Tag: SAP ERP
Businesses find themselves at a critical juncture as customer expectations soar and their loyalty hangs by a thread. The key to captivating and retaining customers lies in mastering the art of seamless omni-channel experiences—an unparalleled approach that fuels growth, builds unbreakable bonds, and sets organizations apart in the digital era.
Embracing this transformative strategy is no longer a choice but a necessity. Thankfully, at the forefront stands SAP Customer Experience, empowering businesses to redefine the very essence of customer engagement.
In this blog, we dive into the crucial significance of delivering seamless omni-channel experiences in the digital era and explore the pivotal role played by SAP Customer Experience in achieving omni-channel excellence. We will also take a look at the success stories of industry-leading companies that benefited from SAP customer experience.
Meaning and Significance of Omni-Channel Customer Experiences
Today, customers’ journey has become complex and dynamic. It spans various touchpoints such as websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, physical stores, and more.
Omni-channel experiences refer to the seamless integration and synchronization of these channels, providing customers with a consistent and cohesive journey regardless of the device or platform they choose to engage with.
It involves delivering a unified and personalized experience that transcends individual touchpoints. To achieve success most businesses have adopted SAP customer experience. Let’s delve into it to understand how it can enhance omni-channel experience.
SAP Customer Experience – Where the Boundaries Between Channels Dissolve
SAP Customer Experience stands as a transformative force, reshaping how businesses engage with their customers across the entire journey. From capturing initial interest to post-purchase satisfaction, SAP Customer Experience covers every aspect of the customer lifecycle, enabling organizations to forge lasting relationships and foster brand loyalty.
By leveraging the power of integrated data, intelligent insights, and personalized content, SAP Customer Experience empowers organizations to deliver consistent, contextual, and captivating experiences across every touchpoint.
With SAP Customer Experience, businesses can unlock the true potential of omni-channel excellence, creating a symphony of interactions that resonate with customers on a profound level. By seamlessly connecting commerce, marketing, sales, service, and customer data, SAP Customer Experience sets the stage for organizations to thrive in the digital era, building lasting customer relationships and achieving unparalleled success.
SAP Customer Experience- Where Extraordinary Customer Experiences Take Center Stage
SAP customer experience strategies not only meet customers’ rising expectations but also provide valuable insights into their preferences and behaviors, enabling organizations to make data-driven decisions and tailor their offerings more effectively. Consider a few key elements of a successful omni-channel strategy:
- Weaving the Threads of Connection: Like the threads woven meticulously into the fabric, a successful omni-channel strategy integrates various channels, ensuring they work harmoniously to deliver a consistent and unified brand experience.
- Insights as Your North Star: By leveraging data from various channels, you gain a deep understanding of your customers’ preferences, behaviors, and needs. These insights fuel your strategy, allowing you to create highly personalized experiences that resonate with each individual.
- Personalization: Just as a perfectly tailored suit enhances confidence, personalization in the omni-channel realm enhances customer satisfaction. By tailoring content, recommendations, and promotions to individual preferences, you create meaningful connections that build loyalty and trust.
- Orchestrating Symphony of Consistency: Consistency across channels is the melodic backbone of your strategy. From the visual identity to the tone of voice, maintaining a consistent brand presence reinforces recognition and cultivates a sense of trust among customers.
- Real-Time Responsiveness: Being able to engage with customers in real-time enables you to provide immediate support, address concerns, and deliver personalized offers. This responsiveness creates a delightful experience that makes customers feel heard and valued.
- Seamlessness: Customers should effortlessly move between channels, with their journey continuing seamlessly, preserving their progress, preferences, and context.
Read more: Optimizing SAP Systems for Better Performance.
Real-World Success Stories of SAP Customer Experience Implementation
SAP Customer Experience presents compelling use cases for different industries and challenges. By leveraging the suite’s capabilities, organizations can overcome the challenges they face, be it in retail, e-commerce, or B2B sectors. From creating a unified shopping experience, and driving personalization, to streamlining sales processes and enhancing customer service, SAP Customer Experience provides the solutions needed to achieve omni-channel excellence and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
1. Retail industry: Creating a unified shopping experience across online and offline channels
Challenge: The retail industry faces the challenge of bridging the gap between online and offline channels to deliver a seamless shopping experience. Customers expect consistent product information, pricing, and promotions regardless of whether they interact with a brand online or in a physical store. Aligning inventory, customer data, and processes across these channels becomes crucial for success.
Solution: SAP Customer Experience offers a comprehensive solution for retailers to overcome this challenge. By integrating SAP Commerce Cloud with their existing systems, retailers can synchronize product catalogs, pricing, and inventory in real-time. This ensures that customers receive accurate and consistent information, whether they browse online or visit a store. Additionally, features like click-and-collect and endless aisle empower retailers to offer flexible shopping options, creating a unified experience that seamlessly blends online and offline channels.
