Guest Speaker:
Rajesh Nair
Former SAP Practice Head with Birlasoft
Former SAP Practice Head with Birlasoft
Transcripts
Welcome to another episode of Tech lyceum. I'm Neerja and I am super excited to get started on a brand new theme. Today another theme we are addressing is orchestrating the move for the SAP SO HANA transformation, and let me set the scene here in a rapidly changing business landscape enterprises must embrace transformation, leverage the power of technology tools and enable rapid innovation to tackle the shifting market demands right now this time on tech Lyceum, we are going to be talking about how the ERP landscape has shifted from linear to multi dimensional, how businesses can assess their readiness for the SAP HANA move and how to navigate change management. And we can't do any of this without a helping hand or should I say, a helping mind. Our guest today is the SAP practice head at Birlasoft. Rajesh Nair. Now let me tell you a little bit about Rajesh. He has been noted for being a management and technology professional with nuanced expertise in high worth enterprises and delivering it and ERP that's SAP transformational programs. Rajesh Nair has a deep sense of ownership in everything he does and his persistent approach coupled with skills in providing strategic directions. The finalization and evangelizing technology adaptation has made him a force to be reckoned with, and I couldn't think of a better person to dive into this conversation with so let's welcome Rajesh are better and more endearingly known as Raj, welcome to Tech lyceum.
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Speaker – Rajesh - 01:42
Neerja, Thank you for the very kind words mentioned about me.
Neerja, Thank you for the very kind words mentioned about me.
Speaker – Neerja - 01:47
Of course, thank you for joining us. Let me ask you this.
You know, since we're on the topic of the SAP S4 Hana transformation, right,
Q: What is the vital factor for enterprises to decide and move to SAP S for HANA now, and how can enterprises identify the strategy best suited to their environment?
Of course, thank you for joining us. Let me ask you this.
You know, since we're on the topic of the SAP S4 Hana transformation, right,
Q: What is the vital factor for enterprises to decide and move to SAP S for HANA now, and how can enterprises identify the strategy best suited to their environment?
Speaker – Rajesh - 02:07
So, SAP actually turns 50 This year, and as you can imagine, there, they are very forward looking software enterprise software vendor. And given the current climate and what's happened with the technology overall, in the past couple of decades, SAP has come up with the next generation ERP platform that you just mentioned, it's s for HANA, SAP is definitely looking to move beyond their X version that they have, which is called the ECC version of SAP that most of the clients today are on some have moved on to S4 HANA. But they are definitely looking forward to getting clients onto S4 HANA. So that they can go innovate and COBOL and move together. So SCP has just, you know, kind of set a deadline of 2027 for ECC, then the support for ECC runs out. But apart from the looming deadline itself, I think customers worldwide are convinced that S4 HANA is the system to go on to, given the technology update that it's the database update in terms of the HANA database, there's, there's plenty of reasons apart from the looming deadline itself, that enterprises are aware of that, that they can benefit from. But apart from that, you know, in the last couple of years, S4 HANA adoption, itself has grown roughly about 18% year on year. That's a That's a big number, if you consider the overall SAP installed base. Now, as the other question, you know, what are the vital factors for enterprises to decide on their move to S4 HANA? And, you know, in some of our articles, we have highlighted this, but I'd like to reiterate that there are a few red flags that enterprises should watch out for one is the architecture, the legacy architecture and infrastructure, everybody's moved on to a cloud native environment, you know, it's the high speed development, DevOps kind of environment. That's what's happening. And if organizations don't adopt this way of working quickly, they'll definitely our competition mismatch in the field. A second is the scalability issues. You know, enterprises want to scale very, very quickly. Nowadays, it's not like the previous years where they had some time to do that. The third one is AI integration. It's absolutely important, especially with Chat GPT. And all of that just that has just recently happened, that ERP also becomes a good AI integrator. So it's things like that, that others about how much of downtime and outages you have had, how slow your upgrades have become, how, you know, how high your maintenance costs. So these are some of the flags that enterprises need to look for and evaluate and plan their move to S4 HANA.
