Expanding Section: The S/4HANA Implementation Payoff

For such a large initiative, S/4HANA is not paying dividends to customers or to SAP. Many customers were promoted into implementing S/4HANA by SAP or their consulting partner, yet what have customers received in return from these implementations? From this research, we learned that there are many hidden S/4HANA implementations. They are non-functional, but those that made the decision to implement S/4HANA on the basis of SAP’s exaggerated claims would prefer if they were not discussed. It was not the objective of this research study to estimate the amount of waste in S/4HANA implementations, but it would have to be quite large.

What all of this means is that companies that use public case studies to set their expectations regarding S/4HANA will have wildly different experiences than what is expected from reading public case studies.

Also, public case studies do not serve to illustrate the risk of a S/4HANA implementation. Large amounts of information that should be considered and that will come up during a S/4HANA implementation are covered up. There have been numerous SAP customers that have announced S/4HANA projects, but over a year afterward, there is no public announcement. From the private case studies. It is quite likely that many or most of those implementations failed.

Obviously, SAP does not want to publicize this information. But it is not only SAP, and should be considered that the SAP S/4HANA customers also do not want this information made public.

There is an issue with the S/4HANA implementations. While it may not seem particularly strange or obvious when each individual case study is looked at individually when taken as a group a clear pattern emerges.