Enabling business continuity through RISE with SAP 

Businesses must migrate away from legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) and towards cloud-enabled ERP.

The business world is changing. Technology moves swiftly, and users want their software to reflect this. Enterprises need to maintain a continuous view of software, as small updates are released at a steady drip instead of one large, yearly update. But business continuity is a hard ask when legacy systems can’t keep up with the barrage of new features and functionality offered by regular updates.

This means businesses must migrate away from legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) and towards cloud-enabled ERP. This will guarantee agility and the ability to scale and implement changes without disruptions, ensuring continuity for the business and the end user. 

However, this is usually easier said than done. Working with the cloud is highly technical, and businesses often don’t have the people who possess the skills and know-how to enable cloud migration. And it’s a large buy-in with a slow return on investment, making it an unattractive option for many. 

There are also operational hurdles, like how do you enable ongoing end-user adoption and solution changes? How do you adopt a flexible operating and resourcing model? Dual maintenance also causes issues in keeping current upgraded and development systems in sync with each other. And the overall adoption process is a hassle because of licensing, migration, and infrastructure operations that need to be maintained.  

To support the migration process, businesses often turn to RISE with SAP, an AI-powered cloud ERP. It guarantees agility and the ability to scale and implement changes without disruptions. But to exploit RISE with SAP to its fullest, there are certain challenges that customers have when it comes to adoption. This includes monitoring, which requires expertise from a business and technology perspective, as well as several other key services. A reliable application development and maintenance (ADM) partner can assist businesses with overcoming those hurdles while maintaining business continuity.

Business observability and continuous monitoring

Businesses can’t improve upon what they don’t measure, so an integrated approach that enables unconstrained application availability and gathers useful data at the same time is necessary. 

ADM partners can create these monitoring dashboards with embedded capability for observability and continuous, proactive, end-to-end monitoring. With 24/7 availability, it can correlate alerts and generate tickets across the scope of SAP systems and edge software, such as regional warehouse control systems or operational technology (OT) platforms. This continuous monitoring through various channels means that issues can be flagged and fixed before they become bigger incidents.  

Continuous value delivery 

To ensure software delivers continuous value, there needs to be a loop of people – and process-driven transformation, enabled by a constant cycle of maintain, optimize, run. An ADM partner can support this cycle at several checkpoints with a focus on business continuity. The cycle focuses on target operating models that are designed for the future and centered on people and technology.  

Continuous organizational change management (OCM) will ensure both people and processes are prepared for new ways of working, both for the current environment while also preparing them for the future, including off and onboarding. To support continuous OCM and drive awareness and engagement, processes can be updated with new technology and automation that’s supported by structured end-user adoption through Enablement-as-a-Service (EaaS) capability powered by SAP Enable Now but managed by your ADM partner. 

Continuous end-user enablement 

Once a new feature is implemented, it’s important to ensure that end users are using it correctly. Your ADM partner can administer digital adoption by fully managing the end-to-end learning journey for all users. The process is structured so that the business can focus on getting their workers up to speed and manage everything from go-live to decommissioning. This is all so that the focus remains on core value activities instead of worrying about their ERP. 

Continuous quality assurance 

Quality assurance must be at the heart of a stable, resilient RISE with SAP environment. Upgrading legacy ERP architecture and databases to a managed SAP S/4HANA platform brings users a lot of benefits but there are risks inherent in this increased level of change. With an ADM partner at your side, these inherent risks will be managed, along with continuous quality assurance to ensure continuous service delivery. 

Continuity is key 

Adopting a continuous delivery approach to RISE with SAP with a trusted ADM partner gives clear segregation of responsibilities and ownership and enables not only business continuity but a clear path towards a renewable enterprise.  

As one of the largest and most experienced SAP systems integrators, and with market-leading ADM capabilities, Capgemini can further simplify the business transformation possibilities enabled by RISE with SAP. Find out more about our ADMnext for SAP solutions here.