So, SAP actually turns 50 This year, and as you can imagine, there, they are very forward looking software enterprise software vendor. And given the current climate and what's happened with the technology overall, in the past couple of decades, SAP has come up with the next generation ERP platform that you just mentioned, it's s for HANA, SAP is definitely looking to move beyond their X version that they have, which is called the ECC version of SAP that most of the clients today are on some have moved on to S4 HANA. But they are definitely looking forward to getting clients onto S4 HANA. So that they can go innovate and COBOL and move together. So SCP has just, you know, kind of set a deadline of 2027 for ECC, then the support for ECC runs out. But apart from the looming deadline itself, I think customers worldwide are convinced that S4 HANA is the system to go on to, given the technology update that it's the database update in terms of the HANA database, there's, there's plenty of reasons apart from the looming deadline itself, that enterprises are aware of that, that they can benefit from. But apart from that, you know, in the last couple of years, S4 HANA adoption, itself has grown roughly about 18% year on year. That's a That's a big number, if you consider the overall SAP installed base. Now, as the other question, you know, what are the vital factors for enterprises to decide on their move to S4 HANA? And, you know, in some of our articles, we have highlighted this, but I'd like to reiterate that there are a few red flags that enterprises should watch out for one is the architecture, the legacy architecture and infrastructure, everybody's moved on to a cloud native environment, you know, it's the high speed development, DevOps kind of environment. That's what's happening. And if organizations don't adopt this way of working quickly, they'll definitely our competition mismatch in the field. A second is the scalability issues. You know, enterprises want to scale very, very quickly. Nowadays, it's not like the previous years where they had some time to do that. The third one is AI integration. It's absolutely important, especially with Chat GPT. And all of that just that has just recently happened, that ERP also becomes a good AI integrator. So it's things like that, that others about how much of downtime and outages you have had, how slow your upgrades have become, how, you know, how high your maintenance costs. So these are some of the flags that enterprises need to look for and evaluate and plan their move to S4 HANA.
Speaker – Neerja - 04:57
Yeah, absolutely. I think you really shed some light on that, and like you said, Raj, with this deadline fast approaching, it also then becomes important for enterprises to identify the right strategy to move to to SAP S4 Hana, right?
Q: So how can they sort of come up with the right strategy and approach this in the best way possible?
Yeah, absolutely. I think you really shed some light on that, and like you said, Raj, with this deadline fast approaching, it also then becomes important for enterprises to identify the right strategy to move to to SAP S4 Hana, right?
Q: So how can they sort of come up with the right strategy and approach this in the best way possible?
Speaker – Rajesh - 05:19
Sure, I think, firstly, that I always recommend and tell all my clients is don't try to do it all by yourself, engage with a really good systems integrator or a consultant to not just drive the strategy and the roadmap but also advise you on the level and type of assessment that you will need in order for you to then plan your move. So that that initial assessment is become a very vital part of the move to S4 HANA that wasn't existing in the in the previous upgrades. SAP itself has got what we call a readiness check report that you know, custom code analysis, and those kinds of things that help you in that overall planning. But apart from that, you will also need to have an extensive analysis of your organization's technical and functional aspects to determine your as far as readiness. This includes you know, in short, evaluating the database platform configurations that are currently in use your business workflows, and your general system landscape as well. And more importantly, organizations should look at how the migration fits into their own digital transformation roadmap, you know, like, identify where you are, where you want to go in the coming years, and then plan for how to get there. And that planning is what is absolutely vital in terms of the strategy to move to S4 HANA.