2. E-commerce sector: Driving personalized recommendations and targeted marketing campaigns
Challenge: E-commerce businesses strive to deliver personalized experiences that resonate with customers, driving engagement and conversions. However, understanding customer preferences, delivering relevant recommendations, and executing targeted marketing campaigns at scale can be a significant challenge.
Solution: SAP Marketing Cloud, a component of SAP Customer Experience, equips e-commerce businesses with the tools to address this challenge. By leveraging customer data, machine learning, and predictive analytics, SAP Marketing Cloud enables businesses to understand individual customer preferences and behavior. This valuable insight fuels personalized product recommendations, tailored content, and targeted marketing campaigns across various channels. The result is a highly engaging and relevant experience that resonates with customers, increasing conversions and fostering brand loyalty.
3. B2B organizations: Streamlining sales processes and enhancing customer service through omni-channel support
Challenge: B2B organizations often have complex sales cycles and multiple touchpoints for customer interactions. The challenge lies in streamlining these processes and providing consistent support across channels while maintaining personalized and high-quality customer service.
Solution: SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud, components of SAP Customer Experience, are tailored to address the unique needs of B2B organizations. SAP Sales Cloud offers comprehensive sales management tools, empowering sales teams with real-time insights, streamlined processes, and collaborative capabilities. This allows for efficient management of complex sales cycles and ensures a consistent experience for customers, regardless of the channel they engage through.
Watch now: Why Businesses Should Opt for SAP to Fuel Their Growth & Success?
Best Practices for Crafting Seamless Omni-Channel Journeys through SAP Customer Experience
Following best practices like these mentioned below will help in successfully implementing SAP Customer Experience:
- Conduct a comprehensive analysis of existing customer touchpoints: Conducting a comprehensive analysis involves examining all the channels through which customers interact with your brand, including websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, physical stores, and call centers. This will help you can identify areas of improvement and uncover opportunities for delivering a seamless omni-channel experience.
- Define clear omni-channel objectives and KPIs: Well-defined objectives and KPIs can help you can track progress, measure success, and make data-driven decisions throughout the implementation process.
- Establishing seamless integration between SAP Customer Experience modules and existing systems: By integrating SAP Customer Experience with existing systems such as CRM or ERP, you can leverage existing data and workflows, streamline operations, and maximize the value of the solution.
- Continuous monitoring and optimization of omni-channel experiences: Implementing SAP Customer Experience is not a one-time task but an ongoing journey of continuous improvement. Identifying areas for optimization can enable you to make informed decisions to refine and enhance the omni-channel experiences you deliver, ensuring they remain relevant, engaging, and effective.
How Fingent Can Help Leverage SAP Customer Experience
Partnering with Fingent can unlock the full potential of SAP Customer Experience for your business. With our expertise in SAP implementation and customization, we can guide you through the journey of leveraging emerging technologies, integrating IoT devices, and harnessing predictive analytics.
Our deep understanding of customer experience trends and innovative solutions enables us to tailor SAP Customer Experience to your specific needs, ensuring that you stay ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving landscape.
Reach out to us, and let’s discuss your needs.
Today, technology unlocks the value of time, allowing us to easily juggle multiple tasks and accomplish much more in less time. For some time now, SAP has become the backbone of efficient business operations. It has helped many businesses streamline their operations and scale their business to never before imagined heights.
Have you implemented SAP yet? If you have, then you must see firsthand how amazing it is! In this blog, we will help you maintain that awesomeness by giving you some great tips on managing and troubleshooting common SAP errors and issues.
Why SAP Is No Longer An Option But A Necessity
To manage current processes, many businesses still use a wide array of legacy software programs and possibly cloud apps to handle different procedures.
Did you know: Enterprises add 1,061 applications on average to their ecosystem. – 2023 connectivity Benchmark Report by Mulesoft Research.
In many organizations, it is common for separate departments to purchase and develop their own software solutions, operating independently of one another. This can lead to the use of multiple software programs within a department, which often lack the ability to integrate with each other.
A 2023 connectivity Benchmark Report by Mulesoft Research shows that only 29% of the surveyed businesses’ applications are properly integrated.
As a result, businesses may struggle to create a unified ecosystem that meets their current needs. To address this, audit your current toolkit and consider implementing a comprehensive ERP solution that can integrate various business operations. SAP solutions offer the ability to integrate these modular apps and create a more cohesive business system. By using a unified approach, businesses can improve their overall operations and drive growth.
The report by Mulesoft Research further mentioned that only 36% of enterprises consider the lack of integration between siloed apps the biggest challenge to digital transformation. Now if you aren’t one of them and have already implemented SAP, that is commendable indeed! –
However, the SAP system can be quite intricate. Given that, issues and errors may arise due to various factors.
Read more: Driving Business Modernization with SAP!
Suggestions And Tips to Manage and Troubleshoot SAP Implementation Issues
Here are some suggestions for common SAP errors and issues along with tips to manage and troubleshoot those issues effectively.
