Before, during or after? When to invest in BTP on your S/4HANA journey

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

Before, during or after?

As you’re working to realize the value of your SAP system, you will have to dig into SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) at one time or another.

In our experience, having a defined BTP roadmap as early in your S/4HANA planning as possible is crucial to unlock the full potential of your ERP-solution.

Now the question is: When to implement BTP? And the right answer often depends on where you find yourself on your S/4HANA journey.

I want to support you with perspective, experience, and knowledge, to help you create a solid plan for your BTP investment and to navigate around the entry points in your S/4HANA implementation: Before, during, and after. 

Understand the pros and cons of your situation

Even the best solutions can fail if they are implemented at the wrong time.

Timing is about understanding the maturity, resources and needs of the business across project phases. The internal governance of the organization, and its people. 

No two businesses are the same – and depending on where you are in your digital transformation journey, your considerations are different. 

Recognizing this allows you to prioritize efforts and ensure that solutions are aligned with both current and future business goals.  

You can also read the first article in the series about the benefits of BTP and our three suggestions for how to start with BTP

We often hear companies say, “We’re on ECC right now, and because of that, BTP is not relevant or interesting to us – it’s one step further down the timeline”. 

But the truth is that you can easily jump-start BTP while on ECC.

Even if your S/4HANA project is still years away, there are plenty of good reasons to get started today – with a range of valuable benefits to gain along the way. 

Avoid polluting your system further before your S/4HANA implementation 

Whether your S/4HANA implementation is one year or five years away, investing in BTP now helps you avoid the trap of continuing to build custom code on your ECC system – only to face the costly task of converting it later. That’s technical debt accumulating over time. 

With BTP, you can start developing and benefit from applications and solutions today, because of SAP’s clean core strategy.  

And the fewer custom-coded and highly tailored applications you rely on – and the more you leverage BTP services – the smoother and more efficient your future migration to S/4HANA will be. 

Benefit from innovative services now – not later 

With BTP, you can build modern architecture and innovative solutions on top of your existing, even “outdated,” ECC system. 

We’re talking AI capabilities, automation, tools for low-code/no-code building of applications and much, much more. All can easily transfer to S/4HANA whether on-prem or in the cloud, when your digital transformation matures. 

BTP expands your development possibilities beyond ABAP 

One of the challenges for organizations still running on SAP ECC is the growing difficulty of finding skilled ABAP developers. 

With BTP, you’re no longer limited to ABAP. You can embrace a broader range of languages and technologies – and tap into a larger talent pool. 

BTP also offers a wide array of low-code/no-code tools that are more accessible and user-friendly, enabling faster development and innovation. A broader, more flexible, and future-ready development landscape. 

Get a head start on the benefits of S/4HANA 

By using BTP alongside your ECC system, you can reduce future technical debt, access innovative features right away, and start building modern solutions from day one – in more languages than just ABAP. 

Implementing BTP as part of a full-scale S/4HANA transformation can seem like a challenge.

But despite the complexity, there are strong reasons to begin exploring and implementing BTP gradually throughout your journey – so you’re not starting from scratch when the pressure is on. And, you’ll start getting full value of your S/4 transformation from the start!

Be aware of freeze periods and avoid them with BTP 

One crucial advantage of getting started with BTP early is avoiding the dreaded freeze periods – those stretches where development grinds to a halt because you’ve entered an upgrade phase that requires everything to stand still. 

The challenge is that your business doesn’t stop. Development needs to continue, and new demands emerge from the business. 

So, what do you do when your systems are effectively paralyzed by a freeze? 

With clean core, development continues 

BTP enables continuous development thanks to SAP’s clean core concept.  

Your applications and services live on a separate “floor,” decoupled from the ERP core – so innovation can move forward without adding clutter to your underlying system. 

This separation is especially valuable during an S/4HANA conversion or upgrade, where you can continue developing on BTP while the ERP core is being upgraded. 

The result? A steady development pace, no buildup of delayed tasks, and no ketchup effect for your already overloaded IT team. 

Make BTP an active choice 

Whether you decide to adopt BTP now or later, it’s important to make a conscious, informed decision, and to understand the implications of that choice. 

This is not just a technical question. It’s also about organizational temperament and readiness. 

You don’t have to implement BTP in parallel with your S/4HANA project, but you do need a clear strategy: why you’re choosing to act now – or why you’re choosing to wait.  

Either way, it should be a deliberate decision, not one made by default, where you understand the implications of not involving BTP in your strategy at this point.  

Once your S/4HANA implementation is complete, the barriers are gone, and the road is open to fully realizing the value of your investment. 

But with so many possibilities, you may face a new dilemma: Where should you focus your efforts, and what deserves your attention first? 

Thoroughly build your BTP foundation and roadmap
A successful start with BTP depends on having both a solid foundation and a clear, well-thought-out roadmap and securing your organizational governance. 

By creating a plan that guides you through the process, you ensure the right steps are in place from the beginning. 

Beware of building for the sake of building
We sometimes see companies rush into building out their environments, developing a wide array of applications in parallel without a clear, unified direction. 

The result? A fragmented landscape with more applications than the organization is ready to adopt, leading to inefficiencies rather than progress. 

Start with purpose. Make sure each solution you build fits into a coherent strategy and supports your overall goals. 

What do you truly need?
It’s important to define your needs from the start. Not to do everything, but to do the right things. 

What should be the first move on BTP? How do you ensure the setup is done right? Should you dive into every new tool and service, or start with a focused area, and only later rewrite or migrate what’s necessary? 

This is your opportunity to take a strategic look at your system landscape, identify where modernization is needed, and decide when it makes sense to innovate within your roadmap. What services from BTP would provide the largest benefits to you? Would you be able to identify key components used in multiple application areas? And then build up your migration from there? 

Pay attention to the licensing dimension
Licensing is another important aspect to consider when working with BTP. 

A common scenario is one team building one solution in one way, and then another team building something similar but in an entirely different way – without any coordination. But there may be opportunities to optimize costs by reusing licenses and making consistent architectural choices. E.g. subscribing to BTP services that share the same database can help keep costs under control. 

Being strategic about licensing early on can lead to long-term savings and greater efficiency.