Describing the SAP Strategy

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

List SAP's key areas of innovation and development
Summarize SAP's Intelligent Enterprise
Describe product variants of SAP S/4HANA
Paraphrase RISE with SAP
Paraphrase GROW with SAP

SAP Strategy at a Glance

As the market leader for enterprise software, SAP helps companies of every size and in every industry to run their businesses profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. From back office to boardroom, from warehouse to shelves, from desktop to mobile device, SAP helps people and organizations collaborate more efficiently and use business information more effectively.

The SAP business goal is to generate direct value for organizations and individuals worldwide. SAP plans to expand its solution portfolio with innovations for everyone who needs information technology every day, at work and in their day-to-day lives, while ensuring the maximum possible consistency of data, processes, and applications.

Innovation and Development

The growth strategy of SAP concentrates on expanding our product portfolio in five market categories: Applications, analytics, mobile solutions, databases and technology, and cloud solutions. SAP is at the leading edge of structural change in the IT sector, which is seeing a shift in demand from hardware to software innovations. Trends in the areas of big data, cloud computing, mobile solutions, and social networks open up enormous market opportunities for SAP. Together with its partner ecosystem, SAP helps its customers to improve their business experiences significantly by deploying new technologies.

Companies in all market categories benefit from the in-memory technology of the SAP HANA platform. The objective of the growth strategy is to expand SAP’s leading position as market leader in the existing market categories of applications, analytics, and mobile solutions and assume a leading position in new categories such as cloud solutions and databases and technology.

Note

You can use the filter functions at the SAP Newsroom: https://news.sap.com/ to find the latest press releases on a wide variety of topics involving SAP and its products.

Intelligent Enterprise

Intelligent Sustainable Enterprise

The following architecture highlights how SAP integrates core business processes, industry specializations, and intelligent technologies on a unified platform (SAP BTP) to deliver the Intelligent Enterprise. Each layer—from foundational technology to AI-driven business processes—works together to enable innovation, agility, and real-time decision-making across the organization:

From the bottom to the top:

Bottom Layer: Business Technology Platform (BTP)

SAP BTP is the foundation for the intelligent enterprise, providing the tools and services required to build, integrate, and extend SAP applications. The core pillars:

App Development & Automation: Tools and services for creating new applications, automating processes, and customizing SAP solutions without extensive coding.
Data & Analytics: Capabilities for data management, data warehousing, business intelligence, and advanced analytics empower organizations to harness their data's full value.
Integration: Services and connectors to seamlessly link SAP and non-SAP systems, ensuring end-to-end process integration across the entire IT landscape.

The Supporting Layers:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Embedded AI services throughout the platform to automate, predict, and optimize business processes.
Platform Foundation: The technical infrastructure supports scalability, security, extensibility, and cloud operations.

Center Layer: Cloud ERP & Business Data Cloud

Cloud ERP: The heart of the intelligent enterprise, offering integrated, real-time enterprise resource planning capabilities in the cloud. It is designed to be scalable, flexible, and extensible
Business Data Cloud: Provide a unified data layer for transactional and analytical data, enabling advanced analytics, reporting, and data-driven decision-making.

Core Business Domains (within the semicircle)

These represent the fundamental business areas managed by SAP Cloud ERP, all working together to create a holistic enterprise management system.

Financial Management: Handles accounting, controlling, treasury, risk, and compliance. Ensures financial integrity and supports regulatory requirements.
Spend Management: Covers procurement, supplier management, and external workforce management, optimizing how an organization spends resources.
Supply Chain Management: Manages planning, logistics, manufacturing, and operations across the supply chain for efficiency and resilience.
Human Capital Management: Includes employee lifecycle management, payroll, workforce analytics, and talent management.
Customer Experience: Encompasses sales, marketing, commerce, and service solutions to optimize customer engagement and satisfaction.

Middle Layer: End-to-End Business Processes and Industry Focus

This layer groups the business domains and showcases SAP's industry-specific, networked, and sustainable approach. It also includes business transformation management and ecosystem solutions, reflecting SAP's commitment to continuous innovation and connectivity.

Ecosystem solutions: Integration with partner and third-party solutions to extend core capabilities.
Industry-specific, networked, and sustainable: SAP solutions are tailored for specific industries and support sustainability goals, connecting business partners and networks for better outcomes.
Business transformation management: Tools and methodologies to manage change, adoption, and business transformation.

Top Layer: Business AI-powered Processes

This outermost arc highlights SAP's focus on leveraging artificial intelligence and automation to drive business process efficiency, agility, and innovation. AI-powered processes help companies make smarter decisions, automate routine tasks, and create new value streams.