Issue #1- Slow Performance
Various aspects affect performance. These include network issues, database problems, or system overload. SAP performance issues, if ignored, can cause serious problems. To troubleshoot and manage this try the following steps:
- Identify the source: Identify the component or area that is responsible for the slowness. You can do this by keeping a tab on SAP performance metrics like response times, resource usage, and so on.
- Analyze logs and traces: Use tools provided by SAP to analyze logs and traces.
- Monitor hardware and network components: Monitoring servers, storage devices, and network components can help ensure the hardware is adequately configured, updated, and optimized.
- Check system performance: Check system performance periodically to identify trends and patterns.
- Optimize database: Check for memory leaks and increase database cache if necessary. Perform regular maintenance tasks like defragmentation and indexing.
Issue #2 – Authorization
Authorization problems may arise if SAP users lack the necessary access to certain transactions or functions. Here are some steps you can take to address authorization issues:
- Check who has what authorization: Confirm that users have the appropriate authorizations for the pertinent transactions and functions. The specified user needs a specific authorization object. Use the SE37 transaction or SE80 in test mode. The result table is very compact and easy to understand for authorization experts.
To help solve authorization problems, you can ask yourself:
- What data did the user access to avail which function?
- What was the reaction of the system and how should it have reacted?
- How is the authorization check set up?
- Verify if the roles and profiles match: Ensure user roles and profiles are correctly assigned.
- Use the right tools: Utilize the authorization trace tool to identify any authorization problems.
Issue #3 – Data Inconsistencies
Data inconsistency problems can occur when data is incorrectly entered or updated in SAP. These issues fall into one or more categories such as unavailable data, internal inconsistency, inconsistent page, and inconsistent page set. To identify and troubleshoot data inconsistencies, try the following steps:
- Identify: Identify the database and the table space that contain inconsistent data.
- Prevent escalation of the problem: Limit access to the data before an attempt is made to resolve the inconsistency. Doing so prevents subsequent updates to the inconsistent data and thus prevents the problem from escalating.
- Verify data: Verify if the data entered and updated is correct in SAP.
- Search the data: Locate missing or duplicate data.
- Use the right tools: Use the data consistency check tool to identify data inconsistencies.
Issue #4 – ABAP Programming Errors
ABAP programming errors can have many causes and can interrupt the program. The most common reasons for these errors are non-handled exceptions, or that a handleable exception was not handled, a non-handleable exception was raised, an exit message was sent, or an assertion failed. Here is what you can do to troubleshoot the issue:
- Analyze the error message: Read the error message carefully to understand the nature of the problem. Look for keywords or specific error codes that can provide insights into the issue.
- Review the code: Examine the ABAP code where the error occurred. Pay attention to the line number mentioned in the error message. Check for syntax errors, missing or incorrect statements, or any potential logical issues.
- Debug the code: Use the ABAP debugger to step through the code and identify the exact point where the error occurs. Set breakpoints in the code to stop execution at specific lines and observe variable values to pinpoint the problem.
- Analyze data and variables: Evaluate the data and variables used in the code. Ensure they contain the expected values and are correctly assigned. Use data inspectors, watchpoints, or variable analysis tools to monitor their values during runtime.
- Check system logs: Review system logs, such as the ABAP runtime error log (ST22 transaction), to gather additional information about the error. Look for any relevant entries that can provide clues about the root cause.
- Apply software patches and updates: Ensure that your SAP system is up-to-date with the latest patches and updates. Some errors might be resolved by applying the relevant software fixes provided by SAP.
Issue #5 – Integration Issues
Integration issues occur when there are issues with data exchange between SAP and other systems. To troubleshoot integration issues, try the following steps:
- Identify the scope and symptoms: Clearly define the integration problem you are facing and identify the specific symptoms. For example, determine if it’s a data transfer issue, communication problem, or functional discrepancy.
- Review integration configurations: Verify the integration settings and configurations in both the sending and receiving systems. Check the integration points, interfaces, message types, mappings, and adapters to ensure they are correctly set up.
- Check system connectivity: Validate the connectivity between the systems involved in the integration. Ensure that network connections, firewalls, and communication channels are properly configured and accessible.
- Analyze error messages and logs: Examine error messages, log files, and monitoring tools specific to the integration scenario. SAP provides various tools like SAP PI/PO monitoring, SAP AIF, or SAP CPI for monitoring and error analysis. Analyze the messages and logs to identify any error codes, timestamps, or specific details that can help pinpoint the issue.
- Collaborate with integration partners: Engage with the stakeholders involved in the integration, such as functional consultants, technical teams, or external partners. Collaborate to understand their system configurations, share information, and jointly troubleshoot the issue.
Read more: Top Business Benefits to Gain with Fingent’s SAP AMS Services!
