The top 5 benefits of S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA promises SAP customers all the benefits they’ve enjoyed over the years, in addition to brand-new capabilities. Here are five of the most compelling reasons why you should modernize your ERP solution and transform your business with S/4HANA on public cloud:
1. Simplicity
SAP S/4HANA has a massively simplified data structure and with the introduction of the Universal Journal, brings better reporting capabilities (see below). In addition, it gives businesses the opportunity to adopt best practice business processes and run these in a “clean core” which then also lays the foundation for future growth and innovation. In short, SAP S/4HANA is simpler, cleaner, and easier to use than ECC.
2. Better reporting capabilities
With the simplified data structures and introduction of the Universal Journal – imagine one big table with all the relevant information from finance, controlling, and material ledgers - it allows streamlining the Chart of Account while being able to slice and dice the data in real-time with the power of the in-memory HANA database. This removes the need to write complicated reports and eliminates reconciliation efforts across the different areas of business. Layer on some simple visualization tools like SAP Analytics Cloud and you have accurate information available at the press of a button.
3. Enhanced user experience
Fiori provides a new user interface where information is presented to the end user in a much simpler and more intuitive way, regardless of mobile or desktop device or deployment.
Users can access multiple transactions in a single app and access role-based work lists and list reports. In addition, transactions are now processed with fewer clicks and screens to be populated.
4. Increased productivity
With standard business processes, simpler data structure, and a much faster database in HANA, it is not surprising that there are improvements in performance in speed both at a technical and business level. Removing redundant activities enables improvements including reducing the time it takes to close the books at the end of each period and giving businesses more time to focus on value-adding activities. Users spend more time looking forward, thinking about predictive analytics rather than performing historical data reconciliations. This will be an added boost to adopt innovation in the workforce and drive wider transformation in the business.
5. Agility and innovation
Adopting standard and commoditized business processes where it does not provide a competitive advantage enables to focus on those business processes that do give you an advantage over your competitors. Even if they don’t fit directly into SAP, the simple data structures and easy integration with the public cloud innovation platform as well as SAP’s own business technology platform (BTP) makes it much easier to plug into other best-of-breed applications that can really drive your business forward. You end up with a composable architecture, creating the ultimate agile and innovative organization.
By putting all of this in the cloud, you also have the added benefit of scaling your computing power to support your growth or slowdown when the next pandemic or financial crisis hits us or adjust processing power and storage based on your business activity peaks and troughs.