Prepare Your SAP Landscape for the Digital Transformation Era

The rapid adoption and evolution of digital technologies has led to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to serve as the foundation for accelerated digital transformation. And for many, the adoption of SAP S/4HANA has emerged as the frontrunner, as the second SAP Business Assurance Study conducted by Sogeti, Tricentis, Int4, and Capgemini reveals, as organizations strive to ride the digital transformation wave.

Balancing cost with benefits

The study of 501 large-scale organizations found that SAP S/4HANA has taken the lead as the most widely adopted version with 39.9% of surveyed organizations currently utilizing it, surpassing SAP ECC (33.1%). Yet, the adoption of SAP S/4HANA remains lower than expected due to the challenges associated with migrating to a new version. A deeper look at the underlying reasons for this lower-than-expected adoption rate suggests that organizations are still struggling to justify the overall costs involved in migrating or upgrading, compared with the anticipated benefits from this change.

We can also see varying rates of adoption across different industries. However, over 93% of organizations that haven't upgraded to SAP S/4HANA have already started or plan to migrate within the next 24 months.

Rise in preparedness levels as organizations strive to stay proactive

Realizing the importance and benefits of preparedness for timely upgrades, more than 81% of surveyed organizations believe that they are 'completely prepared' or 'mostly prepared' to incorporate frequent SAP changes or upgrades.

This indicates that more organizations are recognizing the significance of keeping their SAP systems updated while investing in the resources required to ensure that they are fully equipped to handle upgrades, as and when they are released. This positive trend suggests that organizations are adopting a more proactive approach to managing their SAP landscape, which can lead to enhanced system performance.

Trust in specialized service providers

Reinforcing our findings from 2021, the latest survey reveals respondents increasingly recognize the advantages of partnering with specialized service providers, acknowledging their valuable contributions, such as additional technical expertise (49.1%) and enhanced process efficiency (45.5%).

Furthermore, a significant proportion (36.4%) believes that service providers play a pivotal role in ensuring uninterrupted business operations. Once again, this highlights the critical role that specialized service providers play in assisting organizations in navigating these challenges, and how there is a conscious effort to plan for automated testing and utilize integration platforms, such as integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and service virtualization in SAP testing.

Integration challenges continue to act as a barrier

And on the subject of challenges, our survey highlighted that integrating SAP applications with non-SAP systems continues to present significant challenges, as it requires extensive system customization and infrastructure development. The majority of organizations (42.9%) consider technological differences between SAP and non-SAP applications the most significant integration-related barrier.

Clearly, engaging a specialized service provider is seen as an effective way to deal with the challenges that arise from implementing SAP. Most organizations that seek external support do so for the lack of functional and technical expertise they possess internally. And in line with the 2021 survey, this year’s study once again asserts that robust, end-to-end testing or SAP business assurance practices will play an instrumental role in ensuring the smooth integration and optimization of upgrades and new releases.

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