Implement SAP S/4HANA the right way: How companies can really future-proof themselves

It sounds like a nightmare: First, invest millions in a new ERP system, only to be faced with major changes shortly thereafter. Companies can protect themselves against this with SAP S/4HANA and a future-oriented implementation approach. The keys are a “clean” software core, largely standardized processes, the ability to easily integrate extensions and innovations, and the option to switch quickly from an S/4HANA on-prem system to the cloud if required. This way, companies get a system that will require minimal maintenance in the long term, with the flexibility needed for continuous development of IT and business.

Agile thanks to standardization and a clean core

The dream team for implementing such an SAP S/4HANA system environment is the combination of a platform-as-a-service approach with the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and the clean-core approach. In addition to strong ERP, the SAP BTP, with its functional areas of application development, process automation, integration, data management & analytics, and artificial intelligence, acts as the technological foundation for sustainable and intelligent companies. The clean core principle as a guideline for the operation and expansion of SAP S/4HANA environments ensures a largely standardized application environment. Changes are made exclusively with approved standard interfaces, either as side-by-side extensions on the SAP BTP or as on-stack extensions according to the current ABAP cloud standard.

Our recommendation for SAP S/4HANA implementations is therefore: Keep the core clean but stay different! Anyone who is oriented toward standardization and the clean core principle can rapidly develop their systems and adapt them to new requirements. This also reduces maintenance and support costs and ensures that companies maintain control over their IT environments at all times. In addition, they are already well prepared to move to the cloud faster when needed. And last but not least, they benefit immediately from SAP innovations – including artificial intelligence.

Easily access your own AI apps with SAP BTP

No company can get past AI & Co. The potential of this disruptive technology is great, and SAP Business AI (Artificial Intelligence) offers many ways to use it. Solutions such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Supply Chain Management, SAP Human Capital Management, and SAP Business Network, for example, contain embedded AI functionality to automate processes and routine tasks. The AI coordinator SAP Joule, on the other hand, provides AI agents for the execution of complex workflows and, as a chatbot, revolutionizes the interaction of users with the system.

The SAP BTP with the AI Foundation and the Generative AI Hub serves as an AI development and switching center. It enables customers to use artificial intelligence and generative AI in their systems with their own data, as well as to develop enterprise-specific AI and GenAI applications. A wide variety of large-language models (LLMs) from leading providers are available for this, including ChatGPT from OpenAI and Llama from Meta. Companies can use these flexibly and incorporate their capabilities into applications without having to enter into further contracts with the LLM providers or worry about issues such as hardware, integration, and authorizations. All this comes from a contractual relationship with SAP through the Business Technology Platform.

In January, valantic’s SAP AI hackathon demonstrated just how easily this works. At the event in Garching near Munich, well-known companies from the retail and consumer goods industries developed functional AI apps that solve specific business challenges in just four days.