34. Why are there so few successful S/4HANA projects?

by | Aug 6, 2023 | PM Blog EN | 0 comments

A stocktaking influenced by personal impressions – an EPILOGUE.

Abstract: The blog author reflects on his personal impressions of S/4HANA implementation or transformation projects in the DACH region and concludes that only a few projects are successful. He criticizes SAP for its lack of a clear approach and recommendations for implementing S/4HANA and for focusing on profit instead of customer value. The author also questions the effectiveness of SAP Activate as a methodology and framework and criticizes the introduction of RISE as a comprehensive business process transformation and cloud migration program that may not always be suitable for all customers.

SAP’s RISE – an accelerator for failure?

Looking back on my experiences, reflecting on conversations in my network as well as relevant articles and reactions to them, I cannot help but have the impression that, at least in the DACH region, there are still very few truly successful and reasonably smooth S/4HANA implementation or transformation projects.

The best success seems to have been achieved by smaller companies that have not previously used SAP ERP. In contrast, the large community of previous SAP ECC users, i.e., those who have decided on a real transformation project on the basis of the greenfield approach often used (which then somehow becomes “blue” anyway), still seem to be thinking about how best to approach this and remain – not least because of the lack of method-based guidance – rather in a remarkable rigidity.

 

What could be the reason for this? Have customers been misguided by SAP?

With regard to S/4HANA, SAP has, from the very beginning, oriented itself not to maximizing the benefit for its customers but to maximizing its own profit, both in defining and recommending a clear and consistent procedure for carrying out such transformation projects and for the secure and high-performance operation of an S/4HANA system in different initial situations, and has taken advantage of existing hypes in marketing.

 

The most important examples are:

The unisonous recommendation that the S/4HANA system is best operated in the exclusively SAP S/4HANA Cloud (as Public Edition or Private Edition), without explicitly pointing this out:

    • That it is not itself capable of adequately leading and supporting the associated transition to the HEC
    • That it is not in a position to provide the associated basic support at a service level (in terms of quality and speed) that customers are accustomed to from on-prem.
    • The customer is no longer the owner of the licenses in this model, making it at least massively more difficult to switch to another (cloud) provider.That system ownership does not lie with the customer and there is no regulated handover after the end of the contract (SaaS) – this applies in particular to the data!
    • That reductions in the scope of services are not possible during the term of the contract.
      see also BLOG article 17

 

The unanimous recommendation that SAP Activate as a methodology and framework should definitely be used as a basis to ensure a successful S/4HANA implementation based on an agile approach. At the same time:

  • SAP Activate was never anything really new, but only a primarily verbally pimped agile approach (prototyping cycles are sprints and the OP list is called BackLog) known from AcceleratedSAP and using/recommending partly very outdated templates and tools (i.e. BPP documents).
  • If SAP Activate was initially only a rudiment of a procedure without content and was successively filled with (pieced together) content – a well-founded and consistent structure of a method looks different.
  • In SAP Activate, a lot of emphasis was placed in particular on defining additional products and applications that had to be purchased from SAP for a fee as (mandatory) prerequisites for successful implementation. Examples of this are:
    • The recommendation to acquire one or more so-called model companies (which are then not even harmonized in terms of data technology) – see also BLOG post 9 and BLOG post 10.
    • The use of SIGNAVIO as a BPM system, which has to be licensed additionally and which was taken over by SAP not too long ago, has been integrated into the SAP Activate procedure without any alternative, thus creating what I consider to be an outrageously high hurdle to the alternative use of a different and possibly better BPM system.
    • The recommendation integrated in SAP Activate to use SAP’s own SAP-Enable-Now as an authoring tool for documentation, which has to be licensed additionally, and the impression created by this that there are no better and cheaper authoring tools – see also BLOG post 25
  • In my opinion, SAP Activate starts much too late and does not address the aspects associated with the overall change in the organization in a transformation project either completely or qualitatively adequately. Even the very late defined patching of a BPM system does not really change this.

In summary, one could say that SAP Activate can essentially be seen as a cross-selling tool from SAP, in which for the most part (very) old wine has been poured into new bottles with an agile coating.

