Most organizations assume that their work is done once SAP is implemented. Consider this: Do you own a car you have never given for servicing? Or any piece of equipment that has never been serviced yet continues to work optimally? Absolutely not!

Likewise, the SAP system must be optimized regularly to ensure smooth organization functioning. Such optimization will enable the business to reap the real benefits of SAP investments. In this article, let us look at how you can optimize the SAP system for better business performance.

Why Optimize SAP?

According to Uptime’s 2022 survey, 80% of data center managers and operators have experienced some type of outage in the past three years. One in five organizations reported a server outage involving significant financial loss, reputational damage, compliance breach, and more.

Did you know? Over 60% of failures result in at least $100,000 in total losses.

Optimizing your SAP system is necessary to ensure your business runs as efficiently as possible. Whether you are a large business or a small business, proper optimization of your SAP system can make a big difference in terms of efficiency, agility, and, more importantly, security.

Read more: 8 Ways SAP ERP Software Benefits Your Business

Benefits Of Optimizing Your SAP System

From startups to global conglomerates, all businesses can leverage the SAP system. It is a proven game-changer for businesses looking for ways to stay competitive, as it can equip them with tools and functionalities to enhance their performance. It can help your business:

1. Avoid Reactive Firefighting

Reactive firefighting comes into play when you have to work towards solving a situation whose outcomes are out of control. SAP takes that out of the equation. Once the SAP system is optimized, it gets easier to thoroughly, carefully, and practically monitor the systems instead of reactive firefighting.

2. Prevent Potential Failures 

Optimizing your SAP system can enable quick and easy identification of potential problems within the SAP landscape. This prevents larger issues by enabling early detection of the issue even when their damage is minimal.

3. Reduce Noise

Nearly 40% of businesses suffered a major outage caused by human error, out of which 85% stem from staff failing to follow procedures or flaws in the processes.

Bombarding employees with notifications would lead to missing out on important information. SAP system optimization would reduce the unnecessary noise and the flooding of notifications that would otherwise occur. It could categorize the issue and help to focus on the matters that are actually important and may affect the bottom line.

4. Reduce Time-Consuming Processes

Time spent on tasks such as conducting daily performance and health checks, SLA, audit reports, and compliance reports adds up to quite a bit. This, in turn, can keep the team from focusing on fixing issues. SAP system optimization helps by enabling auto-scaling, which can detect types of applications, processes, and operating systems to deploy the right checks and limits.

It is important for every business to understand the benefits of optimizing its SAP system. But it is equally important to know the best practices. Before we consider that, let us consider common performance issues in the SAP system.

Common Performance Issues in SAP Systems 

Performance issues may affect the entire SAP system or certain functions or operations. Around 10% of small and medium businesses have revealed that their per-hour downtime is over $50,000.

Performance issues can be divided into four categories: SAP application server, Database, Network, and Hardware. Here is an overview:

1. Application Server: The SAP application server is a complex amalgam of ABAP and JAVA application servers, filled with potential issues. System-wide, single transaction, and background job problems are typical, and slow performance may be intermittent or continuous.

Quick fixes can usually handle single-transaction issues, while system-wide surges may require extensive troubleshooting. That’s not all. Ad hoc performance issues, such as when CPU or memory usage abruptly rises, can also be tricky to diagnose. Furthermore, the JAVA server may suffer from sluggish performance due to an individual application or the entire cluster, and long-running jobs are often a cause of concern.

2. Database: These issues could range from slow data retrieval to long procedures, or even administrative errors. When attempting to diagnose the issue, it’s important to first recognize the type of database you have.

You should also make sure to check for high CPU or memory usage in the server, as that can be a major cause of the problem. Additionally, remember to make sure network latency isn’t the culprit. After all, that can heavily impact database performance!

3. Network: The issue with the network would be latency in all queries and truncations. If your server hardware is insufficient and slowing down SAP transactions, you may have to determine how many resources you need to support current SAP operations.

4. Hardware: Hardware issues may include bottlenecks that occur at certain times or around the clock.

Best Practices for Optimizing Your SAP System

Optimizing your SAP system involves a number of carefully executed steps, including optimizing your data structure, optimizing the architecture of your SAP system, and optimizing your applications and processes.

1. Data structure optimization – This involves making sure your data is organized in a way that is efficient and easy to access. It also involves ensuring that your data is properly indexed, ensuring that the most frequently used data is readily available.

2. Architecture optimization – This includes ensuring that your hardware and software are configured correctly in order to maximize system performance. It also means they are up to date with the latest versions and that any patches or hotfixes have been applied.

3. Application optimization – This involves making sure that your applications are running efficiently and that any bottlenecks are removed.

Testing And Monitoring Your SAP System Performance

The SAP system can be a powerhouse, but if it isn’t running optimally, it can bring your entire business to a screeching halt. To keep it in top shape, regular system health checks and performance monitoring are key – no matter how large or small your enterprise is.

Unfortunately, SAP doesn’t provide a straightforward way to monitor performance, troubleshoot problems, and get back to operations quickly. Instead, users are left with the tedious labor of manually analyzing each system component to find the root of the issue, which can take days and hurt the bottom line.

To prevent this, Fingent can help take care of monitoring critical tasks, work processes, batch processes, database stats, and more.

Read More: Optimize Workforce Management with SAP SuccessFactors and Qualtrics

How Can Fingent Help?

Successful optimization of the SAP system is the road to increasing ROI for your organization. But managing complex IT landscapes, different business processes, and multiple tools can be intimidating for in-house teams.

That’s why we at Fingent top custom software development company, provide audit and optimization services to ensure your organization reaches its goals with SAP. Our frameworks and methodologies help identify bottlenecks and bring the best out of SAP systems, helping you save money and improve your processes. Reach out to speak to our SAP experts and find out how we can help.

“There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those that will be.” 

                                                           – Robert Mueller, FBI Director, 2012.

Individuals and organizations are contributing to the global data boom every single day. And business hyperconnectivity creates new challenges in cyber security. Most organizations are adopting the “better safe than sorry” motto.

What can you do? This article will help you find the answer.

Security – A Very Real Challenge!

Did you know?

The global cyber insurance market is projected to double in size by 2015 to reach nearly 22 billion US dollars!

World data is set to grow to 175 zettabytes (that is, 175 followed by 21 zeros).

Companies worldwide are producing data in large amounts. And with large data comes the risk of higher manipulation. Are companies working on securing their data? Is your company prepared to combat a cyber attack? Cybersecurity is a real challenge! But with technology advancing each day, we now have better means to ensure data security. Let’s find out more about this!

Understanding SAP Security and Compliance

Maintaining a secure IT infrastructure is essential for any organization. SAP security is a means to protect your organization’s data. It monitors and controls access both internally and externally.

54% of organizations acknowledge that their IT departments are not adequately capable of handling advanced cyberattacks.

To protect their data, organizations should ensure that all user access is properly monitored, audit logs are regularly reviewed, and that access controls are regularly updated.

Additionally, organizations should implement a password policy to ensure all passwords are complex and regularly changed. Finally, organizations should confirm security patches are regularly applied to all SAP systems to prevent unauthorized access and potential data breaches. Best practices are key to ensuring your SAP systems remain secure and compliant.

Read more: Top Benefits Businesses Can Gain Form Fingent’s SAP AMS Practices.

Risks Associated with Poor SAP Security and Compliance

Poor security and compliance measures can expose a business to cybersecurity threats and data breaches. Without proper security measures, businesses are vulnerable to malicious attacks, unauthorized access, lawsuits, insurance rate hikes, criminal investigations, and bad press.  Furthermore, it may result in heavy fines, reputation damage, and other losses. These are sufficient to put your organization out of business.

Did you know? The cost of data breaches may rise to over $5 trillion in 2024.

