IBM® SAP CleanCore Services are a suite of modules that help you reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of SAP ECC6 and prepare for SAP S/4 HANA.

SAP is no longer innovating for ECC, but there’s plenty of opportunity for you to create value while you wait for the move to SAP S/4 HANA. IBM SAP CleanCore services work with your ECC6 platform to make it smaller, more efficient and more cost-effective. Expect to deliver fresh business agility, reduce TCO, and build a well-reasoned roadmap to S/4 HANA.

The IBM SAP CleanCore services are modular, so you can expect a budget-friendly way to improve your current platform. IBM offers a suite of SAP CleanCore modules, and will complete the assessments that fit your specific situation. The IBM team reviews the status of your environment, reviews the code, the data, and the processes. The result: A uniquely tailored plan to reduce the costs of running your SAP estate and a roadmap supporting the business case for S/4 HANA.

This approach from IBM makes it possible to modernise your SAP ecosystem now, not later. If you’re determined to succeed in a competitive market, consider the ability of these services to unlock agility; you can remove redundant and obsolete custom code from legacy applications; you can perform code optimisation and modernisation with side-by-side extensions; you can optimise business processes with our process analytics tools; you can expand your partnership with our intelligent automation platform and can explore integration with open source platforms.

Benefits of IBM SAP CleanCore

If you’re not moving to SAP S/4 HANA in the near term, use your time to simplify and optimise your core business processes.

A reasoned approach to optimisation of ERP processes can lead to lower costs now and can prepare you for the move to S/4 HANA. The IBM SAP CleanCore team has found that 70% of the use cases will involve procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, accounts payable and accounts receivable.

What to expect from CleanCore process optimisation
Expect to drive control-tower visibility of active processes across the entire SAP and non-SAP ecosystem, which helps you manage and harmonise end-to-end business processes in real time. Discover inefficiencies in current process paths, automation rates, throughput times, and other process-specific KPIs in your organisation. Take advantage of frameworks and tools that prompt immediate actions through automation and that help ease the adoption of intelligent technologies. Expect to maximise execution capacity when you’re able to set clear targets for process improvement and execution.

The power of the process mining
Process mining technology is designed to analyse processes across all systems in a single environment. Event data forms the basis of the analysis, so that business leaders can get a view into reality that’s fact-based and objective. IBM works with companies such as Celonis and Worksoft to bring premiere process mining strategies to organisations that face the move to S/4 HANA.

Process mining is purpose-built to handle the inherent complexity and dynamism of the modern process environment. Every interaction in transactional systems leaves a “digital footprint”, and the techniques visualise the digital footprints and then use event-log analysis to trace them. Process mining extracts and aggregates the records of time-stamped event log data from key IT-systems. The technology then seamlessly reconstructs entire end-to-end process flows as they happen.

Take the happy path and identify variants
The core result that’s available after event log data is loaded is called the variant and process explorer. The transparency of this explorer can reveal new insights; you can identify the process flow that’s considered as best practice, known as the “happy path.” You’ll also identify the most common variant, the variant of process flow that most cases follow. Expect visualisation of 100% of all identified process variants. Get representation of throughput times for each activity and transparency about the impact of process variation. Assess current process automation rates and identify potential for further automation. With the IBM approach, you get a visual simulation of cases that are flowing through separate variants – a great way to graphically illustrate real process executions. You can learn the frequency of activity duplication due to changes, such as changes in quantity or price.

Experience a 15-20% ROI when you turn data quality insight into action.¹

Data-driven insights can improve how your business performs. You gain actionable insights. You automate decision making. As you act to surpass your competition, you make it easier for teams to develop new business models and new revenue streams and as data quality and conversion strategies take hold, there’s another benefit: You reduce costs.

What to expect from CleanCore data quality and conversion
Expect to run a data scan and assessment to determine whether the current state of the data supports your planned business outcomes. Use insight scans to archive data and ERP instances that are no longer active; strengthen lifecycle management for data quality reduce overall data complexity and footprint; locate, evaluate and remediate data errors automatically and increase data harmonisation across processes.

Data quality sparks powerful opportunities
Quality of data is a nuanced concept – and it’s the nuances that bring the opportunities. Data cleanse efforts and updated data models can dramatically reduce the number of wrong decisions, misguided conclusions, and flawed analyses. Governance controls reduce data complexity; GDPR compliance is strengthened by design. When you clean and harness your core business data with governance and clear business controls around ECC6, you get transparent SAP master data processes, a reduced data footprint and a reduction in data complexity. You’re better prepared to meet the marketplace. Your customers, your employees and the environment are well-served.

Case study: Heineken Data-driven operational management depends upon modernised code, data and processes.

The time is right to move from heavily customised SAP to CleanCore and side-by-side applications.

The IBM SAP CleanCore approach helps you to move to a cloud native world and to optimise your code – before or during migration to S/4 HANA. An “optimise-first” tenet for SAP S/4HANA makes it possible for the IBM SAP team to align key migration requirements with CleanCore’s unique modular method; this makes it possible to support the different adoption approaches that are available when an organisation moves to SAP S/4HANA. The goal: agility.

What to expect from CleanCore data quality and conversion
The assessment will allow you to make the most of the code analysis to create a well-reasoned roadmap for custom code across the SAP estate to prepare for the move to S/4 HANA. Optimise existing ABAP code through remediation, decommissioning, consolidation and carve-out analysis. Replace monolithic legacy applications when you get code transformation and application modernisation with side-by-side applications for cloud microservices such as BTP and Fiori. Expect faster performance and stability. Expect scale-on-demand options to reduce failures by up to 50%.

The hallmarks of a modernised architecture
When you modernise, you de-couple; you make it possible to analyse cross-app dependencies, detect business areas, and re-package custom apps that map to the standard functions. Modernisation means that your teams can convert any UI to Fiori apps. They can convert ABAP to be BTP-ready. They can implement ABAP to microservices. Modernised integration makes it possible to connect to an enterprise data model; you can integrate SAP on premises and on cloud applications using APIs. You can integrate ABAP and JAVA applications. When you “run modern,” you get recurring checks and fixes, managed services, continuous DevOps, improved compliance with SLAs, and automation platforms.

Modern opportunities compel modern code
Increase speed to market with development that takes just weeks, not months; your customers expect nothing less. Act to remove the painful integration and scaling issues that are associated with monolithic applications; your colleagues and employees are counting on you. If you’re waiting to migrate to S/4 HANA, now is the time to introduce cloud native capabilities. The IBM SAP CleanCore approach helps you remove the redundant code and modernise the code that’s high value.

Get an integrated, actionable roadmap for your infrastructure that includes insights about system modernisation, the journey to the cloud, and how APIs will integrate your whole system

What to expect from CleanCore infrastructure modernisation
Expect to foster unconstrained business ambition when you standardise the ERP core and build new cloud-native extensions with SAP Cloud Application Programming. Accelerate modernisation when you automatically convert existing developments into side-by-side extensions. Integrate SAP on-premises infrastructure and cloud applications using APIs. Expect to reduce your total cost of ownership when you optimise infrastructure with IBM Cloud Managed Services or any hyper-scaler.

The benefits of infrastructure modernisation
Encourage new revenue streams and business models; there’s an increasing focus on ERP systems as enablers of integration and innovation. Expose data to AI and blockchain solutions that are enhanced for E2E performance and changing market demands. Simplify; ERP is rapidly shifting into cloud to transform the cost basis from fixed to variable, with simplification of process design.

Technology CEO Council Report, One Trillion Reasons, October 2010 (https://www.greenbiz.com/article/technology-can-save-feds-1t-10-years)