As an example, we describe now the four main end-to-end business processes at the top right of the diagram:

Recruit to Retire: This process covers the entire employee lifecycle - from talent attracting and hiring, through onboarding, development, and management, to eventual offboarding or retirement. It ensures organizations are equipped with the right talent, skills, and engagement levels to achieve their goals
Source to Pay: This process manages the entire procurement cycle. It begins with sourcing suppliers and negotiating contracts, proceeds through the purchasing and receiving of goods or services, and concludes with invoice processing and payment. The goal is to optimize supplier relationships and control spending.
Design to Operate: This process encompasses the entire product or asset lifecycle. It begins with the initial design and development, proceeds through planning, manufacturing, and logistics, and culminates in operation and maintenance. It enables organizations to deliver high-quality products efficiently and effectively manage their operations.
Lead to Cash: This process covers the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to sales and order fulfillment, and finally to invoicing and payment receipt. It is designed to maximize revenue, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and ensure efficient order-to-cash cycles.

Key Takeaways

The Intelligent Enterprise is built on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). The architecture integrates core business processes, industry specializations, and intelligent technologies, enabling innovation, agility, and real-time decision-making. It includes layers for AI, cloud ERP, business domains, end-to-end processes, and AI-powered processes, supporting key processes like Recruit to Retire, Source to Pay, Design to Operate, and Lead to Cash.

For more information visit the SAP Homepage.

SAP S/4HANA Product Variants

SAP S/4HANA is SAP’s modern ERP suite, first launched in 2015. It brings together all core processes in a single, simplified, real-time platform powered exclusively by SAP HANA. It is the foundation for SAP’s intelligent enterprise strategy, designed to support digital transformation, advanced analytics, and integration with cloud solutions.

It was constructed entirely on the SAP HANA platform and designed with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX). It offers substantial simplification in areas such as adaptation, data model, user experience, decision-making, and processes, as well as innovations in Internet of Things, Big Data, enterprise networks, and mobile technology. SAP S/4HANA serves as the standard solution for new customers and for new installations among existing customers.

Excursus: SAP HANA

SAP HANA stores data in columns, eliminating the need for indexes and aggregates. This allows for high scalability and avoids database locks.

Due to its In-Memory Technology, data processing occurs in real-time, enabling the immediate calculation of secondary information such as aggregates and key performance indicators. Consequently, companies can achieve instant value in logistics, including optimized net working capital, reduced buffer inventories, and real-time inventory balances and material flow information.

Excursus: SAP Fiori User Experience (UX)

SAP Fiori User Experience (UX) enhances the way users interact with SAP software by providing a modern, intuitive, and personalized interface. It simplifies complex business processes and increases user productivity by offering role-based, easy-to-use applications. Fiori leverages responsive design principles, ensuring a consistent experience across different devices and screens. This helps businesses improve user satisfaction, reduce training time, and ultimately drive better business outcomes.

SAP S/4HANA as a digital core is the SAP technical and conceptual answer to the global digitalization trend. It began over twenty years ago with online banking, quickly followed by digitalized pictures and movies, a taxi company with no taxis, and a hotel supplier with no buildings. All these offers have one thing in common – they are fully built on the individual customer’s desires. From sports shoes in the color of your choice to customized designs on your motorcycle, increasingly more customers desire and expect products that meet their individual wishes. Businesses are shifting towards a Consumer-to-Business (C2B) model.

Customers with their preferences and demands are increasingly dominating the market. And whoever can best meet the customer’s demands – the individual demands – will come out on top. SAP S/4HANA as a digital core for business processes allows you to better tailor your products to individual customers. The resulting mass of data can be easily displayed, processed on the fly, and used for simulations and predictions to make informed decisions.

SAP S/4HANA is available in 3 different product variants:

SAP S/4HANA Deployment Options

Hint

For a more detailed comparison of these offerings, see SAP Help Portal - Offering Comparison..

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and SAP S/4HANA come with their own characteristics and serve different purposes.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: is SAP's public cloud solution, where SAP manages system operation and maintenance for you. This eliminates the need for hardware investment and allows you to instantly leverage SAP's latest innovations, which are released monthly with minimal business disruption. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition comes with a smaller but ever-increasing functional scope as compared to SAP S/4HANA.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition: delivers a cloud experience with a functional scope and upgrade flexibility similar to SAP S/4HANA. We release a new version of the software every two years and provide seven years of maintenance for this release. We also plan to provide feature packs every six months in the first two years of a release. When you opt to install a new release or feature pack, our team will handle the process, minimizing effort on your part. SAP recommends staying up-to-date to leverage our latest innovations as they become available.
SAP S/4HANA: is our on-premise offering that represents the next generation of business applications designed to help you run simple in the digital economy. Installed locally on your servers, it follows the same release cycles for new versions and feature packs as SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. While you control the timing and implementation of upgrades, you're also responsible for managing both software and hardware updates. Meanwhile, SAP provides software maintenance to ensure optimal performance.

