Reasons to switch from SAP ECC to SAP Simple Finance

[Former Member]

Hi All,

As we all know that deploying SAP Simple Finance is a costly activity, so from the customer point of view could any one specify convincing reasons on why customers should transform from SAP ECC to Simple Finance.

Below are some of the reasons which I know, but they aren't convincing to change the mindset of customers.

1. Reduced redundancy, aggregations- Leading to increase in speed.

Customer's view: Why should I change to Simple finance just for increasing the speed of my routine activities. Decrease in the speed by some minutes is not what we expect for.

2. Faster Period end closing activities - Fast close

Customer's view: This also isn't that appealing for us as, usually any closing program would take some hours for execution and with simple finance it has just got done to few minutes or seconds. So, only for reducing the time required for period end closing or improving some performance measures we would not like to do such a costly transformation.

3. SAP FIORI- Simplified user experience

Customer's view: We are happy to work on our existing device from office.Just to make SAP available on all employee devices we would not do the transformation.

4. New Asset Accounting/new posting logic to post to different ledgers:

Customer's view: In standard ECC we are happy with using the delta areas and we are also able to post to all the ledgers as expected. So, why would we want to transform to simple finance just for new posting logic.

So, as you see as the above reasons aren't that convincing to change mind of customers to do the transformation to Simple Finance. So, could any one guide me or give some strong reasons ( some examples like some reports which really are a big change in Simple Finance) which would help me in presenting Simple finance in a better way.

Also, could any one let me know how much time should we say to customer to finish the complete migration to Simple Finance.

Regards,

Devdatth

[former_member226000]

Hi Devdatth ,

I am neither an expert in Finance nor in S4 as I have gained basic insights from SAP Learning Hub and OpenSAP.

My understanding is that SAP is going to stop ECC support from 2025 ( 9 years is not a big time period for a big customer ). That means there will be minimal / no further EHP releases happening. So now or later any SAP Finance customer has to migrate to S4. I know this is not a convincing answer for S4 migration but can be used as a support for your statement.

Moreover as Mrinal and Aleksey said , each customer can have their pain points. Say customer A has long time required ( More than 2 days ) for period closing as their issue , you can react by putting HANA or S4 performance benchmarks. If customer B has huge number of posting users that access existing ECC , Fiori on top of S4 can be a game changer for them. Also customer wanting to implement S4 Logistics has to implement S4F as a pre requisite.

Hope that helps !

Best Regards,

Mandar.

[clinton_jones2]

i assume this is based on this

SAP will extend mainstream maintenance on its Business Suite (and Business Suite on HANA) applications an additional five years, until 2025, responding to customer requests for stronger commitment to on-premise applications and more time to move to the cloud.

In turn, SAP won’t raise the cost of maintenance beyond 22 percent until at least 2025, and there will be no adjustments for inflation to existing contracts until 2020, according to SAP’s Augusto Abbarchi, global head of SAP Maintenance Go-To-Market.

SAP Extends Maintenance, Guarantees Fixed Rate Until 2025 - ASUG News

I wonder whether this perspective has changed lately?

[Mrinal_K_Roy]

Hi Mali,

Faster (or soft) period end closing (with minimal reconciliation) should excite the Finance team of the customer as long hours of period end closing (with no good insight) is a generic business pain .

But agree with the rationale of your customer and that is the thinking with most of the small / medium / large customers. Moreover, if the performance is the bottleneck then if they migrate to HANA DB (but not to S4H) , then that itself will improve performance to a great extent(on average by 10 times).

Not sure , what is the kind of industry for your customer. There are several business benefits (in terms of Low inventory, advanced ATP , unification of applications etc etc) from logistics perspective . Yes, many of the planned functionalities are not yet released but logistic (or S4 Core) can not be implemented unless S4 Finance is in place.

I observe that many customers have S4 logistic in their mind and hence planning (or prototyping) for S4 Finance as a pre-requisite for logistic and also to have first Look & Feel of S4H for innovations in finance .

Regards,

Mrinal

[Former Member]

Hi,

Every customer has own reason or reasons.

E.g. for some customers very important acceleration and faster period closing, for some new analytical level  and central finance, and so on.

.