SAP S4/HANA

Official release of the new generation ERP was finally announced on February 3, 2015. Called SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (or, in short S4/HANA), is the fourth generation enterprise software suite, after R/2, R/3 and ERP - thus number 4. The 'S' stands actually not for SAP, only for 'Simple' .

We already embarked on this exciting journey a while ago, while getting in touch with the HANA capabilities being offered as part of the products existing so far, and representing not only a pure database, but also serving as an application part, as well as a user interface frontend.

It would be very interesting to get familiar with benchmarks, which will hopefully be released for the first focus areas - sFinanse and sLogistics - and compare them with the existing SAP applications which are already based on the HANA database.

What are the key advantages of this innovative step forward ...

2014 Summary

Last year was very successful for our small company and its customers. Main project has been delivered on time, and went live mid-year, followed by after go-live support and optimisation. It was first time that the Team has been working with the HANA database, and gained this way a unique experience – including HANA capabilities as an application server replacing slower ABAP systems in more complex or time consuming processes. We also started an internal project to deliver a web based product, integrated with SAP systems.

Focus for next months and the year 2015 will include:
• Follow up with our current customer on the maintenance and further extensions of CRM on HANA, and CRM on DB6
• First prototype of the internal project by the end of April, and start of the test phase
• Redesign and the re-write of the current company website according to the latest technology and available engines/frameworks (GWT, Hibernate and Spring; optionally bootstrap).

We also wish all the best for the SAP Community in 2015, many challenging projects and successful implementations !

Smooth Go-Live with the CRM360 Solution and Lessons Learnt

After over a month of the solution being live it is no doubt all went as planned, and with no major surprise. Even if we expected the new HANA solution to be faster, especially in the segmentation area, we can understand that terabytes of data can be hard get immediate response for any system. We improved it, however, by setting up the HANA db index (similar to outdated TREX solution), which reduced responses from minutes in some complex cases, to a matter of up to a few seconds for each of them. Combined with the data flexibility and extensibility of the tools that the business users have now, it is possible to execute marketing operations by one person in one day for much bigger data volume and with more complex algorithms – comparing to days before the implementation when a few employees in a few weeks were preparing similar workload with much less sophisticated analyses or requirements possible.

Implementing New Loyalty/CRM Systems

The first SAP CRM operating fully on HANA database implementation in the region - delivery includes:
• Implementing a core nationwide CRM/Loyalty system with multi-branded loyalty programme
• Capture resulting customer loyalty data with CRM Segmentation and use it to understand and influence consumer behaviours - with the help of HANA BW.

SAP CRM Loyalty helps you support business processes in the area of loyalty programs management, including: memberships, loyalty points, processing of member activities as well as customer self-service in the CRM Web Channel.

SAP CRM Marketing allows you to accurately target your audiences and deliver personalized, relevant messages that your audience will find valuable. Segmentation depends on the planned marketing activity - you create target groups from a variety of different data sources by combining selection criteria obtained from InfoSet queries (any CRM data), BW queries, or business partner master data. Target groups may be attached directly to marketing campaigns or used as additional criteria for product proposals.

SAP Systems in the Cloud

After installing SAP CRM in the Amazon Cloud and making it operational, we find this solution a perfect fit for the SAP SME market.

Why to choose the CRM on the Cloud Solution:
• Low cost: SAP CRM RDS on the Cloud is significantly less expensive than traditional (on-premises) applications.  It provides access to an SAP CRM application at an affordable price
• Rapid implementation: the Integration phase is much shorter than with traditional projects
• SAP CRM is always up-to-date: The whole version-upgrade problem disappears and customers benefit from new innovative features over time
• Integration is guaranteed with an existing SAP ERP information system as well as the consistency of the data model with SAP ERP
• Performance: monitored through different service levels
• Information security and confidentiality
• Scalability and service continuity.

Cloud solutions enable to set up and run...