Operational silos have long been a problem for business. When teams and data are isolated from the rest of an organization, they become less useful and efficient. Yet despite a patchwork of corporate initiatives, silos remain for most businesses.
This is a problem, especially in a world where artificial intelligence makes data and coordination highly valuable.
There have been great strides over the past decade toward unified business operations. Cloud services help, and communications platforms such as Slack. But data and teams still often live in separate silos even when there is some integration. Businesses lack a single source of truth and a unified platform that connects both front- and back-office operations.
The good news is that AI has been clarifying minds around the importance of data centrality and unified operations, and ERP vendors have reached the point where their cloud offerings are complete, fully integrated with outside platforms, and affordable for most serious businesses. Silos are no longer a functional necessity. There can be true and complete operational synergy today with the right backend solution.
SAP S/4HANA Unifies Business Operations
For business process geeks and senior management, the evolution of SAP’s technology model and S/4HANA ERP solution is particularly notable.
ERP has long been the way for unifying operations, but SAP ERP solutions were complex, clunky, hard to set up and maintain, and prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses.
The cloud has created the opportunity for a new model, and SAP has rolled out an entirely new foundation for ERP that makes it relevant and accessible for smaller, fast-growing businesses that need a single source of truth and full operational synergy. ERP is for everyone now, especially businesses that still struggle with silos and a coherent AI strategy.
At the core of this transformation is SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP’s flagship ERP platform, reimagined for the cloud. This ERP solution is made highly modular through a small core that is built upon with modules that add industry-specific functionality and relevant integration points. Every possible business application connects with this common core, and every third-party cloud service or marketplace can easily integrate with it.
Businesses can start small and quickly, turning on just the functionality and integrations needed today. But at the same time, this platform can expand to support even the largest, most complex Fortune 500 companies.
SAP S/4HANA is a mature yet modern operational platform that helps businesses realize the dream of actually moving from silos to synergy.
How SAP S/4HANA Creates Operational Synergy
SAP S/4HANA encompasses both the traditional synergy that comes from ERP and the silo-busting capabilities inherent with the cloud model.
1. A Single Source of Truth
At the heart of breaking down operational silos is the concept of a single source of truth. SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP serves as the nerve center for a business, housing and organizing all of a company’s data in a single location for unified accessibility and real-time access across departments and applications. Instead of silos and duplicate data stores, ERP centrality brings everything together in one place.
With this single source of truth, businesses get a real-time picture that includes all operational dynamics. Data can easily be acted upon through automation and augmented with artificial intelligence. Departments that need certain data from other parts of the company can easily get it and coordinate seamlessly.
2. End-to-End Process Integration
SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP comes with the SAP Business Suite, a comprehensive, integrated set of applications designed to manage and optimize core business processes across an entire organization. Through the SAP Business Technology Platform, businesses can also add additional functionality and integrations with third-party solutions or custom code that natively connect to the ERP core, creating seamless workflows and unified processes that work together.
This end-to-end process integration is the holy grail for eliminating silos and fully leveraging both automation and artificial intelligence. When all applications and processes are accessible and integrated, synergy develops organically and automatically.
3. Embedded AI and Analytics
Making sense of operational data with AI and driving efficiencies through automation is a key driver for unified operations. SAP S/4HANA embeds AI, analytics, and automation within the platform so businesses can fully leverage these technologies across processes and the full sweep of company data. This enables deep, widespread use of AI, analytics, and automation at the core of the business.
With SAP Joule, businesses also get to select their AI engine of choice. Instead of relying on one specific AI model, SAP Joule allows SAP Cloud ERP users to integrate any of the major AI models, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or other models such as Anthropic’s Claude AI engine. This gives a business more flexibility and avoids lock-in as AI technology evolves.
4. Built-in Governance, Risk, and Compliance
By centralizing data and operations, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition helps a business enforce process control and governance policies across the organization. With all processes, applications, and data fully integrated, standard workflows, procedures, and company policies can be enforced comprehensively and automatically by the system.
Unified governance is especially important for meeting regulatory requirements and compliance around data privacy, processing specifications, and materials sourcing. For regulated industries such as financial services and life sciences, and multinational operations, ERP is a must. But even for less regulated industries, SAP S/4HANA helps ensure process standardization and governance for added efficiency.
5. Unified User Experience
Moving between various applications, each with slightly different user interfaces, creates confusion, slows down employees, and reduces the full utility of an application when functionality goes unnoticed. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition gives organizations a modern, unified user interface so employees only have to learn a single interface for all applications.
This unified user experience breaks down silos, improves employee efficiency and job satisfaction, and further creates a common set of tools with which employees can perform their daily work. When employees change or expand roles, this common user interface also improves onboarding.
Learn More About SAP Cloud ERP
We’ve been helping businesses break down silos and create deeper operational synergy for more than 25 years as an SAP gold Partner. With more than 500 ERP implementations under our belt, we understand both the technology and the specific needs of businesses across a range of industries.
To learn more about SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition or other solutions for creating operational synergy, contact one of our experienced consultants by calling us at (801) 642-0123 or by writing info@nbs-us.com. We’re always ready to talk shop.
