How to Understand Why There are So Many SAP S/4HANA Books?

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Executive Summary

SAP Press is a publisher that poses as independent of SAP when it is just another controlled and censored marketing outlet for SAP.
SAP Press has published a large number of S/4HANA books even though the application is immature.
The SAP Press books are written by consultants that give a deliberately misleading impression of how ready S/4HANA is to implement.

Introduction

SAP Press has published 16 books at the time of this article’s publication on the topic of S/4HANA. However, there is an interesting backstory to these books and how SAP Press operates.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

What is the Real Story About SAP Press?

SAP has a relationship with a publishing company called SAP Press. SAP does not outright own SAP Press, but they remotely control them. When SAP is trying to push a new application or concept, they rely upon SAP Press to publish a book in the area. Some of these books are written by outside consultants. For example, I wrote a book for SAP Press. SAP employees write others. A book by SAP Press is designed to make SAP look good rather than an accurate reflection of the SAP product.

Many of these books are designed to build up excitement around an area that SAP is introducing. This is why there are so many SAP books for products that never went anywhere. A book like this one will be material that SAP would like customers to think is true.

People reading an SAP Press book may think they are getting real information. They are getting information that SAP approves of being published. Much of it is straight from SAP marketing.

Curiously, with SAP Press books, buyers pay what usually is around $70 for the right to be propagandized.

How to Read an SAP Press Book: I have read many SAP Press books in my life. I read them more as media criticism.
How Much is True?: Some of the things in them are true, but any unflattering information or information that contradicts the official SAP position would never be published in a book by SAP Press. They are a combination of true information with marketing or promotional information.

Book Review of S/4HANA Books

Let us review the books written about S/4HANA. Thirteen of the sixteen were published by SAP Press, and another publishing company published three.

How Many S/4HANA Books Versus S/4HANA Go Lives?

This is quite interesting because, as per our Brightwork research into the number of go-lives of S/4HANA, A Study into S/4HANA Implementations, there are actually few S/4HANA go-lives. Given the number of S/4HANA go-lives, this means that there are many S/4HANA books given the number of go-lives.

Why so many books?

Well, S/4HANA is eventually planned to replaced ECC. At some point, the idea is that this will be a significant amount of consulting work and internal work within ECC accounts. However, because S/4HANA is such an immature product, the books have much preceded the publication of the books on S/4HANA. This is also a bit of a problem because S/4HANA will change as it will have frequent changes rolled into it (again due to its immaturity).

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Conclusion

SAP, through SAP Press, has flooded the market with S/4HANA books. The existence of these books gives the impression that S/4HANA is more ready than it is. SAP, as well as SAP consulting companies, significantly misrepresent the state of S/4HANA to prospects. Many SAP customers don’t realize that S/4HANA is currently one of the riskiest implementations that any company can perform.

SAP Press is part of SAP’s media system that makes customers think that SAP introduces are more popular or more mature than they actually are.