Hey ECC Manufacturers: Don’t Wait for SAP S/4HANA to Upgrade Your Quoting Solution

Swivel-chair* integrations are dragging your business, and customers, down

As you are more than aware, the transition from SAP ECC to S/4HANA is typically a 12-24+ month process, depending on the level of IT resourcing and business buy-in. That is simply too long to wait for a full-featured CPQ/quoting solution given the speed of today’s business.

If you’re like most SAP-based manufacturers, you have some level of a customer and/or distributor portal. But because of the historic complexity of SAP integration, it’s unlikely you have a quoting or eCommerce solution that can deliver account-specific pricing and discounts, ATP, products requiring variant configurations, etc…the list goes on.

Without having these critical features, your customers are left to fulfill only part of their order in your portal and then wait for a rep to get back to them or–worse–having to then call during business hours to speak with someone about the rest of the quote or order. Not only is this inefficient and creates significant friction between you and your buyers, it creates resource drain during a time of staffing shortages and introduces the potential for significant human error.

The case for speed: Solve your business challenges now–and be ready for S/4HANA when your organization upgrades

SAP S/4HANA migration is a complex digital transformation initiative that’s resource intensive but paves the way for future SAP interconnectivity. The pace, and extent, of adoption is not fully clear, but based on a recent article in The Register, it’s slower than most anticipated. Even now, years after SAP announced their end of support for ECC, organizations are slow to move. How slow?

The German-speaking SAP user group, DSAG, has revealed that SAP-based organizations now feel S/4HANA is less relevant than before – down 6% in just a year to 50%. And, according to Garner, only 26% of SAP’s 35,000 ERP customers have bought anything related to S/4HANA and less than 15% are live on S/4HANA. The reality is clear: don’t wait to invest in business-critical solutions like CPQ, or comprehensive eCommerce, until your S/4HANA migration is complete. Your customers’ needs won’t wait.

No matter where your organization is on the ECC-to-S/4HANA migration path, your customers and distributors expect a 21st century digital engagement experience. Couple that with staffing challenges at all levels of your business and it’s clear that swivel-chair solutions are no longer practical. 

*Swivel chair means your sales and customer-service representatives have to jump between screens and systems (or, worst case, have to connect live with employees in other parts of the business) just to perform basic tasks like quoting, ordering taking, status updates, etc. 

Due to the historically complicated nature of SAP integrations, swivel-screen integrations are incredible prevalent in many industries, particularly manufacturing. The business impacts of this phenomenon are very real: 

• Inaccurate data is often used for quoting or pricing because access to the core SAP system is centralized/limited. If a customer is given an inaccurate price, you often have to honor that price even if it’s no longer profitable.
• Customer response time is prolonged as CPQ orders have to be validated, tracking numbers for shipments have to be located, and more. Meanwhile, your customer could have an accurate quote, with ATP, in minutes from your competitor.
• Internal teams often end up creating their own sources of truth in an attempt to best serve the customers–inadvertently creating duplicate data pools that have to be constantly maintained or they become irrelevant.

PIPs to the rescue: leverage SAP experts with pre-built, configurable integrations

PIPs, also known as Packaged Integration Processes, are quickly becoming the software standard for addressing complex integrations. enosix has been leveraging the concept of PIPs since before they even had a name. We just see them as good business sense.

PIPs enable you to integrate best-in-class front-end solutions, like Salesforce, with SAP, thanks to pre-built modules that connect CRM data points with SAP lead-to-cash elements. It’s the ultimate in agile integrations because it enables fully-functional CPQ solutions, eCommerce, and customer service without ever having to leave your CRM. And because these PIPs are mapped to both ECC and S/4HANA components, when your business upgrades to S/4HANA, it requires minimal re-work (and we do the lifting and shifting for you).

Don’t wait for your S/4HANA migration to take advantage of CPQ and fully-integrated B2B eCommerce self-service portal  solutions. See how enosix reinvents SAP-Salesforce integration and let’s talk about how to help your organization, no matter where you are in your ECC to S/4HANA journey.