RISE with SAP: Business Process Redesign for Successful Business Transformation
(5 minute read)
For the majority of SAP customers, the secret to successful business transformation will be optimization of business processes leveraging the organization’s ERP environment. But in order to build a value-based case for change, you need to have a full understanding of your operational processes and be able to identify opportunities for improvement. In this blog, we’ll explore this topic in more detail.
Business Process Redesign Takes More than Just Data
No one will deny that SAP has vast experience and business process acumen across most major industries, and that data and insight is leveraged to help companies build best practices and leading-edge processes. SAP’s recent acquisition of Signavio takes this topic to the next level, as the package will be a key facet for understanding process chains, bottlenecks, areas for re-engineering, and reacquainting the business with adopting standard best practices. But how far will this go toward helping your business with key business strategies and challenges in your industry?
RISE with SAP relies on partners to provide advisory services to complement the offering, and working with the right partner is important when it comes to business process redesign. Your business will benefit from working with an experienced partner with deep industry and SAP product expertise to help you assess your business, discuss trends in the industry, evaluate your existing technology environment, and identify opportunities for business process improvement. Doing this will help your business align its overall strategy and address business challenges with technology investments that add value and provide a return on investment.
A Closely Kept Secret
With all the talk about innovation, a closely kept secret of many companies is that they have not even begun to leverage the technology solutions they already have in place. Far too many business processes are still being executed in a non-streamlined fashion: email is the core method of communication, master data is a mess, tribal knowledge carries the day, and many processes are being run off-system with Excel spreadsheets. Under those circumstances, taking on the newest innovations can seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb.
But this doesn’t mean you can be complacent. This may be the opportunity to pause and address fundamental issues so that the business has a solid foundation upon which to build its future.
What Adds Real Value for Your Business?
RISE with SAP provides a framework and tools to move your business forward, but the question for many executives is: how can I make sure this really adds value for my business? To answer that question, it would be helpful to have an experienced partner help you understand what RISE is, what it can do, what pain points it addresses, and the value it brings for your specific business.
One of the core strengths of NTT DATA Business Solutions is our extensive experience in business across a range of industries, and using that knowledge and experience in solving business challenges for our customers. We combine business and industry experience with deep-rooted SAP expertise to apply technological concepts that solve specific business challenges in the most efficient, cost-effective manner.
Our consultants bring the business acumen and analysis needed to take a hard look at how the application of these toolsets are modeled and provide good advisement on the benefits they deliver. This allows your business to see the path forward and what technology can deliver for the business, with tangible outcomes rather than just providing ‘technical theory.’
As a practical example, one of our customers wanted more visibility to third-party manufacturers, and was looking at solutions to address that requirement. As it turns out, the business challenge was rooted in providing visibility to ownership of the raw materials going through the third-party manufacturer. For this customer, the Ariba solution they were evaluating turned out to be overkill for what they needed, and we helped them identify a much simpler, more pragmatic solution that was able to meet their needs.
That’s the strength of what we offer. We are practical advisors that understand the different models and help our customers apply the lowest cost solution to get the highest value possible.
Stay the Course, or go with Something Different?
Making a decision to move forward requires careful consideration. Some businesses may feel they already have a good path and don’t want to change it. For others, it’s a matter of having too much on the plate to think about it right now.
Even if you have no interest in making a change at this time, we believe it is time to get educated about what’s coming. We would be happy to work with your business to help you understand what it is, what it can do, what pain points it can solve, and what value it could bring for your business.
Next: Operational Dynamics – What You Need to Know about RISE with SAP
In our final blog, we will attempt to ‘de-mystify’ the RISE with SAP offering so that you have the information you need to make the best decision for your business.
A RISE with SAP subscription provides access to a comprehensive bundle of software, tools and services to help your business transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, but SAP always intended that you work with a partner to provide advisory, implementation or application management services.
Beyond that, there are additional things to consider, based on the requirements of your business. It’s important to understand what is included with the RISE with SAP offering, what is optional with SAP, and services that will require in-house or partner resources. We will take a deep dive into these topics in our next blog.