What are SAP Best Practices?
By best practice, we mean the best way of handling business processes. With its SAP Best Practices, SAP is providing numerous pre-configured core processes in the various lines of business (Manufacturing, R&D, Supply Chain, Assessment Management, Sourcing and Procurement, Finance, Human Resources).
If a company decides to implement SAP or, more specifically, S/4HANA there is a good chance that there are comparable companies in their industry that have already implemented SAP and that SAP has already developed a Best Practice solutions package for that industry on the basis of their experiences gained.
Our customers often ask us: How do other companies from our industry do that? Lots of others must have this problem too, right?
And that’s correct. Often, the challenges our customers have are similar, and we can provide fresh impetus thanks to our many years of experience on the market with various customers and in different industries. But we don’t always have to reinvent the wheel; the SAP Best Practices for S/4HANA are a good aid for us.
What are the benefits of SAP Best Practices?
Using Best Practices when implementing S/4HANA has various benefits for you as a customer:
For one thing, you will get a system that you do not have to reconfigure from the ground up, but which already comes with a Best Practice solutions package for your industry. That means you can speed up and simplify the implementation of S/4HANA by reducing the complexity of your implementation project. The system is also easier to maintain. So, you reduce the risks and costs as a whole. Furthermore, you have access to country-specific content to comply with legal requirements.
For another thing, you can put your current business processes to the test and test them against the Best Practices used by many other companies in the same industry. This way, you can check whether your processes are competitive or if there is potential for optimisation. You are laying a good foundation for implementing improvements and innovations.
What SAP Best Practices are there for S/4HANA?
There are a variety of possible applications. There are Best Practices for example for:
- Business processes for various industries
- Configuring S/4HANA
- Data migration
- Analysis and reporting
- User experience (e.g. for FIORI applications)
- Integration with cloud solutions like SAP Ariba or SuccessFactors
Where can you find the SAP Best Practices?
SAP created the Best Practice Explorer (also called Best Practice Library) for this purpose. You can access it with your sapnet user name via the link rapid.sap.com/bp/. Here, you will get an overview of all Best Practices for a wide variety of solutions, industries and operating models (on premises/cloud) and have access to various documents such as user manuals, process workflows and test scripts.
The screenshot below shows part of the process flow diagram for the SAP Best Practice process “Integrated Financial Planning” (4RC).
CAUTION: According to SAP the Best Practice Explorer will only remain available until 30/06/2023. What comes after that is currently still unclear!
Our conclusion
From our perspective, the SAP Best Practice processes make implementing S/4HANA simpler and quicker. You minimise the risk to you and save costs, both when implementing S/4HANA and later during ongoing operations because the system is easier to maintain.
In addition, the Best Practices offer a good introduction to new topics because hurdles for entry are easy. It also makes sense to have a look in the library if you have already implemented S/4HANA. Best Practice Explorer gives you a quick and easy overview of the topics that may be of interest to your company, and access to a pre-configured test that gives you the opportunity to simulate the process on the system yourself using the test scripts provided and to make an initial assessment of whether they are suitable for your company.
If we have piqued your interest and you would like to get a more detailed overview of the Best Practice processes in your field, please feel free to get in touch!
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Further Information