SThe AP is no doubt going through a rather major transition, as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Cloud Platform and the SAP Leonardo “system of intelligence” are all becoming increasingly prominent. Despite this questions do arise about both the technology as well as a business model while this digital transformation is taking place.
Questions that arise are whether the current SAP customers are on board? How will they be able to capture new customers and also establish new markets? Is SAP promoting the proper technologies to the right people? Will SAP S/4HANA Cloud attract people to accept the newer generation of the given vendor’s ERP platform?
What else needs to be highlighted?
The New Year has much in store as far as SAP is concerned such as new opportunities as well as new ideas. What does one expect from SAP in 2018, and what does SAP need to do in 2018?
Technological Aspect:
Technologically SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Cloud Platform, and SAP Leonardo are expected to dominate the required conversation. On the business front, SAP indirect access issue has to be dealt with in 2018.
What do you expect to see from SAP in 2018?
SAP has indeed made significant investments in the machine learning arena over the past two years. In 2018, the use of AI, as well as machine learning technologies, will indeed become more pervasive and more widespread and SAP will move on towards the notion of “intelligent enterprise”.
One expects a strong commercial as well as a marketing push for the cloud ERP, in particular through SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Emphasis will be upon on cloud and intelligence.
SAP will no doubt continue to expand its direct digital efforts via SAP Digital offerings.
What does SAP need to do in 2018?
SAP also does need to focus on making SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) customers’ move to S/4HANA. It is easy for non-SAP ERP organizations to adopt S/4HANA than for ECC users. Most established SAP ERP clients, especially large as well as global organizations, are finding it difficult to justify the adoption to S/4 from a business angle and are much concerned about the cost, complexity as well as the time required by the migration project. SAP has to make much effort to remove these obstacles in order to make S/4 much successful.
SAP S/4 HANA ERP Platform Options and Expansion
SAP does need to improve its relationship with clients. No doubt, most of the SAP clients are quite happy with the products and technologies.
SAP does need to develop more infrastructure-as-a-service partnerships.
SAP must have in-house, native and supported access to rather big data applications that not run not only in memory but also on hard disk drives, where the bulk of business-relevant data is.
A major issue for SAP to settle in 2018 is SAP indirect access licensing. SAP product offerings are diverse such as SAP Business ByDesign, SAP Business One and S/4HANA for SAP Business All-in-One is a natural starting point.SAP S/4
SAP’s customers require services that enable them to keep a check on allegedly unfair or even dishonest behavior. They require SAP to start publicly firing salespeople who pursue rather unacceptable tactics. The SAP is required to fire the sales managers as well as territory heads who are irresponsible. Customers can start by not speaking with any of the salespeople they do not trust. SAP indeed has many honest, customer-centric salespeople.