Therefore, businesses must understand the risks associated with poor SAP security and compliance and take the necessary steps to protect their systems and data. This includes implementing proper access control measures, monitoring user activities, and ensuring that all security measures are regularly updated and tested.

Common Challenges Faced in SAP Security Compliance

SAP security and compliance are becoming increasingly challenging for organizations of all sizes. As more organizations move to cloud-based SAP solutions, they face the challenge of ensuring consistent security and compliance across all systems.

In addition, as SAP applications continue to become more complex, organizations must ensure they have the right processes and tools to maintain security and compliance. Despite your understanding and diligence concerning safeguarding your SAP databases, chances are you are dealing with the following:

• Manual processes take too much time and are prone to errors, rendering it challenging to cover the entire digital estate.
• You will have to deal with heterogeneous point products that are difficult to manage.
• Third-party services that, in turn, are dependent on either of the aforementioned.

Organizations must have a comprehensive security compliance plan addressing these challenges to ensure their SAP systems are secure and compliant.

Read more: How secure is your business in a multi-cloud environment?

Eliminate Your SAP Cyber Security Blind spots with SAP System Best Practices.

SAP systems are the backbone of many business operations. As a result, ensuring the system is always secure and compliant with corporate policies is essential. To help ensure your SAP system is secure, here are some best practices you can follow:

1. Monitor user activity and implement user access controls

Ensure that all users have the least privileged access to do their job. This limits users’ access and reduces the chances of unauthorized access.

2. Teach the team to take responsibility

Everyone on the team may feel that they are not responsible for the breach. But the fact is that someone must take responsibility for the breach. And this fact must be made clear to all on the team.

3. Keep up to date on the latest enhancement packs

Periodically confirm that all patches and updates are installed regularly. This ensures that any security flaws in the system are addressed as soon as possible.

4. Ensure data is securely stored and encrypted

Develop a strong password policy. Require strong and unique passwords for each user and ensure that passwords are periodically changed. Use multi-factor authentication. This adds an extra layer of security and makes it more difficult for malicious users to access the system. Finally, monitor user activity regularly. This can help identify any suspicious activity or potential threats.

5. Revert to Standard installation

It’s essential to minimize the chances of potential security threats by replacing custom legacy code with updated, patched versions of the programming language standards and SAP applications. To do this, you should eliminate unused code to ensure you don’t accrue any vulnerable technical debt.

6. Identify security gaps

Staying secure requires early detection. Just as regular health checkups help detect issues early and provide a path for effective treatment, conducting frequent assessments of your ERP system can provide full visibility and comprehension of your ERP environment before you make modifications and detect when you may be lagging. Through regular health screenings, any security breaches can be identified.

Following these best practices will help keep the SAP environment secure. It is important to remember that security and compliance is an ongoing process and should be revisited and updated periodically to ensure it is up to date with industry standards.

How Can Fingent Help Attain the Best SAP Security Compliance 

Determining which SAP security software is best for your business can be challenging, as it is an important decision. Fortunately, Fingent offers a tailored solution designed to keep critical systems secure. Our security solution also integrates with an organization’s wider cybersecurity monitoring, ensuring the security team is not left in the dark regarding potential threats.

Our experts understand the complexities of managing SAP compliance and are committed to making SAP support and compliance fit your budget and anticipate future needs. We strive to provide comprehensive and cost-effective solutions to all process aspects, including data reporting, administrative tasks, data analysis, and audits. Reach out to our experts and find out how we can help you.

SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA are two key ERP software offerings from SAP that allow enterprises to simplify the management of business processes, enable effective data processing, and facilitate streamlined information flow across organizations. Though SAP ECC is the most commonly used ERP software, things will change as SAP ends its support for ECC 6.0 in 2027. As ECC is reaching the end of the line, the most practical way for businesses to benefit from SAP’s exceptional solutions is to migrate to SAP S/4HANA.

Like ECC, S/4HANA too offers solutions to enhance business process efficiency and the customer experience in areas like finance, inventory and asset management, sales, marketing, HR, logistics and supply chain, and product development, but in an incredible and unprecedented manner.

Before moving to the world’s most intelligent and modern ERP, it’s important to understand how SAP S/4HANA is different from its predecessor, SAP ECC.

What is SAP ECC?

SAP ECC is short for SAP ERP Central Component, the previous generation of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Due to its modular design, SAP ECC is highly customizable and can be configured to suit the different needs of a business, such as finance, logistics, warehousing, human resources, product planning, customer service, and so on. The most striking feature of ECC is its ability to work with third-party or customized applications. For example, ECC can operate on a third-party database such as IBM DB2 or Oracle database and can work with customized applications like business messaging apps.

Due to its interaction with different components in the landscape, ECC is flexible, which also brings in more complexities. This is because a change in one component can affect how other parts function in the ecosystem. So, rolling out any change, such as customization, upgrades, add-ons, or enhancements, demands a thorough and careful testing of the landscape to ensure that your important business functions remain undisrupted.

With SAP phasing out ECC, users are left with only one alternative: moving to S/4HANA.

Read more: SAP for Business: 9 Ways to Maximize Business Performance

What is SAP S/4HANA?

SAP S/4HANA is the world’s most intelligent, complete, and modular cloud ERP software that simplifies your business landscape. It facilitates accelerated deployment by lowering costs with a standardized core and brings agility through an open, modular, scalable, and innovative platform. S/4HANA service management integrates crucial functions from various lines of businesses and industries and incorporates parts of SAP Business Suite Products.

What is the difference between SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA?

Though ECC provides modules covering a full range of industrial and enterprise applications that can be run on a database of the user’s choice, the legacy ERP system fails to leverage the intelligent technologies needed to be competitive today. S/4HANA differs from ECC in many aspects:

Why Move to SAP S/4HANA Now?

Making decisions based on accurate and appropriate data is critical to gain a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic world. With SAP S/4HANA, organizations can use data, people, and enterprise assets in an aggregated manner that best suits their business. Moving to SAP S/4HANA offers you the following advantages:

1. Simplified Technical and Data Architecture

Businesses are attracted to SAP S/4 HANA due to its simplified data table structure and access. SAP HANA’s in-memory computing platform provides a database that operates way faster than the database options used in ECC or any traditional OLTP system. In SAP S/4HANA, there is no need to separate OLTP and OLAP applications into different databases or applications, as a single HANA database can handle both types of operations effectively. The traditional OLTP systems are generally slow at reading and analyzing data that gets updated while processing transactions. SAP S/4HANA offers restructured data models, allowing customers to access data reports faster.

2. Access to Innovative Technologies

Introducing a fresh bulk of innovative technologies will help you address all the upcoming business requirements. Built-in machine learning is an outstanding capability of S/4HANA that automates key business processes across your organization. Real-time insights, predictive BI, and automation free your employees from mind-numbing work and help them focus on value-adding tasks. Access to innovative trend technologies will keep you one step ahead of your competitors.

3. Invest in Your Growth Strategy

You can build an appropriate strategy with fully-automated data if your business is growing and venturing into new markets. Remember that your current SAP ERP  has a shorter shelf-life. Failing to catch up with the latest trends and developments will be costly. Investing in an intelligent ERP system is a business imperative, for it will support and complement your growth strategy and increase your speed-to-market.

4. Consistent User Experience Across All Devices

SAP Fiori – the design system that powers the user experience of SAP S/4HANA – defines how the new business value of S/4HANA is delivered to users. The Fiori design system delivers a modern user experience that works on various devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone) to ensure faster response times and better performance. Digital age user experience, end-to-end real-time analytics, new business processes (such as Group Reporting, Central Procurement, and Predictive MRP), and intelligent automation (such as Situation Handling, AI/ ML proposals, RPA) scenarios are the key value drivers for using SAP Fiori in SAP S/4HANA. Above anything, you need SAP Fiori to configure, adapt and extend SAP S/4HANA.

