Selecting a Cloud ERP Solution with the Digital Discovery Assessment

The Digital Discovery Assessment (DDA) is used in the sales cycle to assess a customer's requirements and match them with the best SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution to fit their needs. This occurs in the Discover phase of the SAP Activate Methodology implementation roadmaps for both SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. Typically, a Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), or similar role from the prospective customer organization works with a sales partner to complete the DDA. The process starts with a Quick Qualification to capture high-level information about the customer, including:

• Existing (installed-base) or net-new customer
• Plan for moving to SAP S/4HANA: new implementation or system conversion (for installed-based only)
• Countries in-scope
• Industry area
• Is this a two-tier ERP scenario?
• Are the amount of FUEs (full user equivalents) below 60?

In some cases, the tool will not provide an automated recommendation and instead the completed Detailed Discovery Assessment will be reviewed by SAP experts to determine the best-fit recommendation for the customer. If a customer already has SAP ERP software and requires a system conversion, the only suitable solution is SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, as only this cloud solution allows a system conversion.

A partner or SAP employee who has completed training through SAP Partner Portal to get SELL or SERVICE authorization for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition or SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition can request access to the DDA here.

For new implementations, the Detailed Discovery gathers information about integrations with other SAP Cloud solutions the customer may already have or be planning to purchase, their ERP business process requirements, localizations, and total users expected in the system.

To make it easier for customers to select the right business processes across the different lines of business, there are pre-selection packages for the following scenarios:

• Baseline covers key end-to-end processes for a company in the areas of Sales, Finance, and Procurement. Core processes include Invoice to Cash, Order to Fulfill, Record to Report and Procure to Receipt. This is also the bundle of processes that would be activated if a customer chooses to purchase the GROW with SAP optional add-on service called Baseline Activation for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
• Finance-Led ERP covers key financial management best practices to run administrative ERP, including procurement and sales capabilities.
• Service Centric ERP includes the Finance-Led ERP bundle, in addition to project and service-related capabilities with industry-specific capabilities to support service-oriented industries for midsize and large companies.
• Product Centric ERP provides all capabilities required to run make-to-stock-based production followed by selling the produced goods from stock.

For each individual business process, the priority and rollout phase can be selected, and questions or notes can be added to provide follow-up information. Finally, additional requirements related to business processes can be entered, and detailed project and scope-related questions are completed, such as the target customer go-live date.

The completed Digital Discovery Assessment (DDA) will propose either the public or private cloud deployment as the best-fit solution for the customer. If the customer moves forward with signing a contract for either solution, the results of the DDA are used as an important document for the incoming partner implementation team to understand the scope and requirements of the project.

For system conversions, the focus is on gathering information related to the customer's current solution scope and ensuring all required functionality is addressed with the private cloud solution. Additional details such as the current system release, partner add-on requirements, selected hyperscaler, data sovereignty requirements, and others are gathered during the sales process when preparing for a system conversion.

The completed Digital Discovery Assessment (DDA) is reviewed by an SAP expert to ensure the automated solution proposal from Detailed Discovery is correct. If the SAP expert determines the automated recommendation is incorrect, they will change the solution proposal to ensure the customer receives the right solution to best fit their needs. The DDA can then be exported to a PDF report as a handover document the implementation partner would use to define the project scope when the implementation project begins in the Prepare phase of the SAP Activate Methodology.

The report provides the following information:

• Known integration and extension requirements.
• Localizations and legal entities.
• The percentage of business scenarios (scope items) selected in each functional business area.
• Individual business processes selected.
• Business process priority and which implementation phase the process will be rolled-out (optional).
• Questions and notes raised by a customer regarding specific business processes and the corresponding answers from the sales account team.
• Additional business process-related requirements.
• Detailed project-related questions.

The PDF version of the report is exported from the Digital Discovery Assessment app. However, there is another way to export the data so that it can be later used in creating the implementation project in SAP Cloud ALM with the selected business processes. To do this, navigate back to the Supply Chain of Selling app and open the customer opportunity.

Select the More drop-down menu and choose Import & Export. Select the Export Excel button and save the file to a folder that you can share with your future partner implementation team. If you are implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, you will also want to select the button Export to JSON for CBC and save the file to the same folder. This file can be imported to the tool used to activate business process content in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition called SAP Central Business Configuration (CBC). This option is not available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, because business processes are activated through a different tool.