Agile S/4 Transformation

Digitalization has been pushed hard in recent years, but not sufficiently by most companies. The Corona crisis, for example, revealed many weaknesses with regard to digital processes and sales channels. Every second company sees itself only at the beginning in terms of the use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA). A large proportion of companies are also not yet very far along when it comes to open source, in order to improve data transmission as well as the connection of third-party providers such as APIs. These are the latest findings of the new Lünendonk 2020 study "Digital Efficiency - Digital Technologies as a Tool for Increasing Efficiency and Reducing Costs".

"Especially now, in a historically weak phase of the economy, when companies have to cut costs, many managers are only just realizing the full potential of digital technologies. The Corona crisis was and still is a catalyst for digitization, explains Mario Zillmann, partner at Lünendonk and Hossenfelder and author of the study.

For the majority of companies, the challenge now is to drive forward the digital transformation at high speed. In terms of necessary investments, lack of skilled workers and remote working, this is again very challenging. In fact, only 36 percent of the managers surveyed said that their companies have the necessary skills for digital transformation.

In the SAP community, the challenge is twofold: database migration to Hana and ERP release migration to S/4. Both are business, organizational and technical tasks. Even if success is certain in the end, the path there needs to be carefully planned - no existing SAP customer should embark on the journey without partners, consultants and the appropriate tools.

Because the challenge seems unique this time, successful partners have joined forces. One such "dream team" is Cognizant and Tricentis. Put simply: the best of a business and technical SAP world!

"The switch to S/4 Hana is not just a release upgrade", Frank Scharpenberg, Vice President Germany at Cognizant for SAP, emphasizes this right at the beginning of the E-3 discussion.

"The changes to the overall architecture or front end are too big."

Frank Scharpenberg consequently believes that the way there does not necessarily have to lead via a complete new implementation. There are also options for conversion or hybrid scenarios.

"Many companies are taking the opportunity to rethink and unify their processes based on best practices, implement innovative features of S/4, or make the move to the cloud."

Big Bang, Greenfield or Brownfield? How do you organize ongoing change in an uncertain environment - from chaos to opportunity?

"For most of the organizations we work with, the challenge is not chaos, but rather a lack of speed when it comes to change"Wolfgang Platz, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Tricentis, knows.

"Governance, change management as well as audits prevent chaos, and the right tools help. Understanding the scope of testing and the impact of change allows you to focus testing on the right areas - reducing effort. That means testing can be done in the time available, providing greater risk coverage and eliminating hypercare phases."

From chaos to opportunity

A Cognizant web page says "from chaos to opportunity". Hopefully, things are not yet that bad for existing SAP customers with ERP/ECC 6.0. But a lot of legacy and Abap modifications have accumulated.

"The text is about seeing the pandemic, after the initial chaos, also as an opportunity to modernize. Of course, this also applies to the ERP system"Frank Scharpenberg reassures us, because he knows that companies have invested a lot of money in their ERP system in recent years and have individualized and refined their processes.

"That's why grandfathering plays an important role for many companies on their journey to S/4"emphasizes Scharpenberg.

"On the other hand, you have to ask yourself whether you really need these individual special curls and in which processes differentiation is really necessary. Individuality and modification often come at the expense of agility. Innovations, due to software updates or new business requirements, can only be implemented at great expense."

Mario Zillmann explains in his study that efficiency gains are to be achieved primarily through more automation, higher productivity and the avoidance of duplication and errors in the execution of activities. Two-thirds of the study participants said they would achieve process acceleration in the future primarily through more digitization.

"Speed is the new currency"says Wolfgang Platz of Tricentis in an E-3 interview.

"The ability to implement testing in a way that keeps up with the pace of change is what sets us apart from the competition."

This need is driving change. Agile and DevOps have not contributed anything to each other - innovation is much more crucial here, says Platz and emphasizes:

"Digital transformation has been the real catalyst, requiring faster, continuous releases as companies migrate to the cloud."

Zillmann adds with the Lünendonk study: The planning of the companies with regard to efficiency increases is also expressed in the investment plans. According to the study, 74 percent of the companies surveyed are placing a very large to large focus on improving their operational excellence in order to improve productivity through more automation.

Another focus is on IT modernization (62 percent) and the development of innovations and new business models (59 percent).

