Beginning in October, enhancements to the SAP Preferred Success offering are available, helping deliver the foundation and ongoing operations that organizations need to optimize the advantages of their investment in the private edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

One of the biggest misconceptions about private cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is that it’s fundamentally an on-premise system in a different deployment environment. The code base may be similar, but gaining the full advantages of cloud ERP – such as the private edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud – requires customers to keep the solution continuously updated to leverage new capabilities, innovations, and technologies.

Available as a subscription and now newly enhanced, SAP Preferred Success presents a proactive partnership to help support our customers that adopt the private edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud through RISE with SAP. The offering can provide a comprehensive plan of services, guidance, learning resources, and expertise – enabling customers to bridge gaps between their current capabilities and relevant updates from each release.

SAP Preferred Success is designed for adopting new technologies and helping SAP customers align their digital investments with business strategies and transformation journeys, at all stages of their project.

Enhancing the Cloud ERP Experience with SAP Preferred Success

The SAP Preferred Success plan for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition includes scenarios that are key for the successful management of the cloud ERP, including:

Clean Core

A strategic clean core service helps ensure the stability of standardized core processes and data as well as the flexibility to innovate, differentiating our customers from their competitors. When these aspects of a high-performing cloud ERP are applied together, a harmonious balance between reliability and agility is created, allowing businesses to thrive and evolve more efficiently.

Thanks to the enhanced guidance of SAP Preferred Success, organizations can now streamline operations, reduce risks, and ensure data integrity – all critical to the ERP system’s day-to-day functioning. In parallel, they can keep the cloud ERP aligned with their ever-evolving IT landscape to help adapt swiftly to changing market dynamics, drive continuous innovation, and seize new opportunities.

Continuous Improvement Governance

To help customers stay one step ahead of potential disruptions, the addition of the continuous improvement governance service to SAP Preferred Success can enable organizations to proactively forecast high-risk situations before they significantly impact business processes and IT solution availability. Direct access to product engineers and subject-matter experts helps give our customers the peace of mind that comes with proven guidance and innovation.

This enhancement can ease the ability to predict the most valuable changes early enough for organizations to implement them promptly and securely and maintain a competitive edge. Businesses can also prioritize security by performing baseline security scans, receiving hardening recommendations, and ensuring their systems remain secure.

Driving Cloud ERP Stability with a Clean Core

SAP Preferred Success focuses on the data management and extensibility aspects of maintaining a clean core. The approach helps bring about a more resilient and high-performing system that can enable organizations to fully leverage the private edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud for sustained growth and success. It can also identify efficiencies early and provide guidance on streamlining core business processes.

Our customers gain significant advantages that could outweigh the combined cost of migrating to and operating the private edition, as demonstrated by insights from a Forrester Total Economic Impact study:

• 377% ROI achieved by optimizing processes and ensuring upgrade readiness
• 30% higher business-process efficiency through regular strategic reviews
• 25% time-savings in release management preparations
• 24% improved productivity with faster resolution of priority one and two incidents
• 10% faster time to value through streamlined implementation and adoption

To achieve these outcomes, SAP Preferred Success can be personalized to meet each customer’s unique requirements and objectives with clean core principles. This combination of strategic alignment, enhanced user experience, and continuous improvement helps ensure proactive, effective, and sustained support for the system’s performance and stability in the private edition.

Running ERP Operations with Flexibility

The continuous improvement governance service of the SAP Preferred Success plan can encompass a comprehensive analysis of all capabilities in the private edition. This includes fast identification of new mission-critical risk patterns, prompt communication of mitigation measures, and consistent transparency of tangible results from the analysis of the private edition to the predictive development of critical KPIs.

In addition, collaboration between our customers’ stakeholders and SAP subject-matter experts is supported by on-demand engineering resources, focusing on providing practical and realistic recommendations and achieving real-world use of them. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI)-driven check logic and predictive check models based on customer system data provided by the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service helps ensure a data-driven and efficient approach.

The holistic approach of the continuous improvement governance service can not only safeguard operations but also foster a proactive mindset crucial for long-term success. According to the Forrester Total Economic Impact study, the benefits of the service include:

• 50% reduction in incident tickets and much fewer priority one and priority two requests
• Reduced risk throughout the lifecycle of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition
• Optimized business processes, which can increase the value of the cloud ERP capabilities
• Improved user satisfaction with faster access to the latest technologies that meet their needs

Moreover, the continuous improvement governance service can establish service-level agreements for risk evaluation, including initial evaluation time after initial risk awareness, corrective risk mitigation response time, and continuous weekly risk detection processing throughout the year. As a result, the private edition can remain stable yet ready to navigate an ever-evolving landscape of risks and opportunities.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Cloud ERP

With the latest enhancements to the SAP Preferred Success plan for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, the debate on whether cloud ERP is merely an on-premise system in a different environment can be put to rest.

Our customers can gain the advanced support they need to empower their organizations to unlock the full potential of their software investment with ongoing guidance and expertise. They can facilitate a smooth integration between the stability of core processes and current data and benefit from the flexibility to adopt and innovate the latest updates, capabilities, and technologies. And as the Forrester Total Economic Impact study indicates, the results will speak for themselves.