Designing a clear roadmap for BTP after your S/4HANA implementation

Sandro Cucarano is Senior Manager in Innovation & Technology at NTT DATA Business Solutions. Sandro contributes to the article series “You invested in S/4HANA – now what?”, where he writes about BTP and S/4HANA.

BTP is a crucial S/4HANA decision

Your major S/4HANA implementation project is finally coming to an end.

Now the question becomes: Your S/4HANA system is live, and transactions are running smoothly. But how do you maximize its value? BTP helps unlock new business opportunities.

Let us guide you to realize tangible business benefits using BTP!

With S/4HANA as the brains of your new system, BTP is the nervous system where your business, strategy, and technology connect, communicate, and complement each other.

Inspire strategic decisions

Starting with BTP is like building with LEGO. It is important to have a solid foundation and a well-considered roadmap. It’s these strategic decisions that we want to inspire.

Before we dive into the ideal places to start on your BTP foundation, let us take a closer look at why BTP is such a powerful tool for unlocking new opportunities in your system.

BTP is an innovation platform that integrates data management, analytics, automation, and development – helping you customize and extend SAP and third-party systems.

With BTP, you can create a one-of-a-kind S/4HANA setup, tailored precisely to your business with standard SAP services.

Or, to put it more simply: You supercharge your business differentiators by making your strengths even stronger.

From composable architecture to AI, data analysis and the endless possibilities of application development, dive into it right here.

Design your digital architecture to your business and strategy

BTP’s architecture allows you to assemble and customize solutions to fit your needs.

The key lies in the composable architecture – a concept that allows you to select the best applications and tooling to execute your strategy while seamlessly integrating them within BTP’s ecosystem. Because BTP is built on flexible services – covering integration, data management, and automation – you can also combine and expand functionality with ease. This gives you the agility to adapt quickly to change and drive innovation.

You can even develop new applications, extend existing ones, and seamlessly integrate both SAP and third-party apps – tailored to your specific needs and previous solutions.

Data analysis

BTP is the platform where you work with data analysis and gather data from different sources. This is where Datasphere and Business Data Cloud live.

BTP connects systems and processes, enabling them to work together in real time across business areas. BTP ensures that data, information, and actions flow smoothly throughout the business.

The entire process is tightly integrated with SAP solutions, so your data sources can be turned into actions directly within your business processes. With advanced integration, automation, and data management, BTP delivers the right insights to the right places.

A modern solution that helps you gain concrete insights, value, and innovation from your data sources. The result: a connected business where decisions are based on accurate and up-to-date information.

AI

BTP provides tangible opportunities to incorporate AI into your processes, using integrated tools like SAP AI Core and SAP AI Business Services.

These tools make it possible to develop, train, and implement AI models that support specific business processes. In addition, standardized services such as document processing, predictions, and chatbots can easily be integrated into SAP applications.

BTP ensures that AI solutions are scalable, customized, and closely linked to your business workflows – a great place to start when incorporating AI into your business operations.

Application development

BTP is also your hub for integrations and application development, where you can build and customize solutions for your business using SAP Integration Suite, which connects systems and data across both SAP and non-SAP solutions.

For application development, you use the SAP BUILD suite of tools, with tooling to build, extend, and customize applications without impacting your core SAP HANA database. The platform supports both low-code and pro-code development, which enables developers and business users to create solutions quickly and efficiently.

With BTP, you have a platform with near endless possibilities.

But! That also means you’ll need to make some choices.

That’s why it’s wise to start with fundamental areas like security, user interface, and application development.

We suggest you begin with these three solutions first:

#1 Security as a cornerstone – with SAP Cloud Identity Services – Identity Authentication

Security is non-negotiable.

With Security Cloud Identity Services, you establish a secure foundation for user access and identity management.

This minimizes future risks and streamlines access to your new integrations. An added benefit is that it makes it easier to scale your BTP environment when all applications share the same security solution.

In short, what do you get?
You get a security solution on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) that supports identity management, authentication, and access control for all the applications and services running on BTP. This also means identity provisioning with a third party identity provider (e.g. Entra ID).

With secure identity and access management, user access administration, authentication, and authorization across systems, you enable secure single sign-on and full control over who can access data and features. The solution is therefore a ‘must-have’ because it keeps your BTP environment efficient, secure, and easy to manage – from the start and beyond.

#2 Optimized conditions for productivity for each user – with SAP Build Work Zone

A good place to start when building a modern and efficient BTP environment is to focus on the user interface, where employees can access their applications, tools, and data.

With Build Work Zone, you create highly favorable conditions to boost productivity and employee satisfaction.

User-friendly workstation – tailored to each employee
For your digital transformation to succeed, the data and applications should be presented in a user-friendly, easily accessible, and intuitive “portal” – customized for each employee, with their own workstation tailored to their needs and role.

Users get the access they need to quickly find the information they need to do their jobs efficiently.

Build Work Zone streamlines workflows, enhances the user experience, and supports customization – all in a unified interface.

Build Work Zone ensures that you streamline project work, create a cohesive workflow, and make the adoption of new tools easy. You can even reduce errors by giving users quick and easy access to the systems and data they use. Plus, your employees gain mobile access to their systems, so they can access data and metrics from anywhere, not just from their desk.

In short, Build Work Zone creates great conditions for productivity.

#3 Build smart applications and tools – with SAP BUILD

Now it’s about building, customizing, and scaling the best SAP applications for your organization. SAP BUILD is not just a low-hanging fruit – it’s an essential part of BTP.

In a way,  SAP BUILD can be seen as a platform within the platform.

It’s a development platform and a central tool for developers within the SAP ecosystem, providing everything they need to build and customize applications that run on BTP and within your SAP ecosystem.

With SAP BUILD, you get a development tool that future-proofs your setup, enabling you to accelerate development projects, continuously customize SAP applications, and quickly respond to business needs and market changes – with pre-built templates and dev spaces, low-code/no-code tools, tight integration with BTP, and plenty of collaboration features.

In short, you are empowered with an agile, value-driven, innovative, and modern development environment.

Seek advice!

Advisory can help you tailor your BTP roadmap and foundation because you’re at a critical juncture when beginning your journey with BTP. This is when experienced advisory can make a significant difference.

Read more about BTP from NTT DATA Business Solutions here

Read more about BTP from SAP here