SAP Cloud ERP Consulting Services

Independent SAP ERP Consulting to help you make informed decisions ahead of the SAP ECC support end date.

Why SAP ERP advisory?

Best-fit solution: Understand the pros and cons of SAP Cloud ERP for your organisation, consider all of the options available to you, and choose your path confidently.

Risk mitigation: SAP Cloud ERP implementations have failed at many high-profile companies, some even ending in multi-million dollar lawsuits. Reduce risks with strategic guidance from truly independent advisors.

Cut costs: Determine the real cost of signing up for SAP’s next-gen ERP roadmap by obtaining line-item pricing clarity, and avoid overcommitments by identifying and contracting for required product usage.

Why now?

Negotiate a better deal: Existing SAP customers have the opportunity to renegotiate licences and inventory, transforming unused licences (shelfware) into valuable assets for negotiating new agreements or upgrades.

Plan for transformation: A lift and shift of your existing ERP system will cost a lot for very little (if any) value. Use the migration to digitally transform your business and associated technologies to meet current and future needs.

Change takes time: The success of an ERP migration ultimately comes down to people. Start your ERP project preparation early to ensure your change management plan has a strong foundation.

Why Invictus Partners?

Vendor-agnostic: We don’t have vested interests in SAP (or any vendor) and we don’t resell or implement next-gen ERP solutions, so our advisory is based solely on your needs and goals.

Due diligence: We evaluate SAP Cloud ERP solutions against other market offerings to ensure you choose the best path for your organisation.

Holistic approach: Our ERP Advisory supports you at every stage of your ERP journey, including strategising and planning, solution selection and negotiation, project governance, and post-implementation compliance and cost optimisation.

Chat to an expert

Stop! Before you begin your SAP Cloud ERP migration, make sure you consider all of your options.

Read this section if:

Most organisations are aware that the end-of-support date for SAP ECC is fast approaching, yet many do not have a clear path forward. SAP will no longer support SAP ECC EHP 1-5 after 2025, and the same will apply to ECC EHP 6-8 after 2027.

As the ECC end-of-support deadlines draw closer, SAP is aggressively finding ways to force customers to adopt SAP Cloud ERP. Many organisations have entered into discussions with SAP, despite not having a compelling business case to upgrade their systems.

With projects of this scale, complexity and cost, decisions should not be rushed or made out of obligation. It’s important for SAP customers to know that there are alternatives to adopting SAP’s cloud ERP roadmap. Our job as independent advisors is to present you with all the available options, empowering you to take charge of your ERP journey, rather than follow SAP’s lead.

Option 1: Move SAP ECC support to a third party

Not prepared to make significant investments in your SAP systems and associated processes at this point in time? Third-Party Support may be for you. You can continue to use your current SAP solution by transitioning support to a Third-Party Maintenance provider.

Option 2: Adopt a best-of-breed ERP model

Having one ERP to run your entire enterprise has long been the golden standard, but the industry is shifting towards a more best-of-breed approach. According to Gartner, almost 60% of organisations are deploying cloud ERP as an ecosystem of application and technology platforms from multiple vendors.

A mix-and-match model doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you consider that SAP’s ERP offering isn’t even a single platform anymore. SAP HR is now SuccessFactors, SAP Procurement is Ariba, Expense Management is Concur, all of which need to be stitched together with the core functions in SAP Cloud ERP such as Financials. Then there are the industry solutions which are still evolving from ECC.

A best-of-breed model would mean retaining your SAP system for core functions and evaluating alternative solutions for the remaining business requirements. When the right combination of software is chosen – and implemented well – it could end up costing you less than an SAP-first strategy, which may require you to customise extensively.

Option 3: Move away from SAP altogether

Large organisations don’t have many options when it comes to ERP systems. Most choose between SAP Cloud ERP and Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, with Microsoft Dynamics, Workday or Infor potentially in the mix as well. SAP and Oracle may be the major players in the enterprise space, but that doesn’t mean that either of them is the most viable option for your business.

It can be worthwhile to look at the niche and comprehensive solutions that cater to businesses in your particular industry. For example, there are multiple tier-2 solutions that may better suit the needs of manufacturing organisations, such as Plex, IQMS, Epicor and Infor. We conduct independent evaluations of SAP Cloud ERP against other ERP solutions, such as Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, Workday and industry-specific offerings.

Option 4: Move to SAP Cloud ERP on your terms

With access to unbiased advice and deep expertise into SAP’s inner workings, you can take your power back from SAP and migrate to SAP Cloud ERP or SAP Cloud ERP Private on your terms. As an independent advisory firm, Invictus Partners can advocate for your organisation’s needs whilst keeping SAP honest and accountable.