Sure, I think, firstly, that I always recommend and tell all my clients is don't try to do it all by yourself, engage with a really good systems integrator or a consultant to not just drive the strategy and the roadmap but also advise you on the level and type of assessment that you will need in order for you to then plan your move. So that that initial assessment is become a very vital part of the move to S4 HANA that wasn't existing in the in the previous upgrades. SAP itself has got what we call a readiness check report that you know, custom code analysis, and those kinds of things that help you in that overall planning. But apart from that, you will also need to have an extensive analysis of your organization's technical and functional aspects to determine your as far as readiness. This includes you know, in short, evaluating the database platform configurations that are currently in use your business workflows, and your general system landscape as well. And more importantly, organizations should look at how the migration fits into their own digital transformation roadmap, you know, like, identify where you are, where you want to go in the coming years, and then plan for how to get there. And that planning is what is absolutely vital in terms of the strategy to move to S4 HANA.
Speaker – Neerja - 06:42
Right? And a transition like this wouldn't come without its challenges. Right. So Raj,
Q: What do you think are some of the top challenges enterprises must expect while you know making this move from their legacy system to SAP S4 HANA?
Right? And a transition like this wouldn't come without its challenges. Right. So Raj,
Q: What do you think are some of the top challenges enterprises must expect while you know making this move from their legacy system to SAP S4 HANA?
Speaker – Rajesh - 06:57
This is a really important question and something that organizations should spend considerable amount of time thinking about and planning on, you know, what are the pitfalls to look for? If we imagine a couple of decades ago, SAP became popular primarily because it allowed for customizations to happen within the ERP system, that means SCP added standard processes. But if I had unique processes that are different or slightly, even slightly different from the standard processes, I had the ability to go and customize the software according to my needs. Now, that was an absolute blessing a couple of decades ago, and that is why or, you know, organizations worldwide jumped onto SAP, because it gives them that flexibility to remodel or model their or their existing business processes onto the system. But as we know, everything has two sides to it, right? What was a blessing couple of decades ago, in a way has become a curse today, primarily because they've gone on customizing the software to such a large extent, that now the maintenance cost has become way too high for them, way too high. So, now, if we look at what SAP recommends in terms of, you know, your move to S4 HANA, one of the mantras that they will give you is standardize as much as possible. And when you say standardize this is exactly, you know, one of the first challenges that organizations will face that it will cause a bit of disorganization and confusion amongst the employees, and also stemming from, you know, what is wrong with the current system that you're asking us to go on to this S4 HANA system for so for the, for the sponsors of the move to S4 HANA, this will become a vital question to answer. And change management then becomes absolutely vital in this transformation to S4 HANA. So, that's, that's one of the key challenges. And then there are other challenges that are opted for that they need to look for. Primarily, you know, it could be improper and insufficient preparation of the source system. So, you know, data cleansing needs to happen before you move. It's the complexity of the data transfer itself from the source to the target system. And then, like I said, there's this custom code or the customizations that the organizations have done on the ACP system that needs to get eradicated because SAP is advices, S4 HANA to keep the code clean, and then use platforms such as BTP, for side to side extensions, and then another underline put this, never under imagine the importance of testing. When you move to S4 HANA. It's absolutely vital that you do multiple rounds of testing. It will not just validate the solution, but it will also give the users the confidence that this is the system that can help them transform into an You organization.