How Can Fingent Help
Automating the monitoring and optimization of SAP performance can significantly enhance your enterprise operations. It is a positive step towards maximizing productivity and efficiency. As a trusted industry leader, Fingent can assist you in optimizing your SAP system and other relevant tools to ensure they function seamlessly within your enterprise.
To avoid costly performance and security issues associated with SAP systems, it is advisable to consult our experienced SAP experts. At Fingent, we are proficient in tailoring SAP solutions to meet the unique need of your enterprise. Our team is equipped with global expertise in implementing SAP solutions across various industries and business sizes.
Contact us today to explore your SAP options and benefit from a seamless implementation that aligns with your enterprise requirements.
“You on the cutting edge of technology have already made yesterday’s impossibilities the commonplace realities of today.” – Ronald Reagan
True to these words, the development and improvement of technology make possible several tasks we previously deemed impossible. The sky is quite the limit as long as humans are willing to innovate, create, and migrate.
This article will look at one of these brilliant technological advancements – SAP S/4HANA. We will also discuss how you can effectively migrate to this technology and benefit your business.
Introduction To SAP S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA is SAP’s most famous product that works as a business suite with an in-memory database. It allows businesses to perform transactions, manage functions, and analyze data in real-time.
SAP S/4HANA is the digital heart of SAP’s plan to help its customers with digital transformations, including tedious tasks of modifying existing and new business processes. It is fabricated to house various advanced technologies, such as AI, machine learning, IoT, and advanced analytics. This enables it to help solve complex issues and analyze more information in real-time faster than any previous products.
Read more: SAP S/4HANA: The Definitive Guide!
Why Migrate To SAP S/4HANA?
There are innumerable reasons to migrate to S/4HANA, and listed below are a few important ones:
1. Cost-effective and fast
S/4HANA’s famous in-memory database improves the performance of complex business processes along with scalability and processing speeds. It plans, executes, analyzes, and reports data at exponential speeds.
2. Flexibility
The greatest benefit of S/4HANA is its compatibility with other databases, hardware, and software, making it the most versatile data solution available. It provides the flexibility to install new business acquisitions, proactively manage assets and eradicate mundane tasks from an employee’s workday.
3. Analytic Capacity
In-memory technology automatically means there will be no waste of time loading data from one location to another. S/4HANA reduces the time needed to perform even the most extensive reports. This, combined with its deftly built-in business intelligence functionalities, makes it capable of processing data in real time and taking required actions to overcome any hurdles.
4. Simple User Interface
For the sake of nostalgia and previous acclimations, SAP did not abandon its GUI of 20 years. However, a few modifications were still made to portray the enhanced business processes.
5. Future-proofing IT Investments
The sooner an organization migrates to SAP S/4HANA, the sooner it modernizes its business ecosystem. SAP is actively investing in this suite of business processes, and any future technological advancements will inevitably be pushed toward this fast-evolving and ingenious solution. Placing your eggs in this basket can help you in the long run.
Challenges Of Migrating To SAP S/4HANA
Just as with any business and technological transition, you are bound to face a few challenges while migrating to SAP S/4HANA. Listed below are a few:
1. Disorientation And Confusion
Being well-prepared for a conversion plan is always the first step in any SAP S/4HANA conversion project. Making conversion plans with fully detailed tasks to be performed in sequence and accurately calculating the time and effort it takes to convert the system is a serious responsibility.
2. Poorly-recorded legacy processes
Before jotting down a conversion plan it is imperative to evaluate existing processes. Often companies carry their existing problems to the new platform and regret the decision.
3. Complexity Of Custom Code
Custom code can be the backbone of information or the core code that unifies it. Conversion of any custom code to S/4HANA is an extremely complex task. An intensive study should be conducted to identify and evaluate the use of custom code. This analysis will then be the factor in deciding if the system can be converted or simply re-implemented.
Read now: How SAP S/4HANA Can Help Your Business to Become An Intelligent Enterprise?
Best Practices Of Migrating To SAP S/4HANA
As we’ve already seen, despite its many benefits, migrating to SAP S/4HANA can be challenging. It is far from impossible, however. Here are 5 best practices to keep in mind while making this conversion in order to keep the transition seamless:
1. Visualize your end goal
Figure out what your ideal ERP infrastructure and functionalities should look like. Starting a SAP migrating process means reverse integrating your ideal plan.
2. Determine what to rationalize, what to refine and what to conserve
This practice depends entirely on the application and which part of the business process it affects. Asses each module, component, and individual process that will be affected by the change and apply this practice to it.
3. Determine how much data is required for the move
If you want to reap the complete harvest of SAP S/4HANA with its advanced analytics, you have to carry over data from your existing ERP. The preceding data is what oils S/4HANA’s motors to be predictive and accurate in the first place.
4. Formulate an implementation strategy that reduces migration barriers
Every company’s migration process is different. However, Greenfield and Brownfield are the most famous ways of SAP S/4HANA migration. Greenfield is a total change from the old platform to the new platform and Brownfield is a technological upgrade.