Our team helps your organisation secure the best outcome by pulling back the curtain on SAP’s operations and guiding you through how metrics, terms and conditions and scope are practically applied in an SAP Cloud ERP commercial engagement. We work with you on requirements-gathering and solution validation exercises to feed the business case, help you to identify areas of leverage in current contracts, and prepare for discussions with SAP.

Once talks are underway, we help you unpack SAP’s proposals and pricing models, and reliably estimate the time and cost required to complete your transformation. We also ensure you take advantage of the negotiation opportunities that moving to SAP Cloud ERP creates – such as remediation of shelfware via SAP’s on-premise and cloud extension policies and favourable conversion of your existing licence agreements – so that you secure optimal terms in your new SAP Cloud ERP contracts.

Download our SAP Cloud ERP Advisory Services datasheet

We help you choose the right strategy for your SAP ECC to SAP Cloud ERP migration.

Invictus Partners can support you through the journey of migrating to SAP’s cloud-based ERP solutions. We can help you make sense of the new licence models, the impact on your current entitlements, contractual options that can be leveraged, optimisation opportunities that can be taken advantage of, and the overall commercial implications.

Our experienced ERP consultants can provide advice and guidance on:

Which model is best for your organisation - SAP Cloud ERP or SAP Cloud ERP Private
Licence migration options (e.g. contract or product level)
Key clauses to consider retaining or adding to the new SAP Cloud ERP contract
Optimisation opportunities to be included as part of the migration
Negotiation strategies to achieve the best outcome with SAP.

Invictus Partners can help you understand the three SAP Cloud ERP transition scenarios and determine which one is right for your organisation.

Brownfield Approach
System Conversion

Greenfield Approach
New Implementation

Bluefield Approach
System Conversion

SAP Cloud ERP Brownfield Migration

(SAP ECC to SAP Cloud ERP Conversion)

Organisations that have undergone an SAP implementation in recent years, or that don’t want to start from scratch, might consider a technical conversion of their existing estate.

SAP Cloud ERP Greenfield Implementation

(New SAP Cloud ERP Implementation)

A greenfield project is akin to a new implementation. It’s a chance for organisations to eliminate customisations and remodel systems and workflows to support business growth.

SAP Cloud ERP Bluefield Migration

(Selective Data Transition)

This hybrid approach is the most common SAP Cloud ERP migration strategy. Organisations can select aspects of their current system that work well and redesign others. This can be ideal for large enterprises with complex IT environments.

SAP Cloud ERP data migration best practices

Whichever transition method you choose, it is imperative that you have a clear data strategy, define your systems of record, and understand what and how data will be moved into the new systems. Invictus Partners can work with you to build a strong data foundation that leads to better business insights and decision making.

SAP Cloud ERP implementation: Navigating the many SAP Cloud ERP deployment options.

Some organisations are choosing to move to SAP S/4HANA while remaining on premises, however most organisations who have decided to stay with SAP are moving to SAP Cloud ERP. Invictus Partners can help you decide what the best option is for your organisation, from running SAP S/4HANA in a private data centre, using a public cloud-hosting provider (hyperscaler), or using one of SAP’s subscription cloud services; either SAP Cloud ERP or SAP Cloud ERP Private. All of these deployment options use the same SAP S/4HANA codeline, but what is made available to each model may differ.

SAP S/4HANA On-premise

Prior to SAP Cloud ERP being heavily pushed by SAP, SAP S/4HANA on-premise was the most popular deployment model adopted in SAP’s installed customer base when migrating from SAP ECC, particularly among large enterprises. In SAP’s view, “on-premise” is the perpetual licence model, which can be deployed in either private data centre or hyperscaler instances (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)). Organisations may choose to stay using the on-premise licence model if they have special sensitivities around their data, have specific performance requirements that aren’t available via one of SAP’s subscription cloud models, or they have other unique requirements.

SAP Cloud ERP (Previously GROW with SAP)

SAP Cloud ERP, public edition, is a multi-tenanted offering provided by SAP as a true software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. Typically this offering has been adopted by net new SAP customers (midsize organisations in particular), deploying a greenfield SAP system for the first time. This model leverages SAP’s best practices content and allows limited configuration. Customers tend to adapt their processes around the solution. Solution updates are delivered quarterly according to a schedule.

SAP Cloud ERP Private (Previously RISE with SAP)

SAP Cloud ERP Private is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), single-tenanted offering, delivered by SAP and hosted by either SAP, or on the customers’ choice of hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP, others). The offering is a subscription model with the software licence, enterprise support, infrastructure hosting and technical managed services bundled into a single subscription fee and delivered as a service to a contracted uptime SLA. The systems are delivered using SAP’s reference architecture, are built using SAP’s Cloud Security Framework and adheres to a comprehensive Roles and Responsibilities matrix which calls out what tasks are included, optional or customer responsibility. The customer has more say in when updates are applied to ensure outages do not impact availability to the business.