5. Avert The Risk of Falling Behind

SAP is no longer investing in ECC as the legacy ERP is reaching its end of life in 2027. On the other hand, SAP S/4HANA incorporates many innovative features through its dynamic quarterly releases that make its core even more intelligent. Several companies around the globe have already started their migration, and some are working fervently on their migration plans. Considering the predicted shortage of skilled SAP consultants and the rising cost of quality consulting services, it’s vital to bridge the gap and avert the risk of falling behind by acting now when there are available resources. Working with a trusted and certified SAP specialist, you can keep your project time, budget, and risk to the minimum. Also, if you have any plans to renew your hardware or hosting solutions, the SAP S/4HANA migration process and hardware purchase should happen simultaneously to avoid any non-compliance.

How Fingent Helps You Accomplish a Seamless Migration to SAP S/4HANA?

With Fingent, your SAP S/4HANA journey can never be complex. We offer the right S/4HANA solutions, expertise, and end-to-end services, including strategic advisory on choosing the right S/4HANA migration or conversion path to suit your requirements.

SAP S/4HANA Conversion Services

Our S/4HANA conversion services are customized to enable the smooth and rapid transition of your business systems, processes, and applications. We offer:

• Convert to SAP S/4HANA on a fixed budget and schedule
• On-premise or cloud-hosted S/4 implementation
• Selective Data Transition (Hybrid approach)
• More flexibility, higher success rate, and lower cycle time
• Enhanced UX, lower costs and risks, and ongoing support services

SAP S/4HANA Migration Services

Improve your enterprise’s resilience by championing your migration to SAP S/4HANA with Fingent. Here are the SAP S/4HANA journey steps we follow:

• Detect challenges, define the business case, and decide where to start
• Pre-configured scenarios and process mining to mitigate risks
• Identify deployment and hosting options
• Perform pre-checks before implementation
• Functional scope and custom code analysis

Our unique SAP S/4HANA service implementation methodology is a tried and tested practice with several successful implementations. Fingent top software development company will combine the best SAP Activate methodology, preconfigured solutions, focused industry templates, automation solutions, and a modular and agile framework. We help you integrate strategy, process, policies, people, and technology to ensure that your organization is process-driven. Transform your complex IT landscape into a simplified business system with SAP S/4 HANA.

Contact our SAP consultant to learn more. 

Historically, SAP solutions have required abundant resources and time to implement. However, this investment of time and resources pays dividends, as organizations that successfully implement the latest SAP solutions gain a distinct advantage within their industry. This is particularly true when discussing the latest SAP solution, SAP S/4HANA. The evolution of cloud technologies fueled the rise of this next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

This definitive guide explores SAP S/4HANA, so business leaders can determine whether this ERP solution is the wisest investment for their organizations.

Why Modern Businesses are Considering SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA is the culmination of decades of product development innovation. This expertly designed ERP incorporates simplified architecture and a robust digital core. Additionally, it is equipped with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to provide clients with access to truly revolutionary tools and functionalities.

Deploying SAP S/4HANA maintains the unparalleled level of business process coverage that SAP products are known for, while simultaneously allowing users to tap into the rapidly scalable computing power available via cloud services.

In simple terms, SAP S/4HANA eliminates the most commonly cited pain points associated with ERP implementation. Specifically, SAP S/4HANA can be implemented faster than legacy options and at a less cost-prohibitive price point, especially when users leverage the platform’s “best practices activations.”

Clients no longer have to invest in an abundance of on-premises computing resources but instead can leverage cloud-based alternatives.

Read more: It’s Time To Transform Your Business For The New Digital Age – Rise With SAP

Top Benefits of Implementing SAP S/4HANA

By transitioning to SAP S/4HANA, organizations can experience benefits such as:

1. Enhanced Ability to Adapt

With SAP S/4HANA, businesses will be better prepared to adapt to rapidly changing conditions within their sector. Additionally, the platform will help companies adopt the latest business models. Cumulatively, these benefits will make businesses more agile and resilient.

2. Improved UI/UX with Fiori

When SAP S/4HANA is paired with Fiori Innovation, the user experience is significantly enhanced. Fiori is the standard created by SAP for the use of design conventions and rich software elements.

3. Faster Deployment

In the past, deployments of legacy SAP ERP solutions could take years. Now, SAP S/4HANA migrations can be performed in mere months or weeks. Conversions from the ECC platform to SAP S/4HANA can also be performed in record times.

This reality allows clients to decrease their time to value and begin using their new software faster than ever.

4. Optimal Scalability

Transitioning from on-premises solutions to cloud-based options maximizes the scalability of ERP technologies. As businesses grow and expand, their SAP S/4HANA ERP software can evolve with them.

Before the release of S/4HANA, expanding ERP capabilities required businesses to invest in incredibly costly on-premises equipment. SAP S/4HANA makes this scalability challenge a distant memory.

5. Decreased Time to Market

One major hurdle to digital transformation was lead times. When businesses explore digital transformation investment opportunities, options that take years to go live are naturally not all that appealing to decision-makers.

As a result, some businesses settle on lesser solutions or rush through the deployment process, only to experience lackluster results with their new investment.

SAP S/4HANA addresses these recurring challenges by offering an expediting deployment process. While the efficiency and efficacy of the deployment depend primarily on the skill of the team overseeing the transition, capable SAP partners can implement S/4HANA far faster than its predecessors.

This rapid deployment is a significant selling point for businesses that need to achieve a condensed time to market and a fast time to value.

6. Advanced Analytics Capabilities

SAP S/4HANA’s dynamic array of reporting and analytics tools can provide organizational leaders with the insights they need to make data-driven decisions.

Decision-makers can view these data points through their preferred lens by customizing their reporting dashboard. SAP S/4HANA provides real-time updates, so business leaders can access the most accurate information possible.

In addition to its advanced analytics capabilities, SAP S/4HANA facilitates process automation via artificial intelligence software. Businesses can implement end-to-end automation, which reduces the workload on staff while simultaneously enhancing organizational efficiency.

Signs It’s Time to Transition to SAP S/4HANA

Waiting too long to upgrade ERP technology can turn a solution that should make businesses more efficient into a financial burden. If businesses are unsure whether it is time to transition to a leading-edge solution like SAP S/4HANA, they should look for indicators such as:

1. Lack of Standardization

When developing SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the company took the time to listen to its client base. What SAP found was that many clients were clamoring for product standardization. SAP’s clients are most often established companies that are facing very complex problems. They were early adopters of the Cloud ERP, but now these entities need to scale quickly to continue to innovate within their respective industries.

Antiquated options offered little or no standardization, making implementing and maintaining ERP software tedious, especially for those businesses with on-premise systems. SAP S/4HANA offers the level of standardization that clients were seeking while still providing them with the opportunity to customize their solutions.

2. Out of Compliance

Organizations that operate in closely regulated sectors must always be mindful of compliance requirements. The consequences can be serious if an organization clings to a legacy solution long after it has exceeded its optimal service lifecycle.

When compliance is a concern, businesses should promptly look to upgrade their legacy system with a modern alternative like SAP S/4HANA.

3. No Vendor Support

While product vendors support their technology products, they cannot support everything perpetually. As new products roll out, vendors will need to eventually discontinue offering support for previous iterations of software and ERP solutions.

You have two options when the vendor no longer supports your company’s preferred software suite.

The first involves maintaining the product in-house via cobbled-together solutions. This approach can quickly lead to diminishing performance and increasing maintenance expenses. The second, more pragmatic option is to upgrade to the latest available solution.

4. Costly to Maintain

All business moves, including replacing a legacy ERP solution, are boiled down to a risk vs. reward assessment. Much of this assessment focuses on the potential value benefits of making the switch versus the transition cost.

When legacy software becomes excessively costly to maintain, making this decision is that much easier. Antiquated technologies not only deliver less value over time, but they are also costly to keep up and running. If your organization has encountered this conundrum, it is a sure sign that it is time to upgrade.