 

A retraction

In my BLOG post 7, I commented on the differences between an S/4HANA and an SAP R/3 implementation, and in BLOG post 8, I spoke very positively about the new tools available free of charge for the S/4HANA implementation and outlined their sensible use. At the time, I was under the impression that SAP was really focused on providing customers with the best possible support for the S/4HANA implementation and not primarily focusing on its own profit – after all, that would be a principle that could form the basis of long-term customer loyalty based on trust. Unfortunately, I have since had to thoroughly revise this impression.

 

Where do we go from here?

Some of the tools that I evaluated very positively in BLOG post 8, which were provided free of charge by SAP, have already disappeared or will disappear in the near future:

 

SAP itself is now crowning it all with its RISE:

What has already worked poorly or not at all in individual parts is now being brought to the market as a complete package:
“SAP’s RISE (Realize Impact & Sustain Excellence) is a comprehensive program that helps companies transform their business processes and move to the cloud. The program is an end-to-end solution that covers all aspects of cloud migration, including planning, implementation, integration, training and maintenance of cloud-based business applications.
RISE includes a range of SAP products and services, such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Ariba. It also offers cloud services such as infrastructure, platform, and software as a service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), as well as the ability to run the entire IT infrastructure in the cloud.
In addition, RISE includes a variety of tools and resources to help organizations plan, implement and optimize their cloud transformation. These include, for example, a cloud readiness analysis, a cloud readiness workshop, best practices for cloud implementation, a cloud migration tool chain and much more.
RISE is designed to help organizations digitize their business processes, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve competitiveness by enabling them to be more flexible, scalable and agile.”

 

Actually one would like to say to it only:

“Oh, dear me, not that too now! Enter into a close and irrevocable embrace with everything SAP has to offer and confidently leave the sovereignty over the weal and woe of your data to SAP.”

At the same time, SAP also succeeds remarkably in creating the impression among new and existing customers that they are also the best-qualified implementation partner. In my opinion, there is no other way to explain the fact that SAP’s sales machinery has managed to push this RISE package so successfully onto the market that they have now run out of on-shore resources to adequately support customers – and even armies of off-shore implementation teams can’t come close to compensating for this. Naturally, this is especially true for transformation projects, where users have to be taken by the hand and convinced of the new S/4HANA best-practice processes in a well-argued manner.

 

RISE contracts already concluded

Of course, it could also be that this tempting offer is often decided at executive level against the better knowledge of the operative IT management – however that may be. To my taste, I have been told far too often in recent months, in the context of inquiries I have received about taking on a project management mandate, how far the contractual agreements had already been concluded – and the reason was always a RISE contract that had already been concluded. I have then often thrown my hands up in resignation because RISE is obviously brought to the customer by SAP without any assessment of the fit of the (deployment) model for the industry, company size and legacy initial situation. In my opinion, this is most worrying when new SAP customers are “delighted” with the RISE package without being able to judge on the basis of well-founded experience with SAP what they have let themselves in for. However, I fear that it will not make a positive contribution to the image of SAP S/4HANA if they realize this.

 

So what’s next in this BLOG?

I am glad that I was able to complete the overall (project) cycle of my S/4HANA Project Management BLOG and provide the tools necessary for the sensible approaches outlined before SAP battened down the hatches.

Also, I hope to meet the claim I set myself in BLOG 1:
“I cannot and will not influence the methodological motivation as well as the basic moral understanding of the SAP consultants’ guild across the board. That is why I have decided to provide you – the customers concerned – with the necessary tools in this blog project, so that you can ensure that you are not likewise taken advantage of by your consulting partner.”
could do justice to a large extent.

 

Updates

Some BLOG posts are in urgent need of updating, as the world has moved on since they were written; this is especially true of BLOG 17 on operating models, as well as the tools “still” available in the S/4HANA environment. I will try to make these updates in a timely manner.

There will certainly also be an additional post on the approach to creating an ROI view for a S/4HANA implementation.

Otherwise, I will focus on updating the topics around end-user empowerment, i.e. communication, application documentation and training (see BLOG 25) – here I have been able to gain a lot of new and good insights over the past years.
For the sake of good order, I would like to clarify that I already wrote this BLOG post at the end of April / beginning of May 2023. After subsequently taking on a new consulting engagement in early May, I held off publishing it for the time being, thinking (and hoping) I might be proven wrong.

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *