EVOLVE SAP

THROUGH CONTINUOUS
DELIVERY ANDINNOVATION
Rethinking your current
approach will ensuresustainable successinto the future.

Are you ready to be an SAP S/4HANA®enabled Intelligent Enterprise?
AFTER 50 YEARS OF DOING IT ONE WAY...
SAP is the biggest provider of business applications

Was this avoidable? Not really. The best practices

globally. It has the largest install base of all existing

and tooling of the time would have been adopted

clients who have achieved significant benefits overand they would have achieved what was required

many decades through the continuous exploitation

at the time.

of its different modules, transactions, and reports.
As the Software as a Service (SaaS) trend appeared
Once an application that fought the millennium bug,and spread across the business application market,

underpinning the globalization strategy of many large

SAP software lost its ability to excite business users

multinational organizations across all industry sectors,

and the CxO suite. Therefore, “keeping the lights on”

SAP became part of the IT furniture. Alongside it, aand “doing more for less” became the order of thepartner ecosystem and large IT functions developed

day. SAP became the back office – important, evento roll out and support SAP with many methods andbusiness critical, but no longer interesting or viewed

tools that became ingrained as the way to effectively

as an enabler to create significant business value.

support an SAP platform.

2

ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

... NOW IS YOUR OPPORTUNITYTO CHANGE, DON’T MISS IT!
Since the introduction of the in-memory database

To fully exploit these new applications, often in

SAP HANA , software has been evolving quickly toward

combination with existing SAP investments, users musta new vision of the Intelligent Enterprise with cloud-consider how they transform their IT organizations.

based, in-memory-enabled applications such as

When SAP was just back office and “keeping the lights

SAP S/4HANA® and the SAP Business Technology

on,” doing minimal “enhancements” was the default

Platform (BTP) to name just a few. These innovations

approach. But now, with new applications on new

are stirring up the SAP market and causing disruption

technologies, new ways of working must be adopted

that could change the way business applications are

to exploit data and insights that increase the resilienceviewed and used as the backbone of more edge-to-edgeof the SAP estate while also increasing the pace ofbusiness processes.

continuous development. Capgemini has a term for®

this, the Renewable Enterprise, which describes an
In addition, with the advent of RISE with SAP, theorganization and an SAP transformational approach thatapproach to accessing the SAP application suite from abuilds on the strengths of the past whilst bringing in thepricing and platform perspective is changing massively.

best practices of the future.

In this case, the IT disruption being caused is around how
management and support of the estate is delivered.

As the pace of change has accelerated and the world
now seems to be in a “perma-crisis,” organizations must

Many SAP users are now seeking to transform with

be able to quickly implement change in order to takethese newer applications to achieve the businessadvantage of opportunities, develop their capabilities,

benefits that modern applications can offer. New

and ensure their resilience. To achieve their strategic

business processes and models, such as servitization,

goals and vision, businesses require the necessary tools

are increasingly available and with SAP at the heartand resources to facilitate and enable such changes.

of these complex architectures, supporting new andunique business processes, it is back at the forefront ofdelivering competitive advantage.
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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

IF IT WERE EASY, THEN EVERYONEWOULD BE “DOING” IT.
“Delivering quality
applications with increased
agility isn’t as simple as“doing” agile or DevOps.”
Bill Holz, VP Analyst, Gartner

Change is hard. The human condition is toresist change even though it is occurring
all around. The change in the SAP productsuite was driven by external disruption fromnew client requirements; and the change
toward a continuous delivery and innovation
approach is essential to truly satisfy theserequirements in the new cloud-enabled,
digital SAP world.
To help us with the change, it is importantto also understand the interconnectednessof many aspects of what we are trying toachieve. To become a Renewable Enterprisethat is able to continuously develop andachieve benefit from SAP investment, wemust consider the following areas and reestablish an integrated approach, including
business and IT, to deliver on them.

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

GIVE THE BUSINESS WHAT THEY WANT!
As IT becomes more complex, the best measure of success will be what the business wants – IT must
be able to measure its performance based on business process outcomes. And since we're looking at
continuous delivery, the ongoing, not simply the one-off, tracking of value must be a part of the IT DNA.
Supply Chain Observability – Strategic to IT KPI hierarchy

Strategic
business KPI

Operational
business KPIInventory
accuracy

Days ininventory

Backorder rate

Forecast
accuracy

SMART KPI

Percentage of SO
not met MAD date

Percentage of backorders due toinventory mismatch

Percentage of deliveries
delayed due to stock
unavailability

IT KPIAvg execution time
per transaction

Interface
availability/Uptime# of transactions
failed or in error

Interface
availability/Uptime

The concept of Business Observability, described by Gartner as a digital immune system1, combines
technologies and practices, such as AI and SRE, to ensure the stability of the IT estate that underpins
business processes. For completeness, Capgemini would recommend the inclusion of business processmining to focus on the ongoing efficiency of business processes in addition to stability. This “business
immune system” is a closed loop so that observability and mining insights can drive continuous businessand IT improvements, covering automation right the way through to predictive monitoring, proactive
self-healing, and insights-driven process improvement. This ensures moving from reactive to preventive
to predictive, using automation and other AI-enabled solutions.
With SAP, and its recent acquisition of Signavio, the ability to build a process observability
platform is inherent in the Intelligent Enterprise suite but, without a conscious focus on thealignment of business and IT outcomes, the opportunity for refocusing and continuous
renewal could be lost.

Top Strategic Technology Trends
2023 – Gartner, Jan 2023

1

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

LET’S CHANGE IT FASTER…
The speed of change often accelerates as a

Landscape strategy. In a hybrid cloud SAP

reaction to external crises that can originate inlandscape, the management of different

the market or from competitors. But thiscomponents to ensure integrity and consistencypressure could also be from an increasing needis essential – as is the inclusion of approaches

for innovation to drive proactive disruption orsuch as FinOps and GreenOps. Historically, thiseven to simply exploit the latest capabilities

was reasonably straightforward for organizations,delivered by more frequent software releases.

but now, with different components undergoingregular releases adding to the complexity, a new

To drive change forward effectively across thestrategy is required with the use of the latest

landscape, one size no longer fits all, so more

tooling. Capgemini’s Multi-Pillar SAP S/4HANA®

digital, cloud, or data-enabled ways of working

Architecture (MPSA), which underpins theare required. In this context, “size” often means

Renewable Enterprise, provides a best-practice

speed, so a multi-speed approach not only

architecture and strategy and is indicative of

requires exploiting agile in some areas andthe level of thinking that needs to go into thisDevOps or DataOps in others, but also

strategic area.

recognizing the rigor of more traditional
waterfall-based approaches, as well as theDocumentation strategy. Delivering continuously

importance of ITIL processes such as incident

requires a solid baseline of documentation on

and problem management for maintenance andwhich to ensure stability, and that requirements

operations.

are correctly tracked and shared. With different
components and development philosophies, thisAnd to ensure that these combined new andcan require different tools and techniques to avoid

old approaches gel, it’s important to consider

falling back to traditionally slow approaches.

some of the more detailed strategic activities,
including:Enablement strategy. Faster does not necessarilymean better, especially if we are not able to bringthe user community along. It's crucial to ensurethat the right level of education and easy access to
support is provided so that each change delivers its
expected benefits.

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

… BUT LET’S NOT BREAK IT.
The SAP suite of applications is now back at the center of complex
architectures, surrounded by multiple other applications,
technologies, and devices, in a true edge-to-edge solution. So, tomaintain stability and resilience of the estate, and ultimately its
business processes, Capgemini’s Business Assurance services for SAP
products is required, covering aspects such as quality engineering andsite reliability engineering (SRE).
Effective quality engineering in an SAP context ensures that any
changes going through our new multi-speed development tracks
are not negatively impacting the business performance of the live
environment. It also takes into consideration that, as the volumeof change increases, cost should not grow proportionally. A Sogeti
report, in partnership with Tricentis, highlights the challenge.2
Embedding quality engineering into the end-to-end development
process necessitates best ices across the different phases of thedevelopment lifecycle, as well as the exploitation of the latest toolingfor automation, data obfuscation, and landscape alignment. In acontinuous development scenario, quality engineering needs to be an
integral part of the development process
to ensure cost effectiveness and efficiency,
as well as the ultimate objective of highquality business outcome delivery.
And while quality engineering secures thedevelopment process, it is also important toconsider proactive initiatives under the scope of
SRE to test the overall edge-to-edge landscape forstability and resilience. A thorough observability regime
must be in place starting with the business outcomes,
as described above, with full traceability through tothe underlying enterprise IT, as well as any peripheral
operational technologies. Using techniques like chaosengineering, proactive incident responses must be tested, andon the occasions that significant issues do occur, blameless postmortems must take place to drive continuous improvement.

