Crossing Your Own Finish Line: How-To Guide to Your Multi-Stage SAP S/4HANA Transition

I watched this year's Tour De France - from the comfort of my couch. And aside from my huge admiration for the fitness levels of the riders, what struck me most was the strategy of the teams and the extended support they have from managers, teammates, and maintenance vehicles - particularly in adapting to unexpected conditions in their environment, such as this year's heavy hail and landslides.

The cyclists rely on these steady partners and colleagues for agile support and troubleshooting on their multi-stage race.

Mere mortals like you and me could do a leg of the Tour in the off season for fun, yet each of us would take our own route, pace, and pit stops based on our unique circumstances and individual environments. After all, there are multiple stages and multiple routes to get each of us across the same finish line. It's the same with your SAP S/4HANA transition; although it's not a race, it is a multi-stage journey.

In the same way that every individual athlete is unique, every business environment has its own specific IT landscape and requirements, making every customer journey to SAP S/4HANA slightly different. That's why we have created a How-To Webinar series to show each stage of the transition.

Whether you're making your move now or a year from now, staying on premise, moving to the cloud, or consolidating multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) instances to one, we have designed this series to spell out the different stages of your migration journey and how to master them.

Think of it as a wealth of experts riding alongside you in your cycle lane, spelling out various options, stages and insights, telling you what's coming up ahead, showing you how to slipstream, and talking to you with tips and advice from the peloton. And just like riding a bike, you can go as fast or as slow as you like.

In this five-part Webinar series, SAP experts and key partners will spell out how to start your transition, plan your own unique journey, maintain data quality and integrity, master data migration, and manage custom code and extensions, as well as what this means for reporting and advanced analytics.

Importantly, you'll hear directly from customers that have started the SAP S/4HANA migration journey, along with those that have already completed it, crossed the finish line, and are reaping the rewards.

Speaking of rewards, the business and IT benefits of making the transition to SAP S/4HANA are immense, providing a digital backbone for your business and empowering you to quickly take advantage of innovation technologies such as machine learning, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

By turning your insights into action, transitioning to SAP S/4HANA means you can easily manage all your current and future data transformation, quickly understand and make use of the vast amounts of data in your business - from the Internet of Things (IoT) and internal systems across every possible customer touch point - reducing process and business complexities and improving efficiencies. To show you just how powerful this is, the Webinar series includes an exclusive customer panel discussion, enabling you to hear directly from peers who have embarked on their journey.

With SAP S/4HANA, there is no reason to compromise any of your critical custom processes and applications, including legacy systems. Afterall, nobody wants to sacrifice their custom code by transitioning, and you don't have to. SAP S/4HANA offers worry-free integration and extensions, along with the ability to harness a single view of your business so you can easily identify new opportunities, easily recognize areas for innovation, and drive business growth.

Whether you're transitioning as part of your digital transformation strategy, to gain greater speed and agility, to better drive innovation, to scale quickly, or to simply execute the next part of your SAP strategy, this How-To Webinar series spells out the pathway to get you to SAP S/4HANA successfully and smoothly.

To take advantage of having SAP as part of your own support crew,register for the free Webinar series here.

We look forward to seeing you cross your own finish line. Enjoy your journey!

Gerd Danner is vice president EMEA Centre of Excellence for Information Management at SAP Deutschland SE & Ko KG.