Bipolar ERP Strategies and SAP Roadmaps

There are presently two currents within the SAP community: SAP with its many business innovations is at one pole; customers and partners with IT tools to harden infrastructure and ERP architecture are at the other.  This creates a bipolar challenge.

SAP currently places a high demand on customers’ and partners’ competence. On the one hand, customers and partners must complete a technical release change from ECC to S/4 in record time; on the other hand, they must also adapt to innovations such as IoT, blockchain, machine learning, process mining, and cloud computing. SAP’s ALM product, Application Lifecycle Management, is a good paradigm for this enormous task. The innovative Signavio tool for business process reengineering stands at one pole, and other general IT tools for operational and automated testing stand at the opposite one. SAP customers must face these bipolar challenges, with the end goal being to organize process mining and automated testing simultaneously with SAP ALM.

One solution at SAP Basis to manage the disparate currents is automation. Never before have so many SAP partners addressed this issue. The topic of automation and monitoring can not only guarantee secure SAP operations, but also cushion the current IT labor shortage. SAP partners Avantra and Nagarro explained that automation can achieve significant savings of two-thirds or more in basic customizing. This means that whether the CCC manager has to schedule 15 workdays or only five makes a significant impact in operations.

SAP itself is currently juggling several tasks. With ALM and Steampunk, the ERP world market leader is showcasing the entire spectrum that spans between the operational and the innovative poles. The entire SAP community is working off of this bipolar roadmap. With IT tools such as automated testing, monitoring, and license measurement at one pole and innovative app development on the BTP, Business Technology Platform, with low-code/no-code and Steampunk, the embedded Abap, at the other, SAP, its partners, and customers are attempting to reach their digital transformation goals.

Serendipity. Even with a bipolar challenge, the two poles need not necessarily repel each other. Those who can harmonize the operational with the strategic will reap added value. As is so often the case in the SAP community, it will be necessary for users to orchestrate different currents, trends, visions, and poles. The challenge here lies in the complexity of a Hana database and an S/4 ERP system. Those who can connect the two poles end-to-end will be able to use the digital transformation to their advantage.

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