What Brightwork Does for SAP S/4HANA Information Verification

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Executive Summary

SAP and its consulting partners provide inaccurate information to clients.
We validate this information for accuracy.

Introduction

This article discusses a service we provide that helps improve process success with S/4HANA.

What We Do on SAP and SAP Consulting Firm Provided S/4HANA Information Verification

We analyze the information provided to software buyers by software companies and consulting firms and have published extensively on how inaccurate this information is. In that case, we find that on S/4HANA, all of the SAP consulting firms provided highly inaccurate information on their websites, in interactions with clients, at conferences, etc. To my knowledge, BR&A was the only entity to question these claims in published articles by SAP and SAP-aligned entities.

Over the years, we have accumulated extensive research on S/4HANA, and I have performed implementation analysis of the S/4HANA case studies. Through publication, people have reached out and shared private information on their S/4HANA implementations.

It is critical to determine before implementation which part of the implementation plan by the vendor is accurate so that, as on so many projects I have seen, these things don’t slowly leak out during the implementation when it is too late to make adjustments. If you notice, the major IT media outlets like ComputerWeekly, CIO, etc.. never bring up the inaccurate claims presented by vendors or consulting firms during the sales phase as a reason for software failure. Typically, “lack of top management support” and other items pointing away from the software and service providers are used to explain the failure. The question should be asked why these explanations are avoided when they are obviously a primary source of software failure.

All clients need to obtain an independent appraisal of the proposal of the implementation firm. However, how many do? The answer is very few. Furthermore, there is another major issue, which is — who would provide this independent analysis. It is nearly impossible to find advisory firms that are not connected to the vendors or need to maintain partnerships of some type. That is where BR&A significantly differs — we have no partnerships, so we can provide accurate information without concern for who is offended. SAP consulting firms are also guided by financial incentives requiring high margins per employee and concerning revenue targets per implementation. And that is not the end of the subject, as they are also bound by their partnership agreement with SAP only to share information that is entirely consistent with SAP’s marketing of the S/4HANA product. If you look at the SAP products I told companies not to buy over the years, those products all fell by the wayside. Solution Manager, PI/XI, PP/DS, and many more were heavily promoted by consulting firms back when these products had credibility due to the lack of exposure. But I knew they would not be effective products by testing them.

Topic #1: About the S/4HANA Implementation Study

Over the years, we have accumulated extensive research on S/4HANA, and I have performed implementation analysis of the S/4HANA case studies. The study contains 240 implementation case studies analyzed.

Topic #2: S/4HANA Plan Accuracy Analysis

The following is a question asked by a prospect on this topic.

Question

Can you share with us how you are able to determine the implementation plan is accurate?

Yes — historical implementation timelines.

When SAP and its partner ecosystem introduced S/4HANA, it essentially told its prospects to forget everything they knew about previous SAP implementations because S/4HANA was so different. They marketed around the concept of “simplification”; however, this was initially a cover for the fact that functionality had been removed.

Time has shown that historical ECC implementation timelines were and continue to be predictive of S/4HANA implementation timelines.

Topic #3: Analyzing SAP’s BOMs

Typically, as with other mega-vendors, SAP stuffs their BOM with applications that are not a good fit for their customers because of financial incentives. That is the pressure from SAP sales and development and marketing to push more products to get a lot of marginal products. This prior knowledge is what we bring to analyzing the BOM.

Dealing With New Products

SAP often comes up with new products, and sometimes it is the first time I have seen some products, but I can typically connect up the latest product or renamed product to a previous SAP product and forecast how that product will do. The best way to get better value from SAP and to increase implementation success rates is to be careful and restrictive about what products SAP places into the environment. This is true of both SAP and all of the mega-vendors. Buying what the vendor wants to sell, which is always expensive, means buying several immature products.

Topic #4: The Reason for the Infrequent Nature of Independent Appraisals

All clients need to obtain an independent appraisal of the proposal of the implementation firm. However, how many do? The answer is very few. Most SAP buyers accept the claims of the primary information providers — like Gartner, Forrester, or Accenture/Deloitte/WiPro, that they will look out for the interests of their customers or clients. When pressed, Gartner VPs will claim that while they do accept money from SAP (a fact which they keep quiet), it would never change their recommendations because of their extraordinary and industry-leading integrity, and so on. That is the explanations require the listener of the argument to trust the entity, even while it is easy to analyze their content and prove that their statements about integrity are not true.

None of the SAP consulting firms declare their financial conflicts with SAP and present their partnership with SAP as universally virtuous and denying they have any financial conflict.

There is plenty of time to get an independent view, and software selections are lengthy. But for some reason, they don’t seem to think about getting an independent view until rather late in the process.

When we advise procurement teams after a vendor has been selected, the vendor will often keep changing their story, pricing, and other important factors, such that the procurement team, which does not understand software vendor, software, or how IT works, will throw up their hands and “get the deal done.” Multiple procurement teams have told me that they can’t take dealing with the salespeople at the vendor anymore and that making a purchase, even if they are bewildered, allows them to move on to their next procurement item and meet the timeline.