If your company is one of hundreds of thousands that rely on the SAP Business Suite for your critical business operations, then you are likely beginning your preparations to move to SAP’s cloud offer, SAP S/4HANA. Companies that have already made the move to SAP S/4HANA have found that the platform facilitates their digital transformation initiatives, by introducing agility, innovation, simplicity, and efficiency to business processes.

For most of those that have yet to move to SAP S/4HANA, SAP’s announcement isn’t forcing a change in strategy: their digital roadmap already calls for eventual modernization and “cloudification” of critical business workloads. However, the SAP decision has focused attention and resources on the execution of the cloud strategy, perhaps with an accelerated timeframe.

In this paper, we provide considerations to help businesses get started with their move to SAP S/4HANA. We identify the business value of SAP S/4HANA in the context of companies’ overall digital transformation, and recommend factors to help assess how and when to begin the migration. Finally, we discuss the benefits of engaging a third-party expert for assistance in managing the migration, and offer tips on choosing the right partner.