This is a really important question and something that organizations should spend considerable amount of time thinking about and planning on, you know, what are the pitfalls to look for? If we imagine a couple of decades ago, SAP became popular primarily because it allowed for customizations to happen within the ERP system, that means SCP added standard processes. But if I had unique processes that are different or slightly, even slightly different from the standard processes, I had the ability to go and customize the software according to my needs. Now, that was an absolute blessing a couple of decades ago, and that is why or, you know, organizations worldwide jumped onto SAP, because it gives them that flexibility to remodel or model their or their existing business processes onto the system. But as we know, everything has two sides to it, right? What was a blessing couple of decades ago, in a way has become a curse today, primarily because they've gone on customizing the software to such a large extent, that now the maintenance cost has become way too high for them, way too high. So, now, if we look at what SAP recommends in terms of, you know, your move to S4 HANA, one of the mantras that they will give you is standardize as much as possible. And when you say standardize this is exactly, you know, one of the first challenges that organizations will face that it will cause a bit of disorganization and confusion amongst the employees, and also stemming from, you know, what is wrong with the current system that you're asking us to go on to this S4 HANA system for so for the, for the sponsors of the move to S4 HANA, this will become a vital question to answer. And change management then becomes absolutely vital in this transformation to S4 HANA. So, that's, that's one of the key challenges. And then there are other challenges that are opted for that they need to look for. Primarily, you know, it could be improper and insufficient preparation of the source system. So, you know, data cleansing needs to happen before you move. It's the complexity of the data transfer itself from the source to the target system. And then, like I said, there's this custom code or the customizations that the organizations have done on the ACP system that needs to get eradicated because SAP is advices, S4 HANA to keep the code clean, and then use platforms such as BTP, for side to side extensions, and then another underline put this, never under imagine the importance of testing. When you move to S4 HANA. It's absolutely vital that you do multiple rounds of testing. It will not just validate the solution, but it will also give the users the confidence that this is the system that can help them transform into an You organization.
Speaker – Neerja - 10:01
Right? That's a lot of perspective Raj and with someone who has your expertise at the helm for Birlasoft. Right? I'm sure Birlasoft has a very unique approach for this implementation.
Q: So what are your thoughts on that? How is Birlasoft moving forward with SAP S4 HANA at this point?
Right? That's a lot of perspective Raj and with someone who has your expertise at the helm for Birlasoft. Right? I'm sure Birlasoft has a very unique approach for this implementation.
Q: So what are your thoughts on that? How is Birlasoft moving forward with SAP S4 HANA at this point?
Speaker – Rajesh - 10:22
Thanks Neerja, for that question. So, you know, we as an organization are constantly looking to see how we can have value and shorten the timeframe for the move from ECC, to S4 HANA. And based on, you know, our experience over the years, one of the things that we have developed is what we call the smart move offering, or the smart move framework. Now, within this framework, there are there are three different phases really, one is the smart prepare, which is right at the beginning of your transformation. And within the smart prepare, is what we call the smart assessment. This directly ties back to that assessment timeline that I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, which is really important to understand how complex is your system? And you know, what is the work that needs to be done before you move to S4 HANA. And then what is the work that needs to be done during your move to S4 HANA. And then, you know, we tie it all up with what we call SAP zone product, which is the value lifecycle management to ensure that you know, there is value that is being recognized in the smooth from ECC, to S4 HANA. So that's probably the phase one, or what I said, the smart prepare, and then we've got the smart deploy. Now smart deploy is really once the assessment is done, we agree with, with the client on what is the best way to move from ECC, to S4 HANA. And there are really three different modes of power to s one a one is what we traditionally have called the Greenfield implementation, which is a fresh implementation, you know, Chuck, everything you've got, just use some of the data or the Customer, Vendor material, master data, but implement everything afresh. The second is a brownfield implementation where we are just moving data from your ECC, to S4 HANA, eradicating as much custom code as possible, but generally the business process and all that tends to remain similar to your ECC systems. That's a Brownfield. And then we have got something called as the blue field, which is really in between the two. So we take what we call selective data from your existing ECC system that will be required for a proper functioning of the organization in the new Esper world, and what Birlasoft as the unique opportunity to do something called the shell conversion. And we are really one of the very few in the world to have been able to do that is again, a version of the Bluefield implementation is called assertion conversion. And that comes along with smart deploy. And the last part, which is the third phase is what we call the smart AMS. Now smart AMS how do you optimize your overall support and bring AI kind of tools velociter does something called as the AI expert, which you will read about it in various analyst reviews, which has helped a lot of organizations reduce your overall support, because smart aim is formed the third part of that overall smart move framework, if you will, right,