5. Choose a consultant who specializes in selectivity
Picking the perfect partner for S/4HANA migration is critical to get the most out of the project. Find a partner who specializes in SAP environments and understands what the migration needs. Ensure that their selectivity in choosing what to migrate, what to preserve, and what to develop is on point.
How Fingent Can Help?
Fingent provides end-to-end planning, migration, and post-migration support and maintenance services. This includes tactical advisory on choosing the right S/4HANA migration path to suit your requirements. Our unique SAP S/4HANA service implementation methodology assists you with preparing, exploring, configuring, and deploying your project. We also provide support, project closure, and maintenance.
Fingent has a proven track record of helping clients across the globe with SAP S/4HANA implementation and migration. We can help you empower your business with this powerful too!
Reach out to us and talk to our experts.
SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA are two key ERP software offerings from SAP that allow enterprises to simplify the management of business processes, enable effective data processing, and facilitate streamlined information flow across organizations. Though SAP ECC is the most commonly used ERP software, things will change as SAP ends its support for ECC 6.0 in 2027. As ECC is reaching the end of the line, the most practical way for businesses to benefit from SAP’s exceptional solutions is to migrate to SAP S/4HANA.
Like ECC, S/4HANA too offers solutions to enhance business process efficiency and the customer experience in areas like finance, inventory and asset management, sales, marketing, HR, logistics and supply chain, and product development, but in an incredible and unprecedented manner.
Before moving to the world’s most intelligent and modern ERP, it’s important to understand how SAP S/4HANA is different from its predecessor, SAP ECC.
What is SAP ECC?
SAP ECC is short for SAP ERP Central Component, the previous generation of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Due to its modular design, SAP ECC is highly customizable and can be configured to suit the different needs of a business, such as finance, logistics, warehousing, human resources, product planning, customer service, and so on. The most striking feature of ECC is its ability to work with third-party or customized applications. For example, ECC can operate on a third-party database such as IBM DB2 or Oracle database and can work with customized applications like business messaging apps.
Due to its interaction with different components in the landscape, ECC is flexible, which also brings in more complexities. This is because a change in one component can affect how other parts function in the ecosystem. So, rolling out any change, such as customization, upgrades, add-ons, or enhancements, demands a thorough and careful testing of the landscape to ensure that your important business functions remain undisrupted.
With SAP phasing out ECC, users are left with only one alternative: moving to S/4HANA.
Read more: SAP for Business: 9 Ways to Maximize Business Performance
What is SAP S/4HANA?
SAP S/4HANA is the world’s most intelligent, complete, and modular cloud ERP software that simplifies your business landscape. It facilitates accelerated deployment by lowering costs with a standardized core and brings agility through an open, modular, scalable, and innovative platform. S/4HANA service management integrates crucial functions from various lines of businesses and industries and incorporates parts of SAP Business Suite Products.
What is the difference between SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA?
Though ECC provides modules covering a full range of industrial and enterprise applications that can be run on a database of the user’s choice, the legacy ERP system fails to leverage the intelligent technologies needed to be competitive today. S/4HANA differs from ECC in many aspects:
Why Move to SAP S/4HANA Now?
Making decisions based on accurate and appropriate data is critical to gain a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic world. With SAP S/4HANA, organizations can use data, people, and enterprise assets in an aggregated manner that best suits their business. Moving to SAP S/4HANA offers you the following advantages:
1. Simplified Technical and Data Architecture
Businesses are attracted to SAP S/4 HANA due to its simplified data table structure and access. SAP HANA’s in-memory computing platform provides a database that operates way faster than the database options used in ECC or any traditional OLTP system. In SAP S/4HANA, there is no need to separate OLTP and OLAP applications into different databases or applications, as a single HANA database can handle both types of operations effectively. The traditional OLTP systems are generally slow at reading and analyzing data that gets updated while processing transactions. SAP S/4HANA offers restructured data models, allowing customers to access data reports faster.
2. Access to Innovative Technologies
Introducing a fresh bulk of innovative technologies will help you address all the upcoming business requirements. Built-in machine learning is an outstanding capability of S/4HANA that automates key business processes across your organization. Real-time insights, predictive BI, and automation free your employees from mind-numbing work and help them focus on value-adding tasks. Access to innovative trend technologies will keep you one step ahead of your competitors.
3. Invest in Your Growth Strategy
You can build an appropriate strategy with fully-automated data if your business is growing and venturing into new markets. Remember that your current SAP ERP has a shorter shelf-life. Failing to catch up with the latest trends and developments will be costly. Investing in an intelligent ERP system is a business imperative, for it will support and complement your growth strategy and increase your speed-to-market.