S/4HANA Conversion vs. S/4HANA Implementation

There is an important distinction between migration or conversion and implementation for S/4HANA. Conversion involves transitioning all data and files from your existing SAP ERP solution (like ECC) to S/4HANA. Put simply, you are transforming your existing ERP solution into a variant of SAP S/4HANA.

During a system conversion, businesses will need to migrate their databases to SAP HANA 2.0. From there, they will need to convert their data to the new SAP S/4HANA model. In addition, the company must upgrade its software, which will involve replacing legacy application code with the code for SAP S/4HANA.

On the other hand, a new implementation involves building out SAP S/4HANA and then transitioning to the new system. The implementation process can be performed via a phased rollout, an incremental transition from legacy ERP to the new solution. Alternatively, businesses have the option to take all business units to SAP S/4HANA during a single massive rollout.

Both processes can be incredibly involved. Therefore, you should carefully analyze each approach’s benefits and choose the best method that best aligns with the needs and goals of your organization.

S/4HANA Conversion

Businesses that select a conversion strategy will see less significant downtime as the conversion is a one-step process. Choosing a conversion or new implementation is determined by your business type (if you are based in IT or finance, for instance), your long-term strategy and how many other systems are connected to your influencing system.

Prepare for Your Conversion

Before any new implementation or conversion projects, preparing your team and system for the changes is essential. Poor preparation can increase downtime, which decreases the effectiveness of the conversion.

Caring for your financial data includes preparing your team for new parallel accounting and document split capabilities via conversion. Also, verify the compatibility of your add-ons to ensure that they can handle the transition.

Ready your team for test cycles and have a plan in place so that each member knows their role to follow the guidelines.

Qualify a Baseline Plan

Your conversion and migration partner will assess your system to help determine the baseline plan for your system landscape. They will walk you through optimizations as well as the quality assurance systems and processes and which development system is best for you. They’ll also conduct a dress rehearsal to minimize the downtime and optimize the time your system has.

Consider Your Add-Ons

Most SAP systems have third-party add-ons as some were used to enhance the existing SAP architecture. Before starting a conversion, locate the vendor of each add-on and verify its compatibility with the SAP S/4HANA system. You’ll also want to check that you’ll still need each add-on. The vitality of the SAP S/4HANA product may eliminate the need for some third-party enhancements.

Read more: Low Code/No Code Development with SAP BTP: How It Is Turning the Future of Enterprise Resilience

Tips for Choosing the Best S/4HANA Migration Partner

When searching for the right S/4HANA migration partner, organizations like yours should consider factors such as:

• Scope of services offers
• Level of experience
• Industry reputation
• Whether the organization offers ongoing support

Of the above factors, industry reputation is of particular concern. While virtually any SAP 4/SHANA migrations partner can claim to be “top-notch,” not all of them are. Feedback from past clients serves as a valuable form of social proof that can help you determine whether a provider is right for your organization.

Fingent is Your SAP Partner

Whether you need assistance with SAP S/4HANA implementation or migration, Fingent is the ideal partner to oversee this complex process. Since 2003, Fingent has been delivering exceptional value to our clients while helping them gain distinct advantages in their respective industries.

Past clients have praised us for our quality of service, ability to expedite time to market, cost-effectiveness, and tailored approach. To learn more about our SAP S/4HANA solutions, contact Fingent today.

The strategic significance of advanced technologies as a critical business component is recognized by enterprises like never before. Besides business modernization and cost reduction, advanced technologies allow you to compensate for labor shortages, improve brand value and competency, and expedite research and innovation processes. However, several companies jump onto the bandwagon without properly understanding the practical applications and benefits of advanced technology in their business. Only 23% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide can invest in and grow with new digital tools, indicates the World Economic Forum. This data proves why companies should analyze advanced business technology examples before adopting digital tools.

Read more: Using technology to build customer trust: Your business plan for 2022

To simplify your understanding, here’s a quick rundown of five advanced business technologies we believe will help you cope with the new business and economic environment. 

• Simplifying Workflows With Cloud
• Low-code Applications
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Document Data Extraction
• AI Assistants

As these business technologies become more affordable and handy, businesses are ardently pursuing them to automate customer service, streamline workflows, differentiate products and services, and reach new markets. Depending on your budget, implementation timeline, priorities, and unique business requirements, our team at Fingent helps you build the roadmap for technology adoption. 

Let’s take a closer look at the five inevitable technologies for business transformation today:

Read more: How to gain maximum value from your technology investments?

1. Simplifying Workflows with Cloud

Workflow management is a highly overlooked enterprise strategy that directly impacts productivity. Managing different stakeholders, heaps of confidential data, and a series of preset and conditional tasks manually can lead to several errors such as employees missing key steps, policy violations, compliance issues, and monetary losses. By taking your workflows online, cloud-based workflow management applications increase your productivity. 

Cloud-powered workflows or workflow management tools:

• Are scalable, centralized, customizable to your needs, easy to integrate, secure, reliable, and hassle-free. 
• Offer a seamless and unified collaboration interface by preventing users from toggling between different messaging apps or communication channels.
• Reduce your dependency on in-house IT team by passing on the software maintenance responsibilities to the third-party software vendor. 
• Can be accessed via any authorized network (with approved access credentials), on any device, from anywhere, 24/7. This has been a huge game-changer for several companies that switched to remote operations during the pandemic. 

Example of a Cloud-based Workflow Tool

Finding a cloud workflow management tool that can be customized to your company’s requirements is daunting. The platform should integrate well with your organizational processes without disrupting your existing workflow. This is where digital workplace applications like InfinCE make the difference. 

With InfinCE Digital Workplace, Fingent has improved its productivity by 20% through real-time, effective, and easy collaboration. Data-powered dashboards, dedicated servers, collaboration apps, productivity tools, virtual desktops, private mobile apps, and a host of exceptional business management features enabled us to achieve a significant operational breakthrough in streamlining workflows. 

Read the full case study here.   

2. Low-code Applications

Gartner estimates that by 2025, 70% of enterprise applications will use low-code or no-code technologies. Digital business transformation requires pushing custom software solutions to the market at lightning speed. This demand has given rise to low-code applications that will break the technological and organizational silos of application development, automation, integration, and governance. Low-code development enables business users to bring innovative ideas to life by just dragging and dropping low-code elements through a graphical user interface. 

In simple words, low-code development enables “citizen” developers or non-tech users (such as business analysts or marketers) to build dashboards and survey or contact forms faster. Professional developers, on the other hand, can leverage low-code techniques to perform more efficient tasks such as legacy application modernization or back-end integrations with improved agility and velocity.

Use Cases for Low-code Applications

• Customer engagement applications and portals
• Mission-critical applications such as ERP software, payments manager, etc.
• Data analysis applications, BI dashboards, and data management software
• Mobile apps for customer engagement
• Order processing, inventory, order fulfillment, supply chain, and accounting apps

Salesforce Lightning, Microsoft Power Apps, and Zoho Creator are some of the leading low-code applications today. SAP users can leverage the unified low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to rapidly build and extend applications, and automate tasks and processes.

3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), often referred to as software robotics, is an easy-to-use software technology that allows anyone to automate digital tasks within their business processes. RPA allows users to create software robots or “bots” that can learn, emulate, and then execute rules-based business processes. According to Forrester Research, RPA software revenue is expected to reach $6.5 billion by 2025, while RPA-related services revenue could hit $16 billion in the same year. 

Potential Use Cases for RPA 

We offer free proof of concepts to help you understand how RPA can improve your business efficiency and customer experience. Some of our top use cases include:

• Automating discharge protocols and data management to increase HR productivity in healthcare.
• Daily retail process automation such as order processing, inventory and warehouse management, etc. to save time and resources.
• Reducing customer wait times through RPA-enabled chatbots that answer customer queries in real-time. 
• Error-free, automated billing and invoices to keep your financial systems and reports up-to-date.
• HR teams can automate the maintenance of personnel data and records, streamline onboarding, and manage payroll seamlessly. 

