Dr. Russell Gomersall

While talking to customers preparing for their HANA journey, I often hear a commitment from the IT departments to involve the business. To a point, everyone agrees that it is inevitable. However, the question of when and how to involve the business is disputed. It is obvious that the business will have many questions, while the project management will not be ready to give answers, yet. Open points during the project inception will involve aspects such as brown vs. greenfield, budgets, duration, and approach.

This often leads to procrastinating to involve the business. Sometimes, there is a 'shadow project' for preparation. This neglect of open communication frequently results in duplicate efforts with business and IT initiating parallel investigations that are hard to merge later on.

I suggest involving the business as early as possible.

Open communication is key, and identifying and involving key stakeholders from both sides will work better the earlier you join forces with them.

It is advisable to set up your own 'business readiness' stream with clear objectives to gather relevant information on current strategic guidelines, operating models, and an inventory of related end-to-end scenarios and their business processes.

As the basis for decisions on brown vs. greenfield, an analysis of pain points and key requirements is essential to effectively challenge the status quo and identify value drivers for the HANA initiative.

Besides gathering crucial information as input for planning and early decisions, timely activation of the business will have a fundamental, positive impact on change management during your project.

So, if you haven't involved your business yet, I suggest you start tomorrow and set up your first alignment.

As bpExperts, this is what we focus on. Using Business Process Management as a true management methodology, we help introduce a process-centric approach, bridging the gap between business and IT, as well as between strategy and operations.

We care, we act, we deliver.

Contact me

Dr. Russell Gomersall

Partner

E-Mail: russell.gomersall@bpexperts.de

Phone: +49 151 222 344 96

bpexperts.de

Dr. Ikemefuna Allen

Building a good business case before embarking on an S/4 HANA transformation is crucial for several reasons. It helps ensure that the transformation aligns with the organization's broader strategic goals and objectives. It also allows you to clearly articulate how the S/4 HANA implementation will support and enhance these goals. A robust business case helps in estimating and justifying resource allocations, as well as assessing risks and quantifying expected improvements in efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

In building a business case, knowing where your operations stand in terms of maturity will give you a clear baseline against which you can measure desired improvements made through the S/4 HANA transformation. The maturity assessment will help you identify gaps in your current processes that need to be addressed. These gaps could be in data quality, process efficiency, compliance, or technology usage. The maturity assessment will reveal how well current processes are integrated with existing technology, providing a roadmap for what needs to be updated or changed in the S/4 HANA transformation.

A thorough assessment that shows gaps and areas for improvement in processes can help in securing stakeholder buy-in, a critical factor in the success of any transformation project. The insights from the assessment provide concrete data and context that justify the investment. Moreover, knowing the maturity level of your processes will help you better estimate the effort and cost involved in the transformation, as gaps are identified and prioritized to focus on areas that need the most attention.

The maturity assessment can highlight dependencies between processes and other business functions. Understanding these can help mitigate risks during the HANA transformation. The assessment can reveal areas where additional training or change management efforts will be required, helping you prepare your team for the upcoming changes.

In summary, assessing process maturity is a necessity for aligning goals, mitigating risks, optimizing resource allocation, and ensuring the success of your S/4 HANA transformation. It provides a strategic and operational roadmap aligning your processes with organizational objectives.

We at bpExperts can guide you through all the steps for performing a process maturity assessment by providing:

A Process Maturity survey
Advisory and support for survey respondents
Evaluation of survey results and diagnosis of process maturity
Detailing of action items and the roadmap required to achieve desired process maturity

For inquiries on the maturity survey and how to conduct an assessment for your organization, please feel free to contact me.