4. Consistent User Experience Across All Devices
SAP Fiori – the design system that powers the user experience of SAP S/4HANA – defines how the new business value of S/4HANA is delivered to users. The Fiori design system delivers a modern user experience that works on various devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone) to ensure faster response times and better performance. Digital age user experience, end-to-end real-time analytics, new business processes (such as Group Reporting, Central Procurement, and Predictive MRP), and intelligent automation (such as Situation Handling, AI/ ML proposals, RPA) scenarios are the key value drivers for using SAP Fiori in SAP S/4HANA. Above anything, you need SAP Fiori to configure, adapt and extend SAP S/4HANA.
5. Avert The Risk of Falling Behind
SAP is no longer investing in ECC as the legacy ERP is reaching its end of life in 2027. On the other hand, SAP S/4HANA incorporates many innovative features through its dynamic quarterly releases that make its core even more intelligent. Several companies around the globe have already started their migration, and some are working fervently on their migration plans. Considering the predicted shortage of skilled SAP consultants and the rising cost of quality consulting services, it’s vital to bridge the gap and avert the risk of falling behind by acting now when there are available resources. Working with a trusted and certified SAP specialist, you can keep your project time, budget, and risk to the minimum. Also, if you have any plans to renew your hardware or hosting solutions, the SAP S/4HANA migration process and hardware purchase should happen simultaneously to avoid any non-compliance.
How Fingent Helps You Accomplish a Seamless Migration to SAP S/4HANA?
With Fingent, your SAP S/4HANA journey can never be complex. We offer the right S/4HANA solutions, expertise, and end-to-end services, including strategic advisory on choosing the right S/4HANA migration or conversion path to suit your requirements.
SAP S/4HANA Conversion Services
Our S/4HANA conversion services are customized to enable the smooth and rapid transition of your business systems, processes, and applications. We offer:
- Convert to SAP S/4HANA on a fixed budget and schedule
- On-premise or cloud-hosted S/4 implementation
- Selective Data Transition (Hybrid approach)
- More flexibility, higher success rate, and lower cycle time
- Enhanced UX, lower costs and risks, and ongoing support services
SAP S/4HANA Migration Services
Improve your enterprise’s resilience by championing your migration to SAP S/4HANA with Fingent. Here are the SAP S/4HANA journey steps we follow:
- Detect challenges, define the business case, and decide where to start
- Pre-configured scenarios and process mining to mitigate risks
- Identify deployment and hosting options
- Perform pre-checks before implementation
- Functional scope and custom code analysis
Our unique SAP S/4HANA service implementation methodology is a tried and tested practice with several successful implementations. Fingent top software development company will combine the best SAP Activate methodology, preconfigured solutions, focused industry templates, automation solutions, and a modular and agile framework. We help you integrate strategy, process, policies, people, and technology to ensure that your organization is process-driven. Transform your complex IT landscape into a simplified business system with SAP S/4 HANA.
Contact our SAP consultant to learn more.
Streamline And Enhance Your Warehouse Management Operations With SAP EWM
Worldwide, companies spend an average of €300 billion a year on warehousing, either in-house or through third-party logistics. The rise of eCommerce and the growth of global supply chains increase warehousing operations costs for enterprises. In addition, with the pandemic heightening consumers’ interest in eCommerce, they expect instant delivery of products. To cater to this dynamic demand, some logistic companies increased the number of their seasonal employees. With this demand continuing to rise, it becomes imperative that warehouse management processes be optimized.
Read more: Warehousing Management System: Simplify Operations & Scale Your Business
Warehouse management is currently undergoing a modern-day makeover to meet growing demands. Therefore, industry leaders must take steps to optimize warehouse management to keep pace with faster requirements and ever-increasing volumes. SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) streamlines, simplifies and optimizes your warehouse operations. This blog considers how SAP EWM can benefit your business.
Challenges In Supply Chain Management Today
Supply chains are at the core of business operations. Therefore, supply chain management needs to overcome several challenges that impact the bottom line of their business.
Read more: Top Challenges Faced By Logistics Management Today
Here are some challenges companies should be aware of:
1. Identifying Bottlenecks In Customer Service
Customers’ demands have become extremely specific. Plus, they expect to be notified about any possible delays. Therefore, supply chain management can benefit from advanced planning and scheduling systems that can help them identify bottlenecks. This can help them prevent delays or notify the customer of a possible delay.
2. Gaining High Supply Chain Visibility
Overall production cost is affected by several factors that go unnoticed. High supply chain visibility will help the management increase the system’s efficiency and eliminate wasteful steps. Such visibility can contribute to cost control.
3. Finding The Right Talent
Hiring and retaining the right talent has become increasingly difficult. Hence, it is beneficial to have a performance tracking system that allows you to gauge employee productivity and spot the right talent that could be trained effectively.
4. Ensuring On-time Delivery
Delivering goods on time is another challenge that can make you lose your customers to your competition. You can resolve these challenges with planning and scheduling software. It can help you receive and deliver the material on time.
5. Maintaining An Agile Production Plan
Lack of an agile production plan that does not reflect market changes can lead to inefficiency of production. You can remain agile by having a planning and scheduling system. This system helps you keep a tab on the effect of market changes without disrupting your current schedule. Those insights equip you to make the best decisions in response to those changes.