Download our white paper to learn more about how Robotic Process Automation can simplify your business operations

4. Document Data Extraction

Extracting quality data out of unstructured or poorly structured data sources and documents for further processing, migration, and storing has been a biggest obstacle in automating back office operations. If you are entering structured invoices to a robust ERP tool like SAP, your payments can be automated and system records can be generated automatically. Due to the high costs of data extraction, several businesses extract only critical information fields, for example, the payment field within an invoice. Businesses are compelled to manually extract data from other important fields, such as validating the invoice’s compliance with VAT.  

AI-integrated OCR Software for Document Extraction

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is an affordable, game-changing technology that automatically extracts data from the digital images (photos) of large files, scanned documents, and sub-titles or captions superimposed on an image. It reduces the time spent in manual data entry and extraction by automatically converting typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-readable text. AI-powered automated data extraction tools like DocuSign, Docsumo, Kofax Capture, and Amazon Textract leverage OCR technology to reduce the chaos involved in document data extraction and enable businesses to create an efficient workplace. 

Our team helps customize document data extraction software that can save your time and money by eliminating transcription and transposing mistakes.

5. AI Assistants

One of the most common examples of small business automation today is the use of AI-powered virtual assistants. They can save your employees’ productivity by automating the most repeatable customer interactions, such as technical support, appointment scheduling, lead qualification, and order management. AI virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa can understand and act according to your voice commands and customize responses to your queries. Understanding customer intent through natural language processing and recognition allows AI assistants to maintain a human-like conversation.

Chatbots are a popular category of AI assistants that are designed specifically for text-based channels like SMS, email, and live chat. Recent years have witnessed a rise in chatbot adoption among several business verticals, product and service lines, websites, mobile apps, customer portals, and so on. Data shows that 58% of B2B companies and 42% of B2C websites are using chatbots to make their websites and mobile apps more interactive. More than 56% of businesses believe chatbots to be driving digital disruption in their industry. 

Case Study: AI Virtual Assistant for HR     

Fingent’s HR team was pressed to transform their service delivery model as routine, transactional tasks affected their performance and efficiency. To solve their struggle, Fingent developed MUSA, an AI-powered virtual assistant (a chatbot) and integrated it with Fingent Hub, Fingent’s internal employee management system. MUSA is short for Multi Utility Assistant. Employees can ask MUSA any queries related to HR and IT DevOps processes at Fingent, and they’ll get answered instantly. MUSA has improved our HR team’s response time by minimizing their workload and allowing them to focus on areas requiring more attention.     

Read the full case study here.

Business and Technology Are Inseparable

Gartner writes that businesses leading with technology employ advanced tech to boost their customer experience and revenue growth, have a clear understanding of their priorities, goals, and strategies, and invest in solutions tailored to their needs. Technology allows businesses to lower the walls within and between their organizations, customers, providers, suppliers, and so on. Organizations perceiving technology as a key business consideration will be able to match the pace of business change and stay relevant and competitive. 

How can your company embrace growth in a new era of transformation and business technology trends? If you feel you’re getting caught in the technology maze, take a quick break to contact us.

Our consultants can simplify your technology adoption strategy based on your priorities, customer needs, financial resources, and technical requirements. 

Despite the rampant economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous small and mid-market businesses (SMBs) managed to survive the odds by embracing modern technology. With a cloud-first approach and a partnership-driven ecosystem, several SMBs demonstrated tremendous growth in these extraordinarily challenging times. Americas’ SAP User Group (ASUG) survey observes that most of their mid-market customers expect to grow at a rate of 56% over the next five years. If you’re an ambitious mid-sized business with a large-scale growth plan, it’s time to outgrow your accounting software and adopt a modern ERP platform.
Read more: How Organizations Can Gain a Competitive Edge by Implementing Digital Core ERP

Many small businesses hesitate to invest in intelligent ERPs due to high costs and technical complexities. Platforms like SAP Business ByDesign allow SMBs to oversee their whole business, improve compliance, increase cash flow, and expedite reporting. SAP Business ByDesign is a sophisticated cloud ERP software designed specifically for mid-market users. How does ByD enable your business to build a robust technology foundation and drive growth? Let’s explore this in this blog.

What is SAP Business ByDesign?

SAP Business ByDesign (ByD) is an integrated, on-demand, full-featured, cloud ERP solution that can run your entire business operations on a single platform. ByD is sold and operated as software as a service (SaaS) and is designed specifically for small to mid-sized enterprises as well as subsidiaries of large corporations. SAP Business ByDesign can integrate and manage all your core business processes such as financials, project management, human resources, procurement, customer service, sales, integrated business analytics, and supply chain, among others.
SAP Business ByDesign is built on the standards of service-oriented architecture (SOA). The platform attains integration between business capabilities via message exchanges. Multi-tenancy enabled SAP NetWeaver is the underlying technology stack of ByD. The platform leverages HANA, SAP’s in-memory database.
Read more: SAP HANA – The Game-Changing Technology 

SAP ByD Unifies Core Business Functions

SAP Business ByDesign works as an end-to-end business suite that unifies the following core business functions:

1. Financial Management 

ByD helps assess your company’s financial position in real-time. You can use the software to administer financial and managerial accounting for multiple operating units, currencies, and reporting paradigms. Using ByD, you can analyze your organization’s customer and supplier transaction data to better understand your cash position.

2. Customer Relationship Management

SAP Business ByDesign allows your business to efficiently manage your sales, marketing, and service processes. Personalized customer data enables marketers to run successful campaigns, improve lead generation and qualification, and expedite handover to sales. The software improves your account management by automating key sales functions, from contact interactions to billing. ByD equips your employees with the right tools and insights to deliver exceptional customer service.

3. Human Resources Management

SAP Business ByDesign simplifies employee onboarding processes. Employees and managers can use the software to access all the relevant information. ByD streamlines time, attendance, labor, and compensation management by centralizing data and self-service processes. Employees can self-manage their timesheets, personal data, and procurement processes. The software lets your payroll integrate with third-party payroll providers for faster processing. ByD also helps automate policy-compliant requests and approvals.
Read more: Choosing Between SAP Business One and SAP Business ByDesign

4. Project Management

SAP Business ByDesign helps manage projects of all sizes and complexities through real-time project collaboration and monitoring. If you’re using Microsoft Teams, you can directly access your ByD application from Teams.

5. Procurement

ByD helps maintain a centralized database to store supplier and product data. You can seamlessly manage multiple vendor contracts and negotiate better prices with real-time information. This saves your cost and time.

6. Supply Chain Management

SAP Business ByDesign streamlines customer and supplier collaboration with improved supply-demand matching. This ensures that the product design meets customer expectations and shortens the time to market. The software helps control your material flows and automates relevant processes across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics operations. All these lead to better procurement planning.

Business Benefits of SAP Business ByDesign

Digital transformation is the prerequisite for an intelligent enterprise. With its ease of use, insightfulness, and openness, SAP Business ByDesign enables SMBs to drive digital transformation efforts successfully.
Read more: RISE with SAP – How Fingent Can Help Explore Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) 

Here’s how your business can benefit from SAP ByD:

• Offers built-in analytics to leverage real-time data across all operational areas. This supports intelligent decision-making.
• Anytime, anywhere access via web and mobile helps build an empowered, mobile-connected workforce.
• Scalable technology and quarterly upgrades ensure that your ByD platform is always up-to-date.
• Though designed for small and mid-sized companies, the platform comprises all the features and capabilities utilized by large enterprises.
• A highly configurable business management solution that requires minimal customization.
• One of the most cost-effective ERP solutions that reduces your operational expenses.
• Gain 360-degree visibility of your business, with instant access to reports on enterprise-wide operations.