Thanks Neerja, for that question. So, you know, we as an organization are constantly looking to see how we can have value and shorten the timeframe for the move from ECC, to S4 HANA. And based on, you know, our experience over the years, one of the things that we have developed is what we call the smart move offering, or the smart move framework. Now, within this framework, there are there are three different phases really, one is the smart prepare, which is right at the beginning of your transformation. And within the smart prepare, is what we call the smart assessment. This directly ties back to that assessment timeline that I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, which is really important to understand how complex is your system? And you know, what is the work that needs to be done before you move to S4 HANA. And then what is the work that needs to be done during your move to S4 HANA. And then, you know, we tie it all up with what we call SAP zone product, which is the value lifecycle management to ensure that you know, there is value that is being recognized in the smooth from ECC, to S4 HANA. So that's probably the phase one, or what I said, the smart prepare, and then we've got the smart deploy. Now smart deploy is really once the assessment is done, we agree with, with the client on what is the best way to move from ECC, to S4 HANA. And there are really three different modes of power to s one a one is what we traditionally have called the Greenfield implementation, which is a fresh implementation, you know, Chuck, everything you've got, just use some of the data or the Customer, Vendor material, master data, but implement everything afresh. The second is a brownfield implementation where we are just moving data from your ECC, to S4 HANA, eradicating as much custom code as possible, but generally the business process and all that tends to remain similar to your ECC systems. That's a Brownfield. And then we have got something called as the blue field, which is really in between the two. So we take what we call selective data from your existing ECC system that will be required for a proper functioning of the organization in the new Esper world, and what Birlasoft as the unique opportunity to do something called the shell conversion. And we are really one of the very few in the world to have been able to do that is again, a version of the Bluefield implementation is called assertion conversion. And that comes along with smart deploy. And the last part, which is the third phase is what we call the smart AMS. Now smart AMS how do you optimize your overall support and bring AI kind of tools velociter does something called as the AI expert, which you will read about it in various analyst reviews, which has helped a lot of organizations reduce your overall support, because smart aim is formed the third part of that overall smart move framework, if you will, right,
Speaker – Neerja - 13:26
I'm sure there's a lot of confidence; the listeners would have gained through this conversation with you while you took us through this transformation in such a detailed and brilliant way. So thank you for allowing us to share in your wisdom today, it was wonderful, being able to pick your brain on this.
I'm sure there's a lot of confidence; the listeners would have gained through this conversation with you while you took us through this transformation in such a detailed and brilliant way. So thank you for allowing us to share in your wisdom today, it was wonderful, being able to pick your brain on this.
Speaker – Rajesh - 13:43
Thank you Neerja, thank you for having me on this podcast. It's been wonderful talking to you.
Thank you Neerja, thank you for having me on this podcast. It's been wonderful talking to you.
This is tech Lyceum, a podcast from Birlasoft.
Speaker – Neerja - 13:56
Well, folks, I think the takeaway is clear. Moving from the ECC to S4 HANA requires an intensive evaluation of transformational elements and the approach to change management specific to the SAP programs to really maximize those benefits from migration. With several business benefits to consider enterprises must mandate a move towards ERP transformation through rise with SAP to enable modernized and successful business transformation. So that is the way forward. I think we all gained some wonderful insights from this conversation. There is more like this coming your way, only on tech Lyceum. Until then, it's me Neerja, signing off. Bye bye.
Well, folks, I think the takeaway is clear. Moving from the ECC to S4 HANA requires an intensive evaluation of transformational elements and the approach to change management specific to the SAP programs to really maximize those benefits from migration. With several business benefits to consider enterprises must mandate a move towards ERP transformation through rise with SAP to enable modernized and successful business transformation. So that is the way forward. I think we all gained some wonderful insights from this conversation. There is more like this coming your way, only on tech Lyceum. Until then, it's me Neerja, signing off. Bye bye.
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