How SAP EWM Can Benefit Your Business
Statista forecasts the global warehouse automation market to surpass 30 billion U.S. dollars. And, Zebra warehousing vision study shows that 80% of organizations plan to invest in new technologies to be competitive. And 27% plan to utilize full automation by 2024. SAP EWM helps you capitalize on this.
Read more: How Robotics In Logistics Helps Improve Supply Chain Efficiency
SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) is fast, agile, and powerful. It is designed to future-proof current supply chain technology and help your business grow.
SAP EWM can be deployed into many business environments. It can support both simple and complex warehouse processes at the granular level. It is a high-speed system that makes supply chain management more accessible and more efficient. SAP EWM can be configured to the organization’s specific needs and can be streamlined over different locations.
Here are some other ways your business can benefit from SAP EWM:
1. Optimize Task Management
In a standard warehouse, one person can be seen going to the same stock bin several times during the day. This happens when all orders that need to be picked for a day appear together, making it difficult to break them down.
You can optimize the picking process with SAP EWM. The platform uses various algorithms to employ the most efficient way to complete as many tasks as possible. This prevents pickers from wasting their time as they have to tread the same path constantly. Plus, SAP EWM’s voice picking functionality enables shorter search time and minimizes errors.
Read more: How SAP Helps Realize Voice-enabled Warehouse Operations
SAP EWM can easily integrate all processes to provide easy end-to-end operations management. It can take the burden off your team for outgoing shipments allowing them to tackle inevitable snags that need to be addressed.
You can link SAP EWM with your transportation management system for greater accuracy for delivery targets. It provides your company a holistic outlook alerting your team when to expect delays and other time-sensitive information.
2. Streamline Labor Management
Efficient use of time, effort, and resources can contribute to business growth. This is another point where SAP EWM can integrate with your WMS. The platform can provide structure in the workplace. With a good framework, each worker knows their location and responsibilities. Such an organized structure will help your employees enjoy more efficient task allocation.
SAP EWM generates real-time insights on workers’ performance, enabling managers to offer more constructive suggestions to improve efficiency. Subsequently, your employees develop more efficient and consistent work habits.
3. Control Costs
Not following the first-in, first-out method for perishables and inefficient use of space and labor can increase wastage. SAP EWM can help reduce wastage of perishables by identifying which units need to be picked first.
SAP EWM can maximize the use of the warehouse space by optimizing the location for each pickup time. It optimizes your space and the travel path of the pickers. All this will reduce your on-hand inventory and reduce your space costs without compromising on quality.
4. Boost Customer Relationship
SAP EWM can reduce delivery lead times and order accuracy errors. This increases customer satisfaction and results in more sales. Thus, SAP EWM elevates and improves relationships with your suppliers and end customers.
Read more: Logistics Management Software – Everything You Should Know
Leverage SAP EWM Capabilities With Fingent
Logistics providers must evaluate the best warehousing management solution for their specific needs. If your business is at a crossroads in choosing the best option for your warehouse operations, Fingent is here to help. Feel free to contact us to learn more about how SAP EWM can transform your business.
Fingent is a certified SAP silver partner and has assisted global businesses in successfully implementing SAP EWM. Our custom software development experts can guide and help you explore the flexibility in deploying SAP EWM and ensure it is the best fit for your specific business requirements.
Why migrate your legacy ERP software to Odoo ERP?
COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic disruption have made many businesses consider the benefits of legacy application migration. Migrating legacy enterprise applications or systems to new technology platforms is one of the cheapest and fastest methods to ensure business continuity in today’s volatile market.
Read more: Why modernize your legacy systems? What’s the best approach to legacy systems modernization?
Technavio estimates that the global ERP software market will grow by $18.91 billion from 2019-2023, with a CAGR of 9%. This report only highlights the growing demand for ERP software across various businesses.
Odoo ERP implementation is an all-in-one solution befitting your particular business requirements. Odoo ERP system is flexible and easy to deploy. It can replace your outdated legacy system and augment the overall business process. For example, Toyota uses Odoo ERP to streamline material handling processes. Even for a complex project, the shortest implementation span has helped Toyota create additional value in just six months of Odoo integration.
Reasons leading to an increase in demand include the need for digital transformation and to keep up with the ‘new normal’ thanks to the rise of eCommerce, mobile shopping, and providing a seamless experience to customers. In addition, the changing business scenarios are compelling businesses to adapt to new technology and platforms for facing the challenges and making the migration from one environment to another inevitable.
This has necessitated migration to the latest platforms such as legacy ERP systems to the new, web-based, Cloud, or On-premise Odoo ERP or from old Odoo ERP to the latest version.