Case Study: Fingent helped a real estate giant reduce manual work, improve TAT, and increase profitability by integrating multiple role-based mobile apps into their SAP ERP system. Download now!

SAP Business ByDesign Mobile Strategy Updates for 2022

The new SAP Business ByDesign mobile strategy 2022 aims to help customers access more preferred features on their smartphones without any complexity. Currently, SAP Business ByDesign supports five mobile apps – SAP Business ByDesign Mobile, SAP Manager Approvals, SAP Time Recording, SAP Project to Go, and SAP Project Cockpit. SAP will now focus on improving the SAP Business ByDesign Mobile App that integrates all these features onto a single platform. Following are the changes to note:

• Starting from August 2022, customers will be able to access all the ByD features using a single app, that is, SAP Business ByDesign Mobile App. No app swapping will be required anymore.
• From 1st May 2022, users will not be able to download and install SAP Project to Go and SAP Project Cockpit apps from the app stores.
• From 1st August 2022, users will not be able to download and install SAP Manager Approvals and SAP Time Recording from the app stores.
• By removing existing installations from your devices and switching to the Business ByDesign mobile app, you can access all these features using a single app. It accelerates your time-to-market and helps you benefit from streamlined business processes.

Experience Seamless Business Transformation with Our SAP Services

As more businesses switch to remote operations, there is an increasing dependency on mobile devices to ensure business continuity. It’s important for small and mid-sized businesses to focus on building a future-driven business model powered by cloud and connected technology. SAP Business ByDesign enables you to accomplish these goals easily. In SAP’s own words, “Business ByDesign connects every function across your company with proven best practices and in-depth analytics.”
Read more: How SAP ERP Software Implementation Benefits Your Business

Fingent top software development company has the expertise to customize and implement SAP Business ByDesign for all sizes of businesses, across verticals such as professional services, manufacturing, real estate, retail, logistics, and so on. Our cloud ERP implementation services help transform your organization into an intelligent enterprise. We are a Silver Partner of SAP with 18+ years of experience in implementing SAP services and solutions. Our goal is to help you adopt the right technology that solves your business challenges without any complications. Contact us to understand how your business can benefit from SAP Business ByDesign.

With proven expertise across 25 industries and an end-to-end suite of intelligent enterprise solutions, SAP has triumphantly cemented its position in the enterprise application software market. According to the World Economic Forum, SAP customers constitute 87% of total global commerce. Right from the R/2 commercial mainframe applications designed in the 1970s to the latest SAP S/4 HANA and its enormous suite of intelligent software products, SAP solutions have enhanced the competency of organizations with deep business insights and improved enterprise collaboration. SAP solutions include both technical and functional modules. While SAP ABAP, SAP Basis, SAP Security, SAP Solution Manager, CRM, etc. are technical modules, components such as Material Management (MM), Production Planning (PP), Financial Accounting and Controlling (FICO), etc. are examples of functional modules. All these modules of SAP closely integrate with each other to provide the best functionalities and solutions for businesses.
Read more: 8 ways SAP ERP software implementation helps your business 

This post analyzes ABAP, one of the core technical modules of SAP, to understand how the platform enables businesses to run better.

What is SAP ABAP?

Advanced Business Application Programming or SAP ABAP is the principal programming language supported on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP server and the applications that run on it. Typical examples of ABAP-based applications include SAP ERP (previously known as R/3) and the present SAP S/4HANA.
SAP ABAP is the oldest and the most popular of SAP’s four key application platforms, together with SAP NetWeaver Java, SAP HANA, and SAP Cloud Platform. ABAP is used by SAP to deploy its applications on the NetWeaver ABAP platform. It’s different from the universal programming languages like Java because all ABAP programs and compiled code reside only in the SAP system. ABAP is renowned as the proprietary fourth-generation programming language (4GL) of SAP, developed to process massive volumes of data in SAP business applications.
ABAP enables businesses to customize their workflows related to material management, production management, supply chain management, financial accounting, and all other modules of SAP. This helps businesses reduce the time-consuming manual processes involved in data processing, particularly when they have more data to process.
Though some of the popular SAP applications such as SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Business One etc. run on other programming languages, the role of ABAP is crucial, especially when these applications integrate with ABAP-based applications such as SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA. As of 2021, there are five million registered ABAP developers worldwide, which indicates the robustness and credibility of the ABAP foundation for a wide range of SAP business applications.
Read more: SAP for Business-Making SAP support available at your hand

How does SAP ABAP accelerate business transformation?

ABAP was developed by SAP to enhance and expand the functionality of SAP systems. Here’s how ABAP is adding value to SAP users across the globe.
1. Aids mission-critical business processes
Since the 1980s, ABAP technology has been serving as the rock-solid foundation of SAP’s application portfolio. Several mission-critical business functions rely on ABAP for its scalability, robustness, and extensibility. ABAP is the underlying technology that steers SAP’s celebrated platforms and flagship suites such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP (R3), and the next-generation data warehouse – SAP BW4/HANA. Thus, ABAP helps monitor and improve strategic business measures.
2. Enables customization of SAP business applications
Due to its availability as an independent platform, ABAP is primarily used to develop cutting-edge, bespoke SAP business applications. Custom ABAP development allows users to configure and tailor SAP modules based on their business requirements. Since the initial days of ABAP, SAP customers and partners have established a tradition of creating custom codes and add-ons that function effectively on the ABAP platform.
3. A holistic development platform
ABAP combines the innovative capabilities of SAP HANA (SAP’s in-memory database), the power and consistency of the ABAP server, and the digital UX potential of SAP Fiori (SAP’s UI technology). All these features make it a holistic development and runtime platform. Continuous developments by SAP make ABAP capable of addressing new business scenarios.
4. Reduces the development cost
ABAP offers a centralized, shared, and integrated development environment that allows multiple developers to work on the same development objects simultaneously. Hence, it’s easy to track the changes to development objects and push them to QA or production environments, without losing version control. The integrated, self-compiling nature of ABAP helps reduce the development cost.
5. Offers excellent development environment and tools
The key highlight of ABAP Platform 2021 (the underlying technology of SAP S/4HANA), is the ABAP Development Tools (ADT) that support the entire development lifecycle in Eclipse IDE. It improves the efficiency of developers and offers enhanced SAP HANA capabilities. ABAP Platform 2021 facilitates the seamless transformation of your existing SAP business suite to SAP S/4HANA (cloud or on-premise) and SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform).
6. Improved focus on user experience
ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model promotes the development of SAP HANA-optimized Web APIs, SAP UI5, and Fiori applications. ABAP development tools support browser-based, device-responsive, and role-based development of application functions. It enables users to switch to different devices and collaborate effortlessly.
Read more: Top 3 UI offerings from SAP: Fiori, Screen Personas, and Lumira

7. Extensible to the cloud
ABAP Platform 2021 has been improvised to create customized extensions in the cloud. The growing number of SAP customers who’re adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud will benefit from ABAP’s tailored extensibility. The users will get access to more innovative features developed by SAP and can keep their software up-to-date with regular patches and upgrades.
8. Change and transport management
ABAP offers comprehensive change and transport management for the development projects organized in the ABAP Workbench and also helps in customizing those projects. It also facilitates to transport the changes between the SAP systems in your environment.

How can Fingent help your businesses unlock the potential of SAP ABAP? 

ABAP is primarily a developer-friendly language. However, associating with the right SAP partner can help even the non-technical SAP users to master the technology. We’ve helped several businesses in identifying, customizing, implementing, and maintaining ABAP within their SAP systems. As a Silver Partner of SAP, we help customers cut their development efforts and costs, reduce technical complexities, and bridge skill gaps. Our SAP application development practice enables businesses and aces IT professionals to collaborate effectively and deliver cutting-edge enterprise applications across any platform, device, and tech stack in the shortest span.

