Growth-focused businesses need the infrastructure for rapid scaling, but typically they don’t have time for large software adoption projects. SAP has a solution.
Earlier this year, SAP announced S/4HANA Cloud Pubic Edition and its new Grow with SAP program. Beyond the vague corporate-speak embedded in the announcements were a pretty significant evolution of SAP’s products that benefit fast-growing companies looking to lay down an enterprise resource planning architecture for sustained and rapid growth.
Let’s take a look at both the new S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and what Grow with SAP means for fast-growing businesses.
Understanding Grow with SAP
The concept is simple: Growth-focused businesses need a future-proof, flexible, full-featured, easy-to-deploy ERP that works with where their business is today but enables seamless scaling as the business grows. Grow with SAP is a framework that promises faster rollout and repositions SAP’s ERP solutions with a small core that then can be easily augmented with additional functionality through the company’s online marketplace, the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
The clean core model combined with the BTP makes system updates less disruptive because the integrations, customizations and add-ons connect natively to the ERP solution but sit outside it. This methodology also means that customizations and modifications to the system are easier since BTP applications can be created in a no-code development environment and plug into SAP’s artificial intelligence engine or its security or automation services.
Grow with SAP also stresses easy adoption, which is important for fast-growing businesses. The Grow with SAP methodology targets growing midmarket companies that are not heavily IT-led and cannot spend 6 months or a year configuring an ERP system. Grow with SAP is built for quick ERP implementations that take as little as 30 days to roll out and leans heavily on industry best practices so fast-growing businesses can lay an ERP foundation for both now and the future without having to disrupt company growth in the process.
Understanding SAP S/$HANA Cloud, Public Edition
The cornerstone of this new Grow with SAP methodology is the S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition that also was announced this year.
SAP has long served large enterprises with S/4HANA, its flagship ERP that can handle operations for even the largest Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola and BP. But until recently, smaller fast-growing companies had to start with SAP’s small business offering, Business ByDesign, because S/4HANA required either an on-premise footprint or a private cloud implementation that was both costly to roll out and to maintain. Fast-growing companies such as shaving manufacturer Harry’s would start with ByDesign and graduate to S/4HANA as they grew, but this migration process wasn’t ideal for a company’s growth velocity.
This is where the new Public Cloud Edition of S/4HANA comes in.
SAP took its industrial-strength ERP offering, S/4HANA, and made a more affordable but almost equally capable multi-tenant edition that runs in the public cloud and is ideally suited for smaller, fast-growing businesses. This, combined with the clean core concept and the BTP, introduced a fast-to-implement, full-featured ERP that nonetheless gives fast-growing businesses roughly 90 percent of what they would have gotten with the private cloud edition of S/4HANA.
Built for Growth
While SAP Business ByDesign still is the best fit for some fast-growing companies, many small to mid-sized growing companies will want to seriously consider S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for their digital backend. S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and the Grow with SAP methodology brings most of the ease of use of the small business editions, but with the advanced functionality that some growth-focused companies will want to leverage as their business continues to scale rapidly.
Overall, these new initiatives by SAP give fast-growing businesses additional options for laying a solid foundation that can scale as their business grows. They also provide an easier pathway for customization and taking advantage of the latest technology innovations via the Business Technology Platform (something that Business ByDesign users can take advantage of as well).
As an ERP support partner that helps fast-growing businesses lay a strong foundation, we’re incredibly excited about this new direction and what it means for growing businesses. To educate businesses on this new option and help them make informed decisions on which offering to move forward with, we’ve created a series of videos that talk in more depth about both S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and the BTP.
Learn more about S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition in our video, What is S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition?
Discover more about the BTP in our video, SAP’s Business Technology Platform.
As always, you also can get answers to your specific ERP questions by contacting one of our experienced ERP consultants at (801) 642-0123 or by writing us at info@nbs-us.com.
