challenges—they lack robust mobile support, forcing reliance on outdated and inefficient methods such as paper notes, Excel exports, and emailed screenshots. These inefficiencies not only slow down operations but also increase the risk of data entry mistakes, compliance issues, and potential data loss. Another example is of shared mailboxes that are commonly employed by organizations to handle communications from customers, partners, or employees. These mailboxes often become congested with messages that need manual efforts to open, read, interpret, and respond, consuming significant time and resources.

Innovating with low-code tools from Microsoft’s Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform emerges as a transformative tool, enhancing SAP's functionality and accelerating its capabilities. This integration is particularly vital for organizations across various sizes and industries that rely on SAP for data management and core business processes.

Microsoft Power Platform serves as a central hub for low-code digital transformation, empowering organizations to drive innovation and efficiency. By allowing teams to develop their own solutions using accessible low-code or no-code tools, the platform democratizes the development process, enabling citizen developers to collaborate effectively with professional developers to create robust mobile and web applications. Leveraging tools such as Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages, and Copilot Studio, organizations can enhance their SAP environments, fostering greater agility and responsiveness to business needs. Integrating SAP with the Power Platform's tools provides a wide range of innovative, flexible, and adaptable interactions with SAP data, allowing organizations to build connected applications, automate processes, and extend the operational data model. This integration supports AI and conversational experiences within SAP, enhancing its functionality while maintaining its core strengths, and creating seamless, connected solutions that optimize and extend SAP's capabilities to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses. The Power Platform effectively addresses operational challenges by facilitating the swift development of task-specific inspection apps. For example, for Frontline Workers, these applications leverage the comprehensive functionalities of mobile devices—including cameras, GPS, microphones, and handwriting recognition—to optimize task execution and ensure seamless data integration with SAP, thereby orchestrating intricate processes through BTP or the SAP Core. The result is a more streamlined process characterized by significantly lower error rates. The integration of AI Builder with Power Automate enables the automatic processing and routing of emails to appropriate personnel. Documents attached to these emails are analyzed, and corresponding actions are initiated in SAP or other relevant line-of-business systems. This level of automation not only elevates operational efficiency but also enables employees to focus on more strategic tasks, ultimately improving service quality for customers, partners, and colleagues.

Adding the agility layer

Organizations leveraging SAP face several inherent challenges that can impede their overall agility and efficiency. Resource constraints, particularly the reliance on specialist resources such as expert consultants, ABAP and Fiori developers, and SAP architects, limit SAP's agility and affect business flexibility. Incomplete SAP processes often lead to the creation of shadow IT solutions, introducing risks and compliance issues. Additionally, the need to keep the core clean to manage total cost of ownership (TCO) and future-proof SAP presents a significant challenge. SAP tools primarily focus on optimizing internal processes, highlighting the need for extending or innovating beyond SAP's scope to address broader business needs. With an agility layer like Microsoft Power Platform enables SAP teams to develop connected solutions efficiently, leveraging both SAP and non-SAP data. This type of platform reduces the reliance on highly specialized SAP resources, thereby enhancing business agility. By keeping extensions separate from the SAP core, Power Platform helps maintain the integrity of both upgrades and extensions, minimizing potential disruptions. The platform can also address gaps in SAP processes, reducing reliance on inefficient and risky manual solutions like paper and Excel, thus enhancing overall governance and efficiency. This approach not only enhances flexibility and speeds up delivery but also maximizes the returns on SAP investments, underscoring the significant potential of integrating advanced platforms like Microsoft Power Platform in modern business environments.

As Krippner states, “Microsoft’s ‘agility layer’ concept acknowledges that despite SAP's comprehensive nature, many peripheral processes still rely on auxiliary tools like Excel, paper, Access, or notes. The primary goal is to preserve SAP's core functionalities, particularly the mission-critical SAP UI, while introducing an agility layer to address minor inefficiencies and enhance role-based and task-based experiences. This approach ensures faster delivery and improved user interactions without replacing any SAP components.”