SAP Sovereign Cloud

For organisations that want to take advantage of the cloud but are limited by data sovereignty and privacy laws, SAP Sovereign Cloud is a specialised version of SAP Cloud ERP Private, designed for hyper-security and data residency requirements. This offering ensures all information is protected and remains within the country of service.

SAP S/4HANA on-premise vs. SAP Cloud ERP

Adoption of SAP S/4HANA has been slow, particularly of the subscription cloud models (SAP Cloud ERP and SAP Cloud ERP Private). Large enterprises and existing SAP customers are looking to get an understanding of the SAP S/4HANA on-premise options, versus the subscription cloud models, and what each offering means to them as they look for flexibility and the ability to use and optimise existing investments.

SAP Cloud ERP licence costs and considerations

The SAP Cloud ERP and SAP S/4HANA on-premise deployment options come with a variety of different licensing and pricing variations. While SAP does not make this easy, it is critical to understand your licence transformation options, not just to avoid non-compliance penalties, but in order to take advantage of contract negotiations by getting credits for old licences, for example.

Should you pivot to SAP Cloud ERP?

SAP is pushing SAP Cloud ERP to accelerate adoption of SAP S/4HANA and the cloud. SAP Cloud ERP bundles SAP S/4HANA with Business Process Intelligence, Business Technology Platform (formerly SAP Cloud Platform) and Business Network Starter Packs.

SAP customers need to take a proactive approach to determining the suitability of SAP Cloud ERP as a potential for their SAP platform future. Invictus Partners can help you understand the capabilities and costs of SAP Cloud ERP in the context of your business.

SAP Cloud ERP migration considerations

An advantage of the SAP Cloud ERP offering is that customers only have to manage one contract, but it also means SAP has full control over the commercials and pricing (which is based on a subscription licensing model).

SAP is attempting to present SAP Cloud ERP as a more affordable option, but the true cost of SAP Cloud ERP versus a perpetual model over a five- to 10-year term can only be estimated by unpacking SAP proposals, and determining how your requirements stack up against what SAP has (and hasn’t) offered for SAP Cloud ERP.

Our SAP Cloud ERP Upgrade Advisory Services

We can assist you at any point along your SAP Cloud ERP migration journey, but we specialise in the strategy and planning work that takes place before the project begins (a.k.a. Phase Zero).

SAP is determined to sign you up to SAP Cloud ERP as soon as possible, but taking a technology-led approach to your ERP transformation is a common pitfall. Best-in-class implementations begin with a business strategy and then determine how to best overlay technology to meet those future needs.

Transformation Advisory

Implementation Advisory

Optimisation Advisory

Pre – implementation

During implementation

Post-implementation

Pre – implementation

During implementation

Post-implementation

SAP Cloud ERP Transformation Advisory: Plan now to succeed later.

Invictus Partners works hand-in-hand with your team to define your strategy and conduct the required planning activities, as well as ensure that the right stakeholders are informed and aligned.

Baseline

Validation

Preparation

Negotiation

Baseline: Review Current SAP ERP Software Environment

We assess your current state to give you a clear view of usage versus entitlements, compliance positions (direct and indirect for perpetual licences), shelfware to be leveraged, T&C considerations, product roadmaps, and future capacity requirements.

Validation: Business Case for SAP Cloud ERP

Our team can help validate the business case for SAP Cloud ERP versus SAP S/4HANA perpetual licence model, taking into account your organisation’s requirements for flexibility, potential restrictions, release cycles, resource impacts, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) for each model.

Preparation: SAP Cloud ERP Negotiation Strategy

We work with you to develop a negotiation strategy that will deliver the optimal commercial, financial and operational outcomes under the preferred model, taking into account support credits, delayed provisioning for new products, renewal terms, swap rights and price protection products. This includes developing a BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement).

Negotiation: Secure Optimal SAP Cloud ERP Pricing & Terms

Then, it’s time to put this preparation into practice. We provide guidance and support throughout the negotiation cycle, either by advising on tactics and messaging from behind the scenes, or by negotiating directly with SAP on your behalf.

SAP Cloud ERP implementation methodology: Turn strategy into reality.

Once agreements are signed and the project has been given the green light, our team can guide you on the functional and technical aspects of the implementation.

While we don’t implement any solutions ourselves (which is one of the reasons we can remain truly vendor-agnostic), we can help you find the right systems integrator and then coordinate the different parties throughout the project to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible.

