Market dynamics: why now
The pressure to change is on. How, that's up to you.
Many organizations are in the same situation. SAP is deeply entrenched. An upgrade to S/4HANA is on the agenda, but the journey is large, risky and costly. Meanwhile, the market demands flexibility: new business models, changing legislation, customers who want to be served through any channel.
The deadline is an opportunity
SAP has announced that standard support for SAP ECC is coming to an end. That creates pressure, but also opens doors. The question is not whether to migrate. The question is actually: what do you want to achieve with your business?
Those who already build a flexible layer around SAP now will soon run less risk. Processes are already simplified, data is unlocked, employees already work with new tools. A future migration to S/4HANA is then a lot less drastic.
"When you build that flexible shell on the front end in Dynamics or Power Platform, you also slowly lighten SAP. You strip the system of complexity. As a result, the transition to S/4HANA becomes much less invasive."
What is going on in the market?
The organizations that already surround SAP with Microsoft solutions have one thing in common: They got stuck in the rigidity of the ERP. The ERP system was built for transactions, not for customer contact or rapid market adaptation.
Imagine you are an energy company that wants to move from just providing products to "heating as a service. Different contracts, different customer relationships, different billing streams. Customizing this in SAP is a project of months. With a Microsoft shell around it, you build that quickly.
Microsoft you can use around the SAP ERP. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Power Platform, Finance & Operations: they are separate modules. You pick what you need, you link it to SAP and you add value without losing the core.
"Towards the market, you want to be as agile as possible. If you're dealing with a lot of changes in laws and regulations, you want to be able to react quickly. With an unwieldy ERP system like SAP, you're not. You have to get that agility from somewhere else."