The pandemic put business challenges on an amplifier and made it look insurmountable. Here we all are though, crossing that barrier and making things work. Some challenges persist though. One area is the acceleration of the remote working scenario. Besides, sectors like manufacturing and Life Science have the challenge of accomplishing more tasks efficiently in less time.

This intimidating scenario drives the need for an intelligent enterprise. That’s exactly what SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) empowers enterprises in all sectors. But what is SAP BTP?

This article describes what SAP BTP is. It also explains all that you must know about SAP BTP and how you can leverage it to grow your business and remain resilient.

Read more: It’s time to transform your business for the new digital age: Rise with SAP!

What is SAP BTP?

SAP BTP is an open platform as a service. It can integrate SAP and third-party applications and extend application capabilities. It can empower an organization to exploit data to solve its business problems.

SAP BTP can provide in-memory capabilities, core platform services, and unique microservices. It can help develop the exact application needed quickly, easily, and economically. All this without investing in local infrastructure.

It is a business-oriented technology platform for your SAP and third-party applications. It can unlock value and drive growth for its clients. SAP BTP unifies a plethora of technology stacks.

SAP BTP covers a wide range of functionalities. These range from document management to globalization, to blockchain and ML. Organizations can leverage SAP BTP services to automate business processes, manage decision logic. It also allows them to gain end-to-end process visibility.

But what is SAP BTP made of?

SAP BTP consists of four building blocks:

• Database and data management: This includes SAP HANA and SAP HANA cloud.
• Analytics: Including SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAC, and Business Objects BI.
• Application Development and Integration: Includes SAP Integration and Extension suites and SAP Process Orchestration.
• Intelligent Technologies: Including AI, ML, and IoT.

How Is SAP BTP Revolutionizing Business Operations? 

SAP BTP can be used to build and extend SAP applications quickly. Here are the top three scenarios:

1. Integration

Most organizations prefer best-of-breed applications. With the journey to the cloud, the system landscapes are increasingly complex and business processes remain disconnected.

Today, most businesses have processes spanning from on-premise to cloud, and across multiple vendors. Plus, to complicate matters, some organizations continue to support their legacy applications along with various platforms and open-source technologies.  SAP BTP allows seamless integration by simplifying development and quickening deployment.

Read more: Improve business planning with SAP Analytics Cloud!

These complex environments can only be managed with proper integration. While the value of these landscapes is decreasing, the complexity and cost of such integration are increasing.

SAP BTP can help organizations to refine and enhance their business operations along the entire value chain. It can do this by connecting applications, data, and experiences across SAP and beyond.

SAP Integration Suite uses a set of connectors and APIs to securely connect and integrate business processes. This can accelerate an organization’s time to value in a secure, sustainable, repeatable, and cloud-centric capability.

2. Data management

Today, we live in the age of data. But most organizations fail to get value from it. They gather the data and store it in disparate mediums. This only leads to a disrupted flow of information.

Your business success depends on how you analyze your data and what you do with the results. SAP BTP allows you to transform your data into value quickly and efficiently.

Data management is all about creating value from the data. If a business wants to exceed in today’s global economy, it must act on real-time business data. However, both the structured and unstructured data volumes create challenges for organizations.

Instead of accelerating digital transformation, data has become the anchor that is holding businesses in the old way of working. This has led to data swamps putting them in a worse position than they were ten years ago.

SAP BTP solutions are designed to provide flexible and user-first data management. It allows organizations to discover, connect, orchestrate data with internal and external data flows. This enables business leaders to access near real-time data and drive insight and value back into their businesses.

3. Extensibility

Businesses must continue to innovate rapidly if they want to stay relevant. During the pandemic, most businesses had to innovate their business models to adapt to changed circumstances such as local lockdowns and shortage of distribution chains.

As new businesses emerged with their reduced innovation cycles, they posed a serious threat to established businesses. Organizations must thus be empowered to build, extend, and enhance their application landscape so they can stay relevant while rapidly realizing new opportunities.

SAP Extension Suite allows organizations to access prebuilt extensions through an integrated digital marketplace. SAP BTP empowers businesses to speed up integration, find real business value from data, and extend SAP landscapes to innovate.

For example, let’s discuss the SAP Workflow Service. The SAP Workflow Service is part of the SAP BTP portfolio. This service allows businesses to extend their business processes. These extensions allow organizations to adopt business process changes quickly and in a non-disruptive way.

It provides unique monitoring applications that help monitor deployed workflows and their instances. Additionally, it also allows REST APIs to read, create, modify, or cancel workflow and task instances.

Integrating SAP Workflow Management with SAP Conversational AI allows organizations to leverage digital support for their workflows, process cycle times, recommendations. Plus, it allows them to reconcile both structured and unstructured workflows.

This can increase the level of automation enabling businesses to better manage overall complexity, reduce manual effort, and associated errors.

Read more:Top 7 benefits of adopting SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation

How can Fingent help leverage SAP BTP being SAP Silver Partner?

As SAP Silver partner, Fingent can apply design thinking and agile methods to develop industry apps on SAP BTP. We can help deliver innovative solutions with speed and agility.

When we combine our expertise at Fingent with SAP BTP, we can leverage disruptive technologies such as AI and predictive analytics and innovate across industries and business functions. This can help our clients extend capabilities, integrate intelligent technologies, generate actionable insights, and amplify results.

We can help our clients gain the flexibility of public or private cloud infrastructure to create an intelligent enterprise experience. Along with SAP BTP, Fingent can help your intelligent enterprise take a big step forward. Give us a call and let’s discuss how best we can help you.

Which transformation path aligns with your business objectives? This is a critical question to ask when designing your business transformation journey. This makes it vital to take the time to know all the available options. It is also important to consider all aspects of each option and their implications before you embark on your business transformation. This blog will explain all you need to know about the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 release. It will also describe how SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 helps in solving business issues.

What is SAP S/4 HANA Cloud?

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud is an intelligent Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It has built-in intelligent technologies like ML, AI, advanced analytics.

It helps organizations smoothen their business transformation by assisting them in adopting new business models and managing business change at speed. Also, it can orchestrate internal and external resources while using the predictive power of AI.

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud can empower businesses to consistently outperform with instant intelligence and actionable insights. It can be implemented quickly and reduce support costs.

Now that we know what SAP S/4 HANA Cloud is, let’s understand what is the difference between the old SAP S/4 HANA Cloud version and the new version.

Read more: SAP S/4 HANA: Transforming CFO’s into a Business Value Creator and Role Model

Difference Between the Earlier SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Version And The New 2111 Version

Many think that SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 builds on the earlier version. In fact, the latest version exceeds the earlier version. It has increased flexibility in the consolidation process. This means users can now create additional customer individual consolidation unit attributes. These help in defining validation rules.

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 comes with enhanced core consolidation rules. These include more flexibility in source and destination rules. Companies can now benefit from an improved ‘import consolidation master data’ app. This new feature helps users gain time and makes maintenance easier.

Along with many other enhanced features, SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 now provides enhanced movement flow management. This means that SAP customers can have full control over the ‘default subitem’ field allowing them to edit and assign default subitems.

How Can Your Industry Leverage The New SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111?

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 brings many exciting innovations to various industries. Here are some examples:

1. Manufacturing

The newer version has revised the SAP Fiori app. The ‘Maintain Tim-Dependent Stock Levels’ option is specifically designed for the manufacturing industry. It allows its users to display, create, and update time-dependent stock levels for specific materials.

Manufacturers can define safety stock levels based on validity intervals. This enables them to react to varying demands dynamically. By ensuring sufficient stocking of products at all times, users can reduce deficiency risk.

2. Supply chain management 

To support supply chain management SAP Fiori app is enabled to support split valuations in the goods-receipt process. This allows users to create their own global valuation types.

3. Service companies 

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 has enhanced service order planning based on spare part reservations. This enables customer service managers to gain better insights into stock availability and to ensure that planned quantities of spare parts are always at hand. Such accurate service order planning ensures on-time delivery.

