The migration to S/4HANA has been reaching many bottlenecks in a variety of companies. One wedded to the SAP ecosystem, it is well nigh impossible to come out of it. Large number of companies have not initiated the process and timelines closing, it is certain that a large number of them will overshoot the deadline. Lots may be forced to continue to use the ECC coughing up much more. There are other bunch of companies, the totally uninitiated one, who don’t even know how much time it would take?
In this rather sordid saga of migrating to the dream destination of S/4HANA. The customer is not sure whether SAP is on their side or not and many pitfalls which have already been documented in detail. Given this backdrop too some companies have made a success of it and they are reaping the benefits of the futuristic ERP too. The headlines explains it all, “IBM’s massive SAP S/4HANA migration pays off.” While company after company is struggling, how did it pull it off and what benefits it is deriving?
The magic sauce was put to the fore at SAP’s Sapphire conference in Orlando. IBM was promoting its consulting services and wisdom gained from its multilayer transformation to SAP S/4HANA. IBM’s ERP journey has brought efficiencies and easier management. It has also provided practical insights into the challenges its customers face in moving to SAP on the cloud. At the first go, what has it achieved which can be called a game changer? Ann Funai CIO & VP Business Platform Transformation says Big Blue has achieved a 30% reduction in operational costs since completing its migration last July.
IBM’s migration to S/4HANA is one of SAP’s largest installations. Contract registration cycles have improved. Greater efficiencies in billing have happened by reducing invoice generation cycle time. On-prem to cloud has sped up payment reconciliation while reducing errors in account deliverables. IBM standardised on SAP’s on-prem ECC system in 2012. The migration away from its on-prem installation to SAP’s cloud platform began in earnest in 2022. IBM’s urge to streamline its business processes and ensure IT systems remain agile for the cloud and the AI era has been the driving behind this successful migration. It is expected that IBM, a major customer and partner for 52 years, will help reluctant CIOs to see the way forward.
IBM MAY JUST TURN OUT TO BE THE ROLE MODEL FOR ENTERPRISES OPTING TO MIGRATE TO S/4HANA.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.