Functional Support

Technical Support

Implementation Plan

Go-to-Market Support

Project Governance

SAP Cloud ERP Roadmap & Functional Support

We review the current state of your SAP environment from a functional perspective, to support the scoping and business impacts of the upgrade project. This includes:

Review of the functional changes provided in SAP Cloud ERP for your organisation’s footprint (e.g. Finance, Payroll, Asset Management)
Roadmap considerations and options for SAP Cloud ERP and integrated systems (e.g. retain or replace SAP SRM)
Assessment of the user experience and user interface improvements (e.g. Fiori)
Documentation of the potential benefits of the upgrade and quick wins
Review of the business requirements for the RFx process.

SAP Cloud ERP Integration & Technical Support

Our team conducts a technical review of your SAP environment, to understand the areas that may be impacted by the upgrade project. This includes:

Identification of dependent systems with SAP Cloud ERP
Review of application versions and the compatibility of integrated systems (e.g. GRC, SuccessFactors)
Review of technology compatibility and considerations (e.g. HANA DB, OS, apps server, architecture, sizing)
Assessment of the technical impacts of the upgrade (e.g. customisations, integrations, data)
Review of SAP transaction changes, including the impact on role-based security
Review of the technical requirements for the RFx process.

SAP Cloud ERP Readiness Support

The focus then turns to preparation and readiness activities for the upgrade. Our team works with you to determine your requirements, including strategy, timeline, licensing option, edition, metric and usage forecast. This includes:

Support in scoping the program of work, including phasing of systems.
Key considerations when preparing for an upgrade, including technical considerations (e.g. environment planning and management), pre-upgrade checks and tools (e.g. readiness, simplification), people and process impacts.
Analysis and interpretation of the SAP Reports (e.g. Early Watch, Pathfinder)
Input into a system refresh strategy and approach.

SAP Cloud ERP Go-to-Market Support

We can also support your internal procurement and SAP teams to conduct the RFx process necessary to appoint a systems integrator to perform the SAP Cloud ERP upgrade. This includes:

SAP Cloud ERP Project Management & Governance

Our team provides ongoing governance during the deployment and advocates for your organisation with the parties and stakeholders involved. We make sure everyone works together effectively so the project stays on track and within budget.

SAP Cloud ERP Optimisation Advisory: Drive efficiencies and maximise returns.

SAP Cloud ERP Compliance & Optimisation

Invictus Partners provides post-implementation optimisation advisory and support to ensure your transformation project continues to deliver value and ROI. We implement best-practice Software Asset Management (SAM) practices to ensure you maintain compliance, minimise licensing costs, and drive tangible business results from your chosen SAP solution.

Are you getting screwed by your software vendor?

Get back on top.

The Invictus Partners difference: SAP Cloud ERP Consulting.

Invictus Partners is a specialist enterprise software advisory firm, where our guidance and recommendations are truly impartial, objective, and in the best interests of our clients, with no influence from vendor relationships and implementation practices. We are proud of our independence, and ensure our advice is specifically designed to meet our clients’ needs.

The Invictus Partners team consists of 30+ year IT industry veterans, who have worked on all corners of the industry (software vendor, systems integrator, support provider and client side), with skills ranging from the strategy, design and architecture, as well as selection, implementation, management and optimisation of software systems and contracts, bringing a wealth of insights, analysis and advisory capabilities to the table. Our expert advisors can demystify the many paths to SAP Cloud ERP and are skilled at building business cases for on-premise upgrades, public cloud deployments, and SAP Cloud ERP Private engagements.

Janine Burns

Partner

Janine is a 25+ year veteran of the IT industry, holding numerous strategy, enterprise architecture, and sales roles spanning the major software vendors, system integrators, and service providers. In Janine’s roles, she has been responsible for architecting, selling, and driving the successful outcome of large-scale IT initiatives, as well as managing customer relationships and expectations. Key advisory roles include:
• Licence and support advisory
services – all industries
• SAP/IT strategy and roadmaps – all
industries
• ERP support services (vendor
replacement & AMS) – all
industries.

Helen Divitcos

SAP Practice Lead

Helen is a 30+ year veteran of the SAP industry holding numerous technical, senior enterprise management, and product line roles, with a recent shift from client to client advisory. Over the last 10+ years in Helen’s career, she has been part of a digital leadership team, ensuring the product line was managed using effective business and technology practices and to support delivery and transformation. Key responsibilities included:

SAP and enterprise software asset management and governance – utility
SAP and ERP applications audit defence
SAP strategy and roadmap
SAP architecture
Developing and maintaining SAP functional, technical, development, and security standards.