Running SAP? Focus on outcomes, not operations

Customers managing their own SAP systems are faced with a staggering task. Acting as their own systems integrator, they must purchase SAP software, test and implement it, then hire an Application Management (AMS) provider to manage the steady state. Regardless of whether it is hosted on prem or in the cloud, this is a complex model.

Migrating your core SAP ERP systems to SAP S/4HANA puts you in a much stronger position to save money and maximize functionality, but it also adds greater complexity. Do you have the in-house expertise to manage the migration to cloud? If not, you’re not alone. According to a survey by Frost & Sullivan, 70% of businesses cite workload migration as the key challenge that is hindering them from migrating their SAP applications to cloud.

Spend now, save later

An experienced SAP service provider is uniquely positioned with the labour and expertise to help ‘right the ship.’  Shifting the management and maintenance of your entire SAP applications to a service provider provides a number of key advantages:

• Predictable, managed costs and resources for SAP workloads. Reduce hardware and software maintenance costs and lower the total cost of ownership.
  • Cost certainty payment plan lays out a plan that works for you, balancing payments across the entire term so you are paying when you are receiving benefits.
  • Cost deferral lets you better match payments to benefits as you receive them.
  • Simplification of SAP landscape and contractual mechanism across your entire footprint.
• Efficiency, security and compliance: Benefit from improved security and compliance reporting for workload, faster delivery of services and applications to line-of-business, and better managed IT, disaster recovery and business continuity.
• Faster time to value: The ability to scale up and down rapidly, better integration of data and access to emerging technology frees your people up to focus more on innovation and new business opportunities.

When the time is right to migrate your existing SAP ERP environment to SAP S/4HANA, IBM offers tailored, pre-packaged templates for over 100 industries so you can accelerate implementation by up to 30 percent.

Reduce TCO and create value with SAP Partner Managed Cloud

Helping customers run their businesses efficiently and cost-effectively is what Partner Managed Cloud from IBM is all about. In 2019, an IBM client in the Oil and Gas industry in Canada approached us with an increasingly common concern: the growing complexity of their environment, compounded by a lack of accountability, rising costs and difficulty in managing the end-to-end support process.

IBM worked with the client to package their existing license footprint with an optimized future software roadmap, a top-tier cloud hosting provider, and managed services over a seven-year term. Going forward, they will benefit from a simplified landscape that addresses their current and future needs; end-to-end accountability of their landscape with defined service level agreements; and a significant reduction in total cost of ownership compared to their existing landscape.

Partner managed cloud helps simplify the complex nature of what your company is facing so you can focus in-house resources on business outcomes instead of operations. Acting as your trusted partner, IBM combines:

• Optimized SAP S/4HANA licenses through partner managed cloud
• A proven, vendor-agnostic cloud platform best suited to your operating environment,
• Ongoing managed services across a single governance, and
• An SAP Pinnacle award-winning excellence in helping customers to achieve value creation, simplification and exponential growth.

As your business emerges from COVID-19, why just survive, when you can thrive? With partner managed cloud, customers have the means to optimize and rebalance their operating model across the entire SAP system. Better ROI, more functionality, and better performance all add up to one thing – enterprise optimization from end to end.

Watch the video: Becoming an Intelligent Enterprise with partner managed cloud  

Learn more about SAP Managed Services

Book a consultation! Email me at bernabo@ca.ibm.com

Roberto Bernabo
Senior Partner, Canadian SAP Practice Leader
IBM Global Business Services