RISE with SAP: the SAP Intelligent Business Transformation
On January 27, 2021, at the live event “RISE with SAP: The Introduction,” SAP CEO Christian Klein announced the release of a Business-Transformation-as-a-Service (BTaaS) offering designed to help customers transform their companies into true “smart businesses” in order to remain competitive and successful in the face of competitive pressures and market changes.
Let’s discover together this offer presented as a revolution for SAP customers and their business and digital transformation.
What is RISE with SAP?
RISE with SAP is a concierge offering that combines several SAP solutions and services in a single contract to help customers transform their business into a sustainable, intelligent enterprise.
By intelligent company, the German firm means a sustainable company that possesses advanced technologies and puts forward good practices within the different business processes.
Therefore, a “smart enterprise” is about the continuous optimization of the management of an organization and its processes through intelligent tools that enable relevant reporting on how the business runs to gain profitability, resilience, and sustainability.
To achieve these goals, SAP offers a suite of software and services to complete the transformation to an innovative and sustainable business in the following areas :
- Human Resources Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Spend Management
- Customer Relationship Management
- IT Management
What are the Challenges of Rise with SAP?
Faced with an increasingly changing environment and market evolutions due to external events such as the COVID-19 pandemic or geopolitical tensions, companies must be able to adapt quickly to external contexts and to the evolving requirements of their customers.
RISE with SAP was designed to provide this agility and speed of response. The objective is to enable all types of companies to support their operational performance by transforming and optimizing end-to-end business processes with continuous and relevant insights.
Companies that digitized their processes before the pandemic found themselves less impacted and more resilient.
Moreover, the events of the past two years have led to a strong acceleration of digitalization in a few months compared to a scenario without a pandemic. Indeed, the Mc Kinsey consulting firm estimates that this process would have gained 3 to 4 years.
This increased need for digital transformation is reflected in IT investments: according to a study based on the use of SAP S/4 HANA, 69% of companies have increased their budget in this area in order to continue their digitalization and migrate to the Cloud.
There are several reasons why decision-makers may want to migrate to the Cloud:
- The first is to reduce the costs of IT system ownership by shifting from capital expenditures to operational expenditures. In addition, no capital investment is required
- The second reason is the flexibility that the Cloud offers. Indeed, the transfer of critical business processes and the adaptability to the existing IT architecture allow for a quick and customized transition while removing the complexity of an on-premises installation
Finally, innovation and continuous improvement thanks to regular Insight lead to more reactivity. In addition, process automation through RPA can also be considered for more efficiency.
In the past, it has been reported that most customers focus on the technical aspect of their migration to S/4 HANA, hoping to achieve a complete business transformation.
However, this approach requires a holistic approach to the components and operations of a business to achieve a true process change.
Indeed, each company is different and not all have the ability to evolve at the same speed. That’s why RISE with SAP gives users the opportunity to integrate this offering into their IT architecture with flexibility regardless of the state of their digital transformation.
Rise with SAP therefore aims to focus customers on business transformation and value creation rather than on the technical details of their migration to the Cloud.
Composition of the RISE with SAP offer
As we have said since the beginning of this article, RISE with SAP has been designed to accompany companies throughout their business transformation process while creating value with flexibility, profitability, agility and sustainability.
The solution aims to help customers achieve their digital transformation, improve performance and grow their business. It is a partnership approach, which is designed to help companies align their business goals with IT and digital solutions.
The Main Softwares Present in the RISE with SAP Suite
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud private version
The “private” version of S/4HANA refers to the ability for companies to deploy S/4HANA on their own infrastructure (i.e. in their own data centers or on their own Cloud), as opposed to a public Cloud environment.
This version offers more flexibility and control over how the system is deployed, configured and managed. They have more control over data security and compliance and can more easily customize the system to meet their specific needs.
This is often the preferred option for large enterprises and organizations with powerful IT infrastructures, sensitive data or regulatory constraints to keep data on site.
It also allows customers to implement and use some of the advanced features of S/4HANA, such as machine learning and advanced analytics, while maintaining full control over data access.
SAP Business Process Intelligence
SAP BPI includes SAP Process Insight and the Signavo suite, which SAP acquired in 2021. These tools have been designed to analyze and optimize end-to-end business processes to improve efficiency, sustainability and customer experience. In this package, we find in particular :
- SAP Process Insights: SAP’s main tool for the analysis and continuous improvement of your business processes
- Signavo Process Intelligence: to monitor, analyze, map and optimize process flows
- Signavo Process Manager: provides animated process visualization and procedural scenario creation
- Signavo Journey Modeler: allows modeling, analysis and modification of the user experience
- Signavo Process Collaboration Hub: models optimized collaboration by providing a holistic view, notifications and data useful for business management without the barrier of enterprise silos
- Signavo Process Governance: create, manage and optimize workflows to ensure compliance with governance standards
SAP Business Technology Platform
SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering from SAP that provides customers with a range of services and tools to help them build and run their applications in the Cloud. It is a core component of the SAP Cloud strategy and a foundation for RISE with SAP.
In RISE with SAP, SAP BTP is used as the foundation for building and running SAP’s intelligent business solutions in the Cloud.
This enables customers to deploy S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, and other solutions on a highly scalable and secure platform that allows them to quickly adapt to changing business needs and leverage new technologies.
An SAP Business Network starter pack
This package offers the possibility to connect to the Cloud. It consists of the Ariba Network, the Asset Intelligence Network and the Logistics Business Network, which together contain several thousand documents on potential business partners.
Functionalities such as the connection of SAP S/4 HANA to the SAP Business application network (SAP Transportation Management and Logistics Business Network), the configuration of the procure-to-pay predefinition via Ariba Network will for example be included in the offer.
What are the Benefits of RISE with SAP?
RISE with SAP is a comprehensive program that offers many benefits:
Business Process Improvement: RISE with SAP helps customers optimize their business processes and make them more efficient.
Increased productivity: customers can more easily automate their business processes, resulting in increased productivity and reduced costs
Innovation: RISE with SAP helps companies identify new opportunities and stay abreast of new industry trends and the latest technologies, such as Industry 4.0, Cloud and AI.
Cost reduction: RISE with SAP helps customers save money by streamlining business processes, reducing manual efforts and increasing automation
All of these benefits of RISE with SAP will help companies run better, be more efficient, improve their bottom line and increase their competitiveness.
