Identifying S/4 HANA Extension Used Cases for SAP Cloud Platform

Industry Trends

January 30, 2017

There has been a recent trend about building extension application using SAP Cloud Platforms. This is even more true and emphatic within the S/4 HANA implementation space

At Sodales, we have experienced that by the time we speak with our customers, who are going through S/4 journey, its pretty late for them to consider an extension app. In fact, most of them are not even aware of the possibility of extending the core solution using standard cloud tools or a prepackaged application.
This happens majory because, when customers start an S/4 implementation, they don’t look at all their current custom codes. They have a whole bunch of legacy custom codes sitting in their on-premise solutions, but they don’t use it anymore and they start with fresh requirements or best practice templates.

A very important element is to identify what should be an extension and what should stay in the core. There are various ways on how to identify what should be an extension used case. Let’s categorize them into three simple buckets based on the complexity of the process of identifying the used cases

 

The Easy way is to first look at the entire landscape, where you will see the 3rd party products which are not the SAP Roadmap. These 3rd party products could be applications with small to medium complexity or as large as a system in itself, that the customer is considering to discard it during the course of their S/4 journey ; probably the customer might even consider to integrate these products into their S/4. In a typical scenario, customers might think of replacing this with another system. However, instead of doing that, they can consider various “Pre-packaged Applications” developed by SAP Partners. Alternately, customers can also learn about SAP Cloud Platforms (SCP) and the tools that enable them to build their own system, with the integration content that goes into the core S/4.

 

Leverage

SAP Cloud Platform has the same look and feel as the customers S/4 product. To top it all there are number of HCIs or iFlows that go directly into S/4. This allows the customer to replace the legacy systems with S/4 extension.

In the second approach, customer has to identify if they have a cross platform interface or user exit specifically if it has a touch-point with another cloud based SAP solution. A classic example is that in many S/4 implementations there is availability of platforms like Ariba, SuccessFactors, Concur and many more.
In such a scenario, customers will have interfaces that will go across these platforms. This creates a whole new set of opportunity to standardize the business processes using S/4 HANA extensions. Customers can accomplish this by developing these tools or buy a pre-packaged application built by an SAP Partner company.

 

Leverage

Availability of standard HCI tools particularly for SuccessFactors. This has created a scenario where other platforms like Ariba and many more are opening up their APIs as well.

The third approach is a difficult and a bit painful one but nonetheless it is a way. Here customers have to look at what comes out of their business process design at the beginning of the project and do a “custom code assessment”. In an inevitable scenario of high customization request that goes beyond just adding some fields then customers should consider building those in SAP Cloud Platform.

 

In a typical scenario, 80% of customization can still stay in S/4 and the rest 20% can be outsourced to the Cloud.

The options described are new to customers, because they are part of the Bi-Modal IT Set up. It is a practice of managing two separate but coherent styles of work

1. One focused on predictability

2. The other focused on exploration

 

The core solution (on-premise) is stable, and there is an AGILE layer around that core which has more new and exploratory things that are going on with the business. This is the layer of SAP Cloud Platform.

There will be a whole bunch of customizations that customers will keep in their S/4 done locally using the configuration tools like adding new fields, etc.

Critical-To-Success Factors

1. Learn the skill of extension, if you are going through this journey

2. Getting to know the platform capabilities for your future expansion of your landscape and business

Sodales Solutions is an award-winning SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) solution extension partner. Sodales was founded as a consulting company. During the year 2016, Sodales evolved into a successful application development company focused on developing and selling apps built on SAP Cloud Platform (SCP). Sodales has referenceable customers across industries and geographies for SCP apps. Sodales has expertise in SCP DBAAS, WebIDE plug-ins, S/4 HANA extensions, SAP SuccessFactors extensions and SAP Smart Business Apps, and is now expanding rapidly into the Ariba extension space.

To know more about S/4 HANA Exension Apps, write to us at sana.salam@sodalessolutions.com or call us at +1.647.824.4286

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