Taking the lead with a Brownfield+ approach for SAP S/4HANA

No enterprise leader likes to play catch-up. Staying ahead of the game is what business today is all about. Whether you’re heading off potential customer issues, staying out in front of regulations, proactively addressing supply chain challenges, or creating a business process and IT environment that can consistently deliver value and outcomes. 

One more item that SAP customers need to add to the list: the inevitable end of mainstream maintenance for SAP ERP Central Component (ECC). Wait too long to transition to SAP S/4HANA, and you could find yourself playing a game of multidimensional catch-up—rushing to upgrade to a modern digital core ERP while also bringing along all your business-critical data, processes, and apps, as well as stakeholders such as employees, customers, and third parties.

It's a game you cannot easily win—especially if your competitors have already made the move to SAP S/4HANA and all the benefits it can bring. With SAP S/4HANA, you can get out-of-the-box analytics, granular real-time insights, continuous upgrades, a modern intuitive user experience, and a platform for rapid core-to-edge innovation. But the question for many decision-makers is how. How do you get there? How do you make the move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA? And how do you do it fast—to prevent playing catch-up?

Existing SAP ECC customers looking to make the move to SAP S/4HANA will often fall somewhere on the continuum between brownfield and greenfield. They need flexibility to get them on SAP S/4HANA fast, while providing opportunities for transformation both at the time of the upgrade as well as during the a “green tail” phase that follows it.

This requires more than a brownfield approach. It requires Deloitte’s Brownfield+.

Brownfield+: Not new, not complicated

Deloitte’s Brownfield+ approach serves as a central source for the services, toolsets, insights, and leading practices that SAP customers will need to support a flexible and cost-effective brownfield transformation. It provides a tailored approach that allows you to move efficiently from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA—letting you realize the business benefits of a new ERP sooner, potentially in a matter of a few months.

Brownfield+ is not exactly a new offering. Deloitte has been building toward it for years as a leading SAP global partner, offering our clients a spectrum of innovative services and SAP-certified solutions for enabling a better brownfield path to SAP S/4HANA. 

Brownfield+ is also not a complicated offering. Ultimately, it’s about helping SAP customers do three things—and do them faster as part of their journey to SAP S/4HANA. It provides the resources you need to assess, prepare, and move your data and processes efficiently from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA. That’s it. It’s that simple. But there is a lot that Deloitte brings behind the scenes to make that happen, including our deep industry-specific experience, proprietary toolsets, worldwide team of SAP-focused professionals, and our focus on helping clients enable the built-to-evolve enterprise—the Kinetic Enterprise™.

Want to know what that looks like and how we are continuing to embed industry-specific capabilities and new SAP functionality into the offering? Visit Brownfield+ for more information or Contact us at SAP@deloitte.com to schedule a demo and find out how Brownfield+ allows you to move forward faster with capabilities that can help your business maintain the lead in its industry. 

For more information contact:

Chip Kleinheksel
Principal
ckleinheksel@deloitte.com

Christopher Hott
Principal
chhott@deloitte.com