4. Finance 

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 provides SAP Fiori apps in ‘collections and dispute management.’ This modernized process offers extensibility options that help the app deliver a seamless user experience.

These new apps improve the process of collecting receivables and handling dispute cases. Along with several other features, it provides in-depth data insights to its users.

Read more: 6 Capabilities of SAP S/4HANA That Will Help You Become An Intelligent Enterprise

4 Top Challenges SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 2111 Helps Resolve

1. Project management

The latest release SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 allows project managers to plan, trigger and monitor materials or services enabling them to ensure on-time delivery.

Here is how it helps resolve challenges in project management:

• Date alignment is accelerated by reducing manual efforts leading to more accurate planning of project demands.
• Purchase contract for specific demand.
• Automatic demand blocking prevents requesting for unrequired demands.
• It provides a comparison chart for improved monitoring.

2. Sales

SAP Self-Billing Cockpit allows users to receive and process self-billing messages, edit messages, and receive multiple order reasons and condition types in case of errors or differences. This latest feature offers a central entry and overview page to its users, leading to a more efficient sales process.

3. Product compliance 

Monitoring of substance volumes will help users to comply with chemical regulations. It is integrated with the logistic processes of purchasing and manufacturing.

Substance Volumes Tracking feature enables users to identify possible risk factors. It can track, calculate, monitor volumes for substances either imported or produced within the country.

This will help users to define legal entities and map production plants. Thus, it increases transparency by directly linking the aggregated substance volumes to the original logistic documents.

4. Asset management

SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 introduces four process phases:

• Reactive maintenance
• Proactive maintenance
• Improvement maintenance
• Operational and overhead maintenance

Process phases help in creating specific maintenance requests for technical objects like functional locations or a piece of specific equipment.

These requests allow users to store relevant information that will help the employees to identify and solve any problems that might occur. Such simplified work requests for maintenance reduce the unnecessary effort for logging maintenance issues.

Read more: How Fingent Helps CFOs Gain New Insights and Reliably Enable Key Decisions

How Does Fingent Smoothen Your Transit To SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111?

SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 can empower your business to stay relevant and competitive. Fingent is a leading SAP Silver partner. To be classified as an SAP silver partner there are certain rigorous criteria that a company must meet around SAP certification and dedicated SAP resources.

We offer a broad range of services under the umbrella of SAP. This includes business consultation, implementation, and post-implementation services and support.

Take a look at our Case Studies to see how we have implemented various aspects of SAP for our clients.

We work with our customers from pre-planning through to project execution and application support. We assure you that you will receive the best possible care in the long term. Give us a call and let’s discuss your project.

Low code/No code is becoming a fierce upcoming contender in today’s digital landscape. For one, its unique capabilities enable collaboration between business stakeholders and IT teams. And it allows for an unprecedented speed of innovation.

Before the pandemic, companies looked to a Low code/No code platform for its unique benefits. Today though, the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the importance of low code in remote development.

This article will explain what is Low code/No code development with SAP BTP, and will also discuss how it is changing the future of enterprise resilience.

Read more: Rise with SAP – How Fingent Can Help Explore Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS)

What is Low Code/No Code Development with SAP BTP

Studies confirm the that market landscape for  Low code/No code development technologies will remain on a strong trajectory into the future. We can be confident that more organizations will turn to low code platforms to support innovation and digital transformation.

Low code/No code is a software development approach. It enables the delivery of applications faster with little or no coding. Low code/No code platforms are a collection of tools. They enable the visual development of applications via modeling and graphical interface instead of extensive coding languages.

The term “Low code/No code” is a modern alternative for RAD tools (Rapid Application Development). Today, Low code/No code is especially advantageous for enterprises that are looking for ways to streamline all organizational operations such as procurement, production scheduling, customer data, and order processing without the complication of hand-coding.

These tools empower developers to speed up the process of getting an application to production. All without hand coding! These platforms are a fast and easy alternative to traditional software development. Both professional and non-professional developers (citizen developers) can use Low code/No code platforms to develop apps of varying complexities.

Low code/No code development with SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) empowers non-IT professionals to develop and launch apps with little or no input from IT. This reduces the IT talent gap. It enables transformation in the development and expansion of organizational capabilities.

Low code/No code platforms are built on Platform-as-a-Service cloud environments. This means it employs visual programming interfaces to solve business problems faster. The best part of it is that it does not require deep technical knowledge as it has a simple drag and drop interface.

However, Low code/No code is not just about the user interface. SAP considered this fact while shaping a part of the SAP BTP strategy. Developers and business experts are no longer limited as they are now empowered with integrated Low code/No code automation tools such as SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation SAP Business Application studio and more. These tools enable developers to build Intelligent Enterprises.

Read more: A Complete Guide On Software Product Development Stages And Life Cycle

How Low Code/No Code Is Turning The Future Of Enterprise Resilience

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled the adoption of digital technologies. The goal of these technologies is to allocate human resources wisely to empower the end-user. Low code/No code is faster and more efficient. It frees up professional developers’ or citizen developers’ time for more complex activities.

Most importantly, Low code/No code builds systemic resiliency and responsiveness into the daily functioning of an enterprise. As enterprises aim to become more future-proof, they see Low code/No code as an immediate and effective opportunity.

According to Gartner’s prediction, by the end of 2025, half of all new Low code clients will come from business buyers that are outside IT organizations. Commenting on pricing, Mr. Biscotti said, “Low code capabilities that support remote work function, such as digital forms and workflow automation, will be offered with more elastic pricing since they will be required to keep the lights running.” Given the benefits and the affordability, the Low code/No code market will see commensurate growth.

How does SAP’s Low code development become the future of enterprise resilience? Please consider the following:

1. SAP offers the necessary sophistication to address complex business processes

SAP users often manage processes that involve a large number of applications linked to a single business process. Plus, a business may need an app that can handle complex tasks such as creating work orders offline for field crews. Low code/No code with SAP gives developers the ability to extend their functionality and solve any business problems.

2. Helps in streamlining work and allow employees to work more efficiently

Low code/No code development with SAP is much easier. Hence, it allows developers to manage repetitive tasks and focus on complex activities. Also, it enables them to focus on best practices across their organization to optimize processes and innovate. Thus, it streamlines work, allowing employees to work more efficiently regardless of their location.

3. SAP Low code reduces technical debt

Most organizations that are adopting digital transformation are discovering that they have large amounts of technical debt. This stands in the way of modernization and optimal user experience. Unfortunately, in some cases, the cost of legacy code exceeds its value-creating a debt.

On the other hand, Low code/No code platforms are designed to avoid technical debt. SAP Low code platform enables your team to discover customizations, estimate the cost of modernizing them and then transform them into custom objects on the Low code/No code platform. Furthermore, the right Low code/No code platform will make it simpler to maintain and simplify future upgrades and migrations.

Read more: Answering the Critical Questions Asked by Business Leaders Today on Digital Transformation!

4. SAP Low code can help your business scale

One of the most important aspects of resilience is the ability to scale as needed. While it is true that hand-coding development will lock in and not allow your business to scale, it isn’t so with SAP Low code.

Because Low code/No code development solutions use open-source standards, they allow you to export your raw source code and adapt it as required. Additionally, cloud-based platforms provide virtually unlimited scalability.

Look To A Resilient Future With Low Code/No Code

SAP BTP is in a unique position to assist many organizations to implement digital transformation. It can help businesses achieve significant productivity gains and improve forecast planning. Looking to the future, the digital landscape is changing.

Enterprises must continue to evolve on their mission for greater speed and agility. SAP Low code/No code platform creates a unified, business-centric, open platform for an Intelligent Enterprise. You can count on SAP for future-proofed resilience. As an SAP Silver partner, Fingent is uniquely positioned to open up all the benefits of its features in a way that is tailored for your business. Give us a call and let’s get talking.