Keeping data clean and consistent

Power Platform tools like Power Apps can access and manipulate data within SAP S/4HANA while keeping the core data structures intact and maintaining data consistency and cleanliness. Additionally, these solutions can store data in Azure databases and display it in Fiori, minimizing the use of Z Tables. Power Apps also facilitates the creation of tailored workflows and processes that complement SAP S/4HANA, ensuring organizational agility and adaptability by keeping these processes separate. Operational efficiency is further enhanced as Power Apps automates tasks, reducing manual effort and minimizing unnecessary customizations within the SAP system, thereby contributing to a cleaner core.

The introduction of hundreds of ready-to-use connectors in the Microsoft Dataverse has significantly simplified the creation of impactful solutions, suitable for both individual and enterprise-wide applications. The Power Platform offers effortless integration with prominent Microsoft products such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure. This connectivity breaks down traditional data silos and fosters a cohesive approach to achieving business success in the dynamic landscape of today's workplace.

Infusing Value to the SAP Ecosystem

Integrating solutions like Microsoft Power Platform with SAP yields several key benefits: client-facing employees gain real-time access to customer information from multiple systems, allowing for faster and more personalized service; service engineers can report product issues more efficiently and consistently, enhancing the efficiency and quality KPIs of the service delivery function; and back-office staff responsible for order processing and data entry can quickly and reliably match information within SAP, improving accuracy and saving time, effort, and costs.

While SAP's Business Technology Platform provides comprehensive services that meet diverse needs, yet there remains considerable potential to expand these capabilities with supplementary tools designed for the periphery, facilitating the creation of connected solutions. Krippner emphasizes, “It is important to highlight that the Power Platform does not involve delegating complex integration tasks to non-technical personnel, such as finance professionals tasked with constructing live workflows independently. Rather, the intention is to augment and provide the SAP team with the necessary flexibility to effectively develop these connected solutions. The core of this approach is to boost flexibility, augmenting the speed and efficiency with which connected solutions are delivered. This enables teams to achieve more with fewer resources, thereby extracting greater value from both SAP investments and resources. Power Platform tools area multifaceted and highly complementary to existing SAP tools, broadening the range of potential use cases. By integrating SAP and non-SAP data, the platform facilitates the creation of straightforward, valuable, and expedited experiences, thus expanding the realm of possibilities within the SAP ecosystem.”

What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders?

As businesses strive to streamline processes, cut costs, and boost employee productivity and efficiency, the demand for solutions like Microsoft’s Power Platform is expected to rise. When evaluating technology platforms, it is imperative to assess both the current functionalities and prospective enhancements along with organizational needs and objectives. SAPinsiders should follow the below when considering integrating low-code development platforms:

Identify organizational objectives and requirements. It is essential to prioritize adopting solutions that offer the most substantial potential for reducing time, lowering costs, and enhancing resource efficiency, thereby ensuring maximum impact on the organization's performance. The identification of business needs and objectives entails a structured approach, beginning with a comprehensive needs assessment. It is also imperative to engage key stakeholders early in this process to guarantee that the solutions devised are in strict alignment with overarching business goals and objectives.

Engage with business users: Engaging with business users is a critical approach to determine the business value of platforms like Power Platform. By conducting targeted interviews and actively listening to their experiences, businesses can gather insights into user behavior, challenges encountered, and potential problem-solving applications.

Measure business value and organizational impact: It is crucial to assess the business value of a solution before its development to ensure it meets specific business needs and aligns with organizational KPIs. This evaluation helps identify areas needing enhancement, potential risks, and opportunities for cost reduction.

Create an adoption strategy: Implementing an adoption strategy for low-code platforms requires a multifaceted approach. Starting from understanding integration requirements and extensibility to ensuring data security and compliance; it is also essential to educate employees on the advantages and functionality of low-code/no-code tools to enhance participation and foster widespread adoption. Capitalizing on these platforms for rapid prototyping facilitates expedited project completion, substantially reducing both development timeframes and associated costs.

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