2State of Worldwide Business Assurance for SAP Solutions,
Sogeti, Oct, 2021

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

A PARTNERSHIP OF MAN AND ROBOT.
To support new ways of working, effective toolingimplementation tooling. It now covers a broad range

must be used to increase the operational efficiency

of application lifecycle management capabilities forof IT processes, while also replacing certain tasks with

SAP-centric environments.

AI/ML-enabled automation.
Capgemini adopts a fabric-based approach to tooling
SAP Solution Manager has been available since thewhere we exploit the latest market assets combined

mid-2000s and has evolved significantly since its firstwith our own experience and accelerators. The following

incarnation as a replacement for previous desktop

diagram shows the different components required:

CLIENT
LANDSCAPEUI LAYERINTELLIGENT AUTOMATION FABRIC COMPONENTS

ClientlandscapeApplication/
infrastructurelogos, output
of monitoring
tools

ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

PROBLEMMANAGMENTASSISTEDRESOLUTION

DEV SEC OPS

Observability

INFRASTRUCTURE
MONITORINGAPPLICATIONMONITORING

AI OPS

AutomationITPA

INTELLIGENTASSIGMENT8FUNCTIONAL LAYERVIRTUALASSISTANTUNIFORMPROCESSESDASHBOARDS

Enhanced service management

DATA LAYERManage service platform

UNIFORM
GOVERNANCE

Integration layer

ITSM

COMMAND TOWER

TICKET DATAHEALTHCHECK

Analytics

RPA

REPORTING

SOLUTIONCATALOG

AUTOMATIONASSESSMENTCMDBThe implementation of an SAP-centric approach to an intelligent automation fabric is a separate
topic all of its own, but for the implementation of a continuous delivery strategy, there are somekey topics for consideration:
1.

Release management. Integration is a great strength of SAP but, without properconsideration of its impact, it can become one of the shackles that prevents continuous
delivery. Maintaining an integrated landscape requires a well-considered strategy, such
as MPSA, that maintains integrity while also being able to support fast-paced changes
from new product releases and new customer requirements.

2.

Template management. SAP has always been a platform that can deliver common
processes at a global level in many functional areas, such as finance and procurement,
and this will continue to be a requirement. But in other areas such as customer
experience or marketing, there may be a need for more flexibility, which traditionally
breaks the template management approach. A continuous delivery approach will not
only adopt and recognize the value of a template in certain areas but also acknowledge
the need for pragmatism where necessary.

3.

Traceability. Across both areas, there must be traceability of requirements through tosolutions. This will necessitate proper rigor where it is required, for example, to support
regulatory compliance, but it will also be supported by the right choice of tooling. In thiscase, the correct use of the SAP Business Technology Platform to maintain configuration
outside of a clean core, and taking advantage of the platform's inbuilt tooling, will
help achieve traceability across the entire system. This will result in a more optimized
landscape that enables faster and more automated testing of standard processes.

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

LET’S SET UP FOR SUCCESS!
Bringing all the components together, it’s importanton the on-going delivery of transformational value, as

to consider the structure of a “new” SAP center ofwell as the continued adoption and enablement within

excellence. Looking at many of the CoEs that havethe end-user community.

been established as clients rolled out SAP, they
have followed the trend that we have seen with the

As we’ve mentioned before, new SAP offerings

SAP software itself, which is to become focused on

are providing new opportunities across new areas

supporting and sustaining this business-critical asset.

of business, and this necessitates a different

As IT budgets have been diverted to the business withapproach to the way an SAP CoE is viewed. In ordermore SaaS platforms being funded from departmental

to take advantage of the latest technologies andbudgets, the focus on the SAP solution has been on

work effectively with a diverse set of suppliers in acost effectiveness and stability, so ways of working andcollaborative partnership, CoEs must adopt a more

the CoE structure have followed.

business-focused and innovative approach. At the sametime, it's important to maintain rigorous standards

10This "next-generation" SAP CoE must become theto ensure the stability and resilience of this criticaltransformation engine for the organization, focusingbusiness asset.

ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

Where are you now and what
could be your next step?
Clearly there is a transformation taking place in the SAP

2.

Exploiting the current SAP investment. In order

portfolio driven by changes that have happened across

to extract continuous benefits today, potentiallydifferent dimensions. Changes can also be observed in(but not always) in preparation for an SAP S/4HANA®

customer requirements and expectations, so businesses are

migration, various proactive initiatives can betransforming to survive and prosper.

undertaken that deliver value immediately,for example:

To really thrive in the current landscape, it is essential that theway that SAP is exploited changes, and we see the need for a“Clean the core.” Bespoke complexity can often

new continuous approach, as described previously.

be an inhibitor to fast continuous delivery, so in manycases it is worth considering whether a simplification

But how do we get there? We see two strategies that can beof the core can help to accelerate the development

adopted to proactively make the change:

path. Using MPSA with a composable architecture andtools such as BTP can also help to move complexity away

1.

During an SAP S/4HANA business-led

from the core. Additionally, this simplification makes

transformation project. Undertaking such amonitoring of interfaces and other technical objects

project presents a unique opportunity to transformeasier, thereby improving the stability and resilience of the

not just the business, but also the IT infrastructurebusiness processes.

®

that supports it. During the design phase, and in
the Buildprint within Capgemini iCaptivate, theProcess optimization. Many SAP landscapes areimportance of designing new business processes

surrounded by workarounds. This is because, over time,is equal to that of considering new IT processes,

working practices have changed but IT has not kept in step

including exploring options for new tooling to

due to the difficulty in making swift changes. With processenhance end-user experience and adoption. Whendiscovery and mining tools such as Signavio, the huge

executing the project in phases, it's crucial to also

volumes of transactional data in the SAP applications canplan for an interim support function that follows the

now be converted into valuable insights that can pinpoint"continuous delivery" principles and expands as newthese workarounds and propose changes that streamlinefunctions are delivered. By establishing the interim

processes, reducing cost and accelerating throughput.

support function early, the rollout team can stay
focused on new deployments while ensuring the
successful adoption of new processes and facilitating
the continuous delivery process.

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

“Agile/DevOps/PODs.” Improving
IT ways of working through the betteralignment of development and support
teams, and the exploitation of the latest
tooling, can benefit any organization.
The challenge in the SAP industry is often
the perception of it being traditional
and therefore not relevant. In our
experience this is not the case, andeven with no business transformationon the horizon, IT should be considering
incremental change to ensure costeffectiveness and efficiency.
There is also a third way that we are seeing
more often as projects are kicked off without
consideration of the IT change needed tosustain the business change – you could callit “project rescue.” The SAP market, backto the implementation of SAP R/3®, has
occasionally experienced such situations and,based on our experience, we believe that
this is due to a lack of a continuous delivery
approach. So, now is the time to avoid
history repeating itself and set out on thecorrect road toward an in-memory, cloudenabled digital Intelligent Enterprise.
The scenarios described above areexamples. We know that each situation
is different – if you would liketo discuss yours, please don’t hesitate
to get in touch.

Gary James

Darren While

Offer Lead – ADMnext for SAP Solutions
gary.james@capgemini.com

SAP Transformation Advisor
darren.while@capgemini.com

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ADMnext for SAP Solutions – Continuous Delivery

AboutCapgemini
Capgemini is a global leader in partnering with companies to transform andmanage their business by harnessing the power of technology. The Group
is guided everyday by its purpose of unleashing human energy throughtechnology for an inclusive and sustainable future. It is a responsible and diverse
organization of 360,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its
strong 55-year heritage and deep industry expertise, Capgemini is trusted byits clients to address the entire breadth of their business needs, from strategy
and design to operations, fueled by the fast evolving and innovative worldof cloud, data, AI, connectivity, software, digital engineering, and platforms.
The Group reported 2022 global revenues of €22 billion.
Learn more about us atwww.capgemini.com

The information contained in this document is proprietary.
©2023 Capgemini. All rights reserved.

MACS_2023_21-10-3690

SAP, SAP S/4HANA, SAP R/3 and SAP HANA are the trademarks or registeredtrademarks of SAP SE or its affiliates in Germany and in several other countries.