How will you get value from SAP ECC?

If your SAP project isn't supporting a key business requirement, why are you doing it?

Viewing your S/4HANA migration as just a technical upgrade kind of misses the point.

And, it really isn't just a technical upgrade - it has significant change management implications.  If it didn't, how would it transform your business?

It’s easy to get sucked into a vortex of consulting jargon where you feel the only thing worth focusing on is how you'll approach you S/4HANA journey - which colour field will you tip-toe through - Greenfield, Brownfield, Bluefield, or some horrendous kaleidoscopic multi-coloured LSD laced field of flesh eating Triffids?

What all of this means is the case for transformation must be driven by the business, with technology as the enabler. It’s a two way process. 

SAP's game of 2025 chicken ran out of runway in 2020. End of life support for ECC was pushed out to 2027 (or 2030 at a cost). And, if that wasn't enough of a motivator, the COVID-19 really threw the anchor out of the dinghy.

Yes, you'll think about S/4 at some point in the next decade.

But what happens in the meantime?

No.

You can’t stand still with your SAP solution.

SAP's narrative on disruption and digital is true. It suits the S/4 marketing pitch.

Truth is, you can achieve many of the stated benefits of S/4 in ECC.

Fiori isn't exclusively an S/4 technology - although some apps are HANA specific.  And Fiori isn't the only UI technology available.

It's not even that good.  Some S/4 customers have reverted back to the SAP GUI and others have noticed a drop-off in user adoption after moving to Fiori.

There are dozens of other best-of-breed solutions that can delivery elements of what S/4 promises.  You only have to pore over the AWS catalog of cloud-based data lakes and pre-built machine-learning and NLP solutions to realise there's plenty more out there to consider in 2020.

Across many of your core business processes, new technology alone is not enough.

You need to consider the efficiency and effectiveness of your current business processes, your current ways of working and operating model, your data and your controls.

The reality is, there's value waiting to be unlocked in the ECC system that you've already paid for.

You need to know where to focus. Obvious, but how do you do that? 

The first step is to look at it through a business lens rather than an SAP salesperson's eye glasses. 

You may know how processes are meant to run, but have you considered the efficiency of processes, the complexity, the importance to the business and how they deliver competitive advantage? 

Have processes been highly customised to meet specific requirements, or are they largely commoditised and standard?

Understanding and categorising your processes is the first step in determining where to focus your efforts.

This isn't an IT exercise. Ask the business' view on what works well, their pain points, and the stuff they've put up with for years.

If it’s time to do things differently, it’s time for some honesty and hard truths to avoid the mistakes of previous SAP generations. 

Our approach - build yourself a Business Process Framework.

A Business Process Framework helps you to think differently about your business processes.

This isn’t a lengthy process mapping or documentation exercise. Quite the opposite - it’s about reviewing your business processes through a different pair of glasses. 

Instead of speaking SAPansese, start by creating a common language that everyone understands - breaking your process hierarchy down into simple constituent parts. 

Over time, people refer to different parts of a process in different ways e.g, Procurement, Procure to Pay, Purchasing, Source to Pay. 

Building the Process Framework is a great way to standardise your process definitions. We use the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) as the de-facto standard for this but the most important aspect here is to have a common definition and stick to it. 

The Process Framework introduces a Process Classification Framework - a hierarchical list of business processes broken down into categories (or value streams).  

These break down into more granular levels (e.g. Process Group, Process, Activity, Task).

Create a consistent language for business processes that maps to the way work is actually performed in your organisation (not the way that software providers describe functionality).  

If you already have a standard list of business processes, use this as the basis of your Business Process Framework.

However, we advise you standardise on APQC.

Not only is it the most comprehensive open-sourced business process framework available, but there are some other key benefits of using APQC as a foundation:

• APQC have 20 process models including a core model and 19 industry variants.
• APQC invests time and effort updating their process model as new business models evolve - and are diligent with their version control.
• APQC publishes over 2,500 KPIs linked to their process model - providing a ready-made framework for your S/4 business case and analytics design.
• APQC provides reliable benchmarking data for a large proportion of processes and KPIs indexed back to their catalogue.

Now evolve your Business Process Framework and describe your business processes with meta-data that informs roadmapping and portfolio planning.

Add things like Process Variability, Operational Frequency. Transaction Volumes, Complexity, Isolation (vs. Integration), User Volumes, Change Impact, Workarounds, Usability & Defects alongside each process.

Map the applications that support each process. 

It's unlikely you run all of your business processes in SAP. Find which value streams have multiple applications resulting in a need for extensive integration. 

Whether you’re planning your S/4 move, or looking at immediate ECC value opportunities, understanding your processes in this way helps you prioritise and make sound decisions. 

Different views of the Business Process Framework can present information back to the business in meaningful ways.

One such view is what we call Portfolio Shape Analysis - mapping competitive advantage of business processes to customisation of your SAP solution to drive sensible decision making.

It describes how your processes enable competitive advantage - are they real differentiators adding value to the top line - or focused on driving efficiency and reducing cost on the bottom line?

Why is this important? 

Where processes support bottom line cost reduction, they are typically commoditised and should be largely standard. From an application perspective, this means zero customisation.

But, where processes enable your top line competitive advantage, customisation may be the differentiator. 

Once you start to look at your processes through this lens, the you can also consider:

• Mapping business processes to potential RPA (Robotic Process Automation) opportunities.
• Identifying each processes suitability for Shared Service Centre delivery.
• Mapping processes to the Toyota 7 Wastes framework to identify cost reduction opportunities.

You know, really sensible stuff that drives business value.

Building a Business Process Framework provides a solid foundation to plan your future road-map for ECC or S/4HANA.

Plus, it provides a framework for understanding what's new in S/4HANA, or white-space where you're not maximising ECC functionality you've already paid for.

The Process Framework supports other things like adoption strategies for change management and a solid baseline for SAP test automation.

SAP implementations are often an enabler for a one-company strategy where business processes are standardised on a global basis.

So much so, that implementing a global template on a single SAP instance became the holy grail of many SAP transformations. 

But to do this, you need a process framework that can drive a new operating model to drive standardisation home.

And that standardisation doesn't need S/4HANA. It can be done right here, right now. On ECC.

Let’s face it, you weren’t sat there waiting for an in-memory database to replace Oracle along with `a few table changes.

What if you could invest your time and money getting the most out of the ECC asset you have today?

What if you could improve business processes and performance without the distraction of an S/4 programme?

And, what if you could start to simplify your future S/4 journey in parallel?

Focus on quickly establishing how your business processes could be improved today using the SAP solution you already have.

Map this into quick, agile sprints that can be delivered in isolation to reduce cost, disruption and change management effort.

Using your Process Framework, you can quickly assess where you should focus your limited budget for the biggest upside.