IBM Services leads the way in helping clients accelerate modernization of enterprise systems, with more than 100 clients now live with SAP S/4 HANA
IBM has announced it has completed more than 100 successful SAP S/4HANA implementations that are enabling companies to speed up their digital reinventions.
As companies look to simplify increasingly complex business processes and upgrade their technology infrastructure, SAP S/4HANA allows companies to enable new capabilities not available before, helping them lay the foundation for easier adoption of innovative technology such as AI and blockchain.
Smart & Final Stores, a value-oriented food and everyday staples retailer, recently turned to IBM Services as the company set out to reinvent their operational business processes, beginning with modernizing their financial processes and systems. By adopting SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC), Smart & Final has created a financial backbone, a central digital platform which optimizes financial processes and harmonizes data centrally. Coupled with their e-commerce transformation, these new capabilities will help the retailer gain a better understanding of their customers and deliver an enhanced in-store experience. Key to embarking on this journey was to adopt the right approach to SAP S/4HANA that helped ensure a continuous path to improved business performance, enhanced employee experience and operational efficiencies to support future growth.
Clients across industries are opting for pre-configured industry solutions. Based on IBM research, pre-configured industry solutions have increased implementation speed up to 30 percent. Drawing on its long term relationship with SAP and deep understanding of IT environments, IBM Services created pre-configured industry specific accelerators – IBM Impact Industry Solutions – designed to bring together and enhance existing IBM and SAP services to help accelerate SAP S/4HANA adoption. These solutions, combined with IBM’s Impact Assessment, help companies increase quality and success in the change process.
“SAP S/4HANA can represent a significant shift in a company’s entire business model, allowing them to transform processes, integrate new technology and quickly turn their focus on new market opportunities. The way companies implement the platform is critical and has a significant impact on their business down the road,” said Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Business Services. “All clients have different starting points and requirements to drive their digital transformations. Having advised hundreds of clients and completed 100 transformations, our consultants bring this deep insight and knowledge to streamline transformation journeys and unlock the benefits for clients as quickly as possible.”
With more than 100 transformations complete, IBM Services is guiding more than 200 leading global companies in their SAP S/4HANA implementations to help drive their digital transformation.
“Successful Digital Transformations requires a strong business value case, and a well-defined technical roadmap that is closely aligned with the company’s current and future strategy,” said Michael Kleinemeier, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Digital Business Services. “The many successful SAP S/4HANA projects delivered by SAP and IBM are the great proof points, that our investments into business value assets help our joint clients to make the intelligent enterprise a reality. Aligning the SAP Model Company and IBM Impact Solutions accelerators are good examples of how the partnership delivers in-depth industry functionality, and at the same time accelerates time to value.”
Together, IBM Services and SAP are helping to accelerate customers’ digital transformations across many industries. The partners continue to enhance their intelligent enterprise platform to deliver new insights and capabilities that speed innovation. Recently, IBM introduced an accelerated Bluefield migration approach that automates the process and conversion to provide a fast and flexible path to SAP S/4HANA transformation. In addition, IBM Impact Industry solutions are now available on multiple cloud environments, including IBM Cloud Private, and IBM is working closely with SAP to develop Industry Cloud solutions on IBM Cloud Private that can enable clients to securely tap into powerful technologies such as AI, Blockchain and others.