Read more: Top 6 reasons to migrate to a cloud-hosted ERP
Legacy System vs. Odoo ERP
Currently, many organizations are operating under the legacy system, and some even continue to stay within that comfort zone. However, decision-makers will have to look into new technology and methods, as legacy systems need better functionality to facilitate daily business operations and accommodate the growing customer base.
Migrating to Odoo ERP system is the best way to adapt and meet the ever-evolving market demand. In addition, Odoo ERP migration reduces manual labor and improves business productivity to a great level. It is less time-consuming and cost-effective than going for a total replacement of your legacy enterprise application.
Why is legacy application migration needed?
1. Eliminate maintenance and security risks
A legacy system is inefficient and outdated and can cost you more than a total replacement, especially if the system is older. It can result in IT businesses spending more on its maintenance, leaving little of the budget to address business challenges that are getting complicated day by day.
That said, old and outdated software systems are more prone to cyber-attacks and security risks. Also, when such an obsolete system is near its end of the life cycle, support will be stopped leaving organizations operating on those legacy systems vulnerable.
In many cases, companies may lose data and information when legacy systems fail. Also, it could be tough to find people who know those obsolete programming languages to repair the system. Outsourcing the maintenance work may also become more expensive than usual as the professionals may not be well-versed with such a system. This is where a legacy application migration expert like Fingent can help. We help migrate your legacy on-premise systems to advanced, cloud-hosted infrastructure so that your business can scale as it grows.
Read more: 5 ways application modernization enables your business to reap ROI during a pandemic
2. Gain improved access to relevant data
Most of the legacy systems were built during times when customers would still shop from traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Also, these systems would not store business data from each department in a central place.
So, organizations looking to continue operating on outdated applications or systems will naturally miss out on better opportunities and scaling up. It will limit their business mobility and flexibility as well. Additionally, legacy systems lead to data duplication. The data itself could be inaccurate, outdated, and incomplete. These inefficiencies will hamper your business growth and even slow down the competitive edge.
On the other hand, web-based cloud ERP systems like Odoo allows businesses to access their data from anywhere and anytime from various operating systems and mobile devices.
Simply put, Odoo migration provides organizations with more innovative ways of operating a business while offering technological developments allowing them to maximize value creation across assets and operations lifecycles, eventually improving ROI.
Read more: Odoo Migration: Why is it crucial and how to do it seamlessly
Benefits of legacy application migration to Odoo
Odoo migration allows you to move your legacy applications from their existing tech stack to the latest software platform. Legacy application migration to Odoo ERP is one of the best ways to augment software performance by leveraging the latest technologies. Here’s what legacy system migration to Odoo offers you:
1. Improved operational efficiency
Odoo offers both Cloud and On-premise ERP solutions that enable organizations to address the needs of their customers. Cloud-based ERP is more popular as it offers improved flexibility, accessibility, security, and better operational efficiency. The cloud-based application is also accessible across different devices such as laptops, smartphones, desktops, and tablets. However, you will need a reliable internet connection and a compatible device to access the application anytime and anywhere. Migrating to Odoo will also reduce hardware dependency and is easily accessible.
2. Cost-efficiency
Odoo migration is cost-effective and gives you better control of your operational expenses. You can utilize Odoo’s dedicated financial management, invoicing, and accounting modules and customize them according to your business needs. More importantly, Odoo migration reduces infrastructure complexities and maintenance costs. Also, its flexible nature allows you to pay for the features you are using.
3. Robust data security
As legacy systems include obsolete software configurations and outdated technologies, they are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Odoo offers exceptional features such as 256-bit SSL encryption, PBKDF2+SHA512 encryption, RPO/RTO-based backup, and disaster recovery techniques in addition to top-notch network defense against DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and malware attacks.
4. Overcome compatibility issues
Many organizations are likely to face compatibility issues while upgrading their legacy applications due to old software configurations. In addition, given the underlying software architecture, the legacy system also makes integrating new technologies very challenging.
So, legacy application migration seems to be the only option to overcome the apparent limitations and vulnerabilities. As the entire tech is upgraded while moving data to the Odoo ERP software platform, it becomes fully compatible with several applications, enterprise modules, and software technologies. You can also benefit from the multiple, feature-rich modules offered by Odoo ERP to manage various business functions.
Read more: Why your business needs Odoo ERP
In addition to the above benefits, Odoo ERP enables search integration, social networking, and other latest technology functions. Moreover, migrated systems are less likely to become outdated as they can be continuously updated to on-trend technology.
Migrate your legacy ERP to Odoo with Fingent
Odoo ERP caters to the business needs of enterprises of all sizes, and legacy application migration to Odoo will provide you with a string of benefits. These benefits will future-proof your organization regardless of its diverse functionality.
Read more: Why choose Fingent as your Odoo ERP partner
We, at Fingent, provide end-to-end Odoo ERP solutions for industry-specific business needs. We specialize in building custom enterprise applications for varying business needs and render complete support for Odoo ERP integration and legacy application migration to Odoo ERP. To know more about our Odoo ERP migration services, contact us right away.