Integrated testing

Cognizant and Tricentis are working together to provide an integrated testing solution for companies transitioning and modernizing critical business applications from SAP Enterprise Core Components (ECC) to S/4 Hana. It is available globally and for all industries.

In the R/3 era, testing was mostly a one-time thing, then it was: never change a running system. So why is Continuous Testing necessary?

"We are still in the R/3 age"., says Wolfgang Platz and explains:

"Seventy percent of users have not yet switched over. Testing has never been a one-time thing. Continuous testing has always been necessary, it just wasn't possible. If there had been the confidence in the business to make changes quickly, it would have been done. But this is a big, risky undertaking. Automated Continuous Testing gives the confidence to test faster and more accurately, and reduces the associated risks."

In addition to the transition to agile methods and DevOps, German companies are also showing interest in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to further automate their development and maintenance processes, according to an ISG (Information Services Group) study. Many large providers would follow this automation trend.

"When implementing Agile and DevOps, it's not just issues of technology and methodology that come into play, but also, and especially intensely, the organization and culture of a company." says Heiko Henkes, Director and Principal Analyst at ISG.

"DevOps, for example, primarily concerns business processes. Vendors are in demand here less as technology experts than as consultants who master change management."

Frank Scharpenberg of Cognizant takes a more differentiated view of this challenge:

"This is probably a philosophical question like with the chicken and the egg. Personally, I would attach more importance to the requirements side - necessary agility due to constantly changing business requirements. What is certain, at least, is that with agility and speed, the aspect of quality and test automation becomes more important."

"The transition to S/4 Hana is just the beginning of a new era with higher update cycles and vendor releases"defines Frank Scharpenberg.

"S/4 Hana is constantly evolving and new functions are added regularly. So companies need to test more often per se, and already during their S/4 project and the possible multitude of roll-outs. That's why we recommend getting it right from the start."

The investments are paying off, as Zillmann from Lünendonk also knows: "Seventy-four percent of companies that have already deployed digital technologies to improve efficiency in the past two years have seen positive effects on process cycle times."

Scharpenberg confirms and knows how to do it: "But much more important is the ability to respond to continuously changing business requirements. New or changing business models and time to market play a crucial role in the digital transformation. Constant change requires continuous testing. Using outdated, mostly manual testing approaches would immediately counteract the agility and success of the digital backbone that has just been introduced."

Continuous Testing

Andreas Golze, Global Head Quality Engineering and Assurance at Cognizant, agrees: "Continuous testing is a business necessity and a technical challenge. And a mental challenge for every developer."

His colleague Frank Scharpenberg thus emphasizes once again: "The most important thing is, of course, defining the strategy between business and IT and then designing the individual transformation roadmap, taking into account the goals and weighing up the opportunities and risks. The topic of test strategy and conversion to modern test methods plays a central role here, so that the complex undertaking also leads to the desired success."

Wolfgang Platz warns, however, that migrating is not the same as testing, although migrations must of course be tested.

"Data integrity is more important in a brownfield migration and would place additional demands on testing, such as removing custom code and dependencies. You need to understand what you are testing and test the impact of the change." explains the Tricentis founder.

S/4 migration for CEO, CFO, CIO

In preparation for S/4 migration: What should the existing SAP customer prepare? Why should the CEO, CFO and CIO discuss with Cognizant and Tricentis in advance at a round table or better go to a telco?

"When preparing, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of the changes and their impact"explains Platz.

"If you don't have a good understanding of it, you're in a mess."

Wolfgang Platz describes the situation of the SAP community as follows: A CEO must focus on the loss of reputation and the bottom line that could be affected by a lack of productivity if a core solution like SAP were to be adversely affected. Here it will be of interest to show a way to efficiency and improved return for shareholders.

The CFO will focus primarily on ROI (return on investment) and TCO (total cost of ownership) and how innovative new approaches can deliver cost savings. For the CIO, the certainty of a risk-free transition with the help of partners will be an incentive to participate.

Fitter ERP backbone

If you look at the number of customers who have switched to S/4 Hana, it is becoming increasingly clear that the market is facing a huge bow wave until 2025. Frank Scharpenberg from Cognizant therefore believes that it is first of all to be welcomed that SAP has ensured clarity here that support is also possible after 2025.

