Early last year, SAP launched its RISE with SAP solution at the beginning of 2021. Described as a holistic business transformation service, RISE with SAP aims to give businesses the support they need to achieve true digital transformation.
However, not many people are really aware of what it does and what they need to know before introducing it. In this ZTalent blog post we will discuss some tips on RISE with SAP from SAP expert Luke Krogh to help you implement it in your business deployment.
1- Cost management
For some companies, especially SMEs, digital transformation comes at a huge price. However, the main aggravation of this occurs when there is no plan or guideline for such a transformation. The priority for companies is to manage high costs while still offering viable options for transformation. The first of Krogh’s RISE with SAP tips relates to this issue.
RISE with SAP was designed to address this issue. It’s a comprehensive set of tools dedicated to helping a company plan and execute its digital transformation. The ability to balance costs with the need for digital transformation can be mitigated by introducing RISE with SAP as a complete one-stop shop for the process.
2- Maintain security
Moving from an on-premise solution to a cloud solution takes time to consider several points. Chief among them is maintaining data integrity and security. During the digital transformation, says Krogh, “the cloud provider assumes some of the responsibility for data security, but the company retains some elements of security”.
As such, it’s essential to know where obligations begin and end, as well as the responsibilities associated with them. SAP has created the Security Operations Map (SOM) to help companies see security as a whole and not the sum of its parts to better understand what is going on.
3- Choose partners wisely
Another piece of RISE with SAP advice from Krogh is to be careful when choosing a vendor to implement RISE with SAP. The company needs to trust blindly and relate to them as efficiently as eating.
Because RISE with SAP is not hosted on a local system, but must run on the vendor’s infrastructure, the company needs a specialised configuration to access RISE with SAP data in other cloud-based applications. Krogh points out that “support in a mixed vendor landscape should be carefully considered before the company chooses who to partner with for its cloud hosting solution”.
4- Simplified contract management
On-premises SAP systems used to be tied up with contracts related to governance, structure and service level agreements. In this respect, RISE with SAP makes things much simpler. The company only has to worry about arranging implementation and management services with the vendor.
The result is a more simplified environment and fewer SLAs clogging up the system. However, as Krogh says, “while this has simplified the procurement process, SAP S/4HANA licensing has become more complicated to compensate. Therefore, licence analytics can help a company manage its costs and reduce the overhead of unwanted licences.
5- Move to S/4HANA sooner rather than later
Many companies are still delaying digital transformation. With an estimated 25% of current SAP customers having made the move to SAP S/4HANA, the remaining 75% are still clinging to their on-premise system. This is not just because these companies are afraid of change.
So the final one of the five tips on RISE with SAP is to move to S/4HANA as soon as possible. The switch requires a partner who is an expert in deploying and managing cloud systems and who understands compliance and security. However, Krogh explains that “companies are running out of time, as 2027 is fast approaching. They need to move their data to the cloud before on-premises support ends.