For more information please visit the SAP Homepage.

RISE with SAP

If you want to succeed in today’s world, you have to constantly adapt your business. Planning for this continual evolution requires that you not only be ready for change, but that you change the way work gets done. This demands a redesign of your business plans and processes, and that demands new thinking and new technologies that unlock new ways of doing business. RISE with SAP brings together the solutions and services you need for true business transformation, in one package, regardless of where your business stands now or where you want it to go. It is SAP and an entire ecosystem of partners helping you chart your change on your terms and your timeline.

RISE with SAP – Capabilities

What is RISE with SAP?

Through the years of IT infrastructure and projects, every company has developed a unique landscape and unique processes. They might have intersections to the landscapes of other companies or default scenarios, but every company needs to plan their transformation to an intelligent, sustainable enterprise completely uniquely.

Every company has different requirements regarding flexibility, scaling, system landscapes, and infrastructures that must be planned and reviewed individually.

RISE with SAP consists of several components with one contract - the business transformation as a service. It is one possible approach to start the transformation to an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. The components are:

Cloud ERP

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a Cloud ERP, you have a future-ready enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with built-in intelligent technologies, including AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics. SAP S/4HANA Cloud runs on SAP HANA - a market-leading in-memory database. Achieve a fast time to value with a modern Cloud ERP as a digital core in your company. You can innovate with industry-specific next practices using SAP, and partner industry solutions and result in differentiation with best-in-class line-of-business solutions

Business Process Intelligence

Business process intelligence (BPI) solutions from SAP allow users to turn process insights into actions to help drive digital transformation. You can get tailored recommendations for tangible process improvements and run your business profitably by removing process inefficiencies. Reduce process variations and manual work and start simulating processes for alternative business scenarios with SAP and SAP Signavio solutions.

Business Platform and Analytics

SAP Business Technology Platform is used as a foundation for integration, extension, and data to value. With RISE with SAP, you get consumption credits to start using the capabilities of SAP BTP in a production environment. You can accelerate your move to the cloud with faster data migration or keeping the core clean with SAP BTP side-by-side extensions. Start optimizing and automating business processes through integrated applications, or drive decisions based on data with predictive analytics with the help of data and analytics solutions from SAP.

Business Networks

With SAP Business Network , you can extend your transformation beyond your four walls by creating dynamic digital connections with suppliers, carriers, and assets. You can share data and orchestrate workflows while applying network-wide intelligence to guide decisions, adapt quickly, and keep improving. This results in collaboration between manufacturers, packagers, logistics service providers, asset operators, service & maintenance providers, retailers, and customers. You can start building a resilient supply chain with access to the world’s largest trading partner network.

Outcome-driven Services and Tools

Leverage services and tools offered by SAP ecosystem and partners to enable your business innovation journey. Check the readiness of your processes and get technical guidance on moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud with, for example, analyzing custom code & add-on compatibility.

For more information about RISE with SAP, check the RISE with SAP Product Page.

GROW with SAP

GROW with SAP is a complete offering of solutions, adoption acceleration services, community, and learning so any size company can successfully adopt cloud ERP.

GROW with SAP is a complete offering of solutions, adoption acceleration services, community, and learning to help midsize customers adopt cloud ERP that enables speed, predictability and continuous innovation. GROW with SAP customers get the same best practices powering the world’s industry leaders, while benefiting from rapid deployment and frictionless updates.

GROW with SAP also includes SAP Business Technology Platform, so customers can define their own processes in a cloud-native way using SAP Build. With SAP Build solutions, business users can create enterprise apps, automate processes and design business sites without writing code, an important asset for those closest to the business who can create the solutions they need.

Slide promoting GROW with SAP. Left side shows a winding road through a forest with the text GROW WITH SAP – Adopt SaaS Cloud ERP, quickly and confidently. Right side explains that GROW with SAP is SAP’s flagship ERP package and includes: Solution Components (SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP Business Technology Platform, preconfigured best-practice processes), Adoption and Acceleration Services (tools, methodologies, activation services, partner ecosystem), and Community and Learning (access to SAP Community and learning resources).

The GROW with SAP offering helps midsize companies confidently adopt cloud ERP. This offering provides products, best-practice support, adoption acceleration services, a community, and learning opportunities to help customers move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with speed, predictability, and continuous innovation.

Inclusive offering with solutions, services, community, and learning access
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition – a ready-to-run cloud ERP solution
SAP Business Technology Platform
Packaged activation services for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
Expert and user support through SAP Community and the SAP Learning portfolio

For more information about GROW with SAP, check the GROW with SAP Product Page.

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