"However, we recommend that we do not sit back now, but continue to move forward with the project." Scharpenberg emphasizes and adds:

"Especially with complex new implementations and global roll-outs, the timeline should not be underestimated. Furthermore, you should consider switching to S/4 not only for maintenance reasons, but also as a way to make your ERP backbone fit for the digital future."

Tricentis and Cognizant support existing SAP customers using ERP solutions every step of the way to smart operations - from upgrading ERP applications to consolidating solutions to migrating to SAP S/4.

Traditional testing methods are not only the biggest barrier to software delivery (source: 2019-2020 World Quality Report), but also account for nearly 30 percent of IT budgets (source: GitLab). That's why Tricentis reduces uncertainty when upgrading SAP applications, while reducing time and costs.

"The cost of failure and inaccurate data are two big factors that would cause a company to review their manual testing procedures"Wolfgang Platz knows from his professional practice, where he is repeatedly confronted with the obstacles in software deployment.

He warns: "It can be difficult to determine the ideal level of test automation the team should strive for during the DevOps transition. However, as releases become much more frequent, the volume of testing must also increase significantly."

His solution and answer: This is where automated testing comes in. According to recent research, successful DevOps businesses are much more likely to have high levels of automation in key testing and QA processes (for example, test case design, functional test automation, test data management).

DevOps, AI/ML and Analytics

According to ISG analysts, companies are currently facing the challenge of permanently integrating DevOps in test automation. Machine learning and cognitive analytics are increasingly forming the basis for test automation, which providers often offer as part of a maintenance contract. AI-driven test automation is also often part of complete platforms for software development factories, covering both legacy systems and hybrid cloud environments.

Wolfgang Platz still specifies:

"However, teams should not simply move forward with the goal of automating as much as possible. Instead, the goal should be to lean on the team's in-house testers to develop a test automation strategy that maximizes resources - and saves testers from having to manually perform repetitive test runs. By eliminating routine tasks, automation allows testers to use their time more strategically."

SAP: Open Source and AI

AI-driven solutions will be increasingly available to SAP's existing customers (see also Info Box: Migration to the Intelligent Enterprise). SAP CTO and Executive Board member Jürgen Müller explains SAP's approach to AI:

"Although our focus is on software, in the AI space we rely on specialized hardware, such as that from Nvidia. Especially in deep learning, when it comes to training unstructured data and complex AI models, Nvidia GPUs often offer excellent acceleration over CPUs.

On the software side, our strategy is an open one. This means that in addition to open source, we also use proprietary developments and the frameworks offered by partners, such as Nvidia. Especially in the open source environment, TensorFlow in combination with Python, among others, has proven itself and is equally appreciated by our data science teams."

Cognizant and Tricentis have the first solution that uses automated, AI-driven tools for continuous testing and provides a complete set of services for modernizing core ERP applications.

Tricentis' AI-driven continuous testing platform automates labor-intensive tasks and is proven to enable ten times faster testing compared to traditional methods, contributing to smoother approvals and better business outcomes.

Tricentis is a leader in continuous testing technology and this year announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with SAP to become their recommended testing solution. Cognizant, one of the largest professional services firms in the world, is an SAP Global Strategic Service Partner.

The fact is that the number of possible applications for AI is almost unlimited. There is not one AI, but a multitude of different technologies and approaches. The market researcher Lünendonk and Hossenfelder has published the free magazine "Artificial Intelligence".

Co-publishers are the consulting and IT service providers Cognizant, KPS, Arvato Systems, Cosmo Consult, and Detecon. Andreas Golze, Global Head Quality Engineering and Assurance at Cognizant, explains:

"In our digital economy, market conditions are more dynamic than ever, and companies are challenged to leverage the latest AI technologies to keep pace with their supply chain management and new product test and release cycles.

Combining Tricentis' world-class AI testing and automation technology with our expertise in delivering enterprise-wide, global SAP projects creates a trusted point of contact for large enterprises looking to smoothly transition SAP S/4 Hana capabilities while seeking a 'correct the first time' approach to testing."

However, Mario Zillmann of Lünendonk is already certain about one development: "AI will lead to disruptive change in almost all industries and enable digital transformation."