Organization Change Management for SAP S/4HANA

Digital Projects Jan 20, 2024

Table of contents

Introduction

SAP S/4HANA is short for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA. It is the latest ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) offering from SAP and is based on the SAP HANA in-memory database. It is designed to simplify and streamline business processes with features such as the Universal Journal, which serves as the single source of truth, and the new HANA database.

It also includes a merger of CO and FI, a new general ledger, and mandatory Business Partners. Other features include Real-time MRP, Global Trade Services, and Extended Warehouse Management.

Additionally, it allows for a real-time analysis of business data, improved performance, and faster decision making capabilities. Overall, SAP S/4HANA is the next generation of SAP's business suite software that is optimized for the digital economy and is intended to replace SAP ECC.

KTern.AI – A DXaaS Software

Ktern.AI is a product suite built for SAP Digital Transformations. It aims to help existing ECC customers migrate to S/4HANA by covering the entire lifecycle and guiding them before, during, and after the conversion. Its inbuilt S/4HANAPEDIA rule engine combined with several modules eases the transition from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA.

One of the key features of Ktern.AI is its Data Archiving Recommendations which automatically analyses the system and identifies the documents, tables, and custom programs which can be archived. This allows organizations to reduce costs of memory, disk, and administration costs, ensure cost-efficient system upgrades and S/4HANA migration, improve system performance, and reduce the cost of maintenance and running growing application infrastructure.

Need for Organization Change Management for SAP S/4HANA Projects

Everyone talks about Digital Transformations these days. But, here is an alarming stat. Four out of five Digital Transformation Projects fail to reach the desired goal. That’s a lot of money, effort and time wasted. But why are the results so dismal? Is it because the technology fails to deliver or is it because of the human component involved in these projects?

Embarking on a huge digital transformation project like the SAP S/4HANA system conversion, impacts all the facets of an organization. It is not a mere technical upgrade project. Such projects have a higher chance of failure because people fail to adopt the new way of doing things.

Organizational Change Management and Involvement of end-users is a critical success factor in a system conversion project.

So, if you are a CIO or a Digital Change Manager worried about the impact of Digital Transformation in your organization, then this article is just for you. Here, we will explain how KTern can help you in effective change management by providing automatic training scenario recommendations and managing the human component of an SAP S/4HANA conversion.

In addition, you can find out everything you need to know about SAP S/4HANA Assessments using KTern in this article.

The importance of End-User Training and Change Management in S/4HANA

More often than not, we only focus on the day-to-day details and nuances of a system conversion project. We spend several months on the transformation project. In the meantime, we forget the actual people who are going to use the software after Go-Live. They are given just a few days of generic end-user training. But a complex project like S/4HANA conversion requires much more than that. It requires a mindset shift – from viewing a S/4HANA transformation as just a standard ERP upgrade to using it to succeed in the complex digital economy.

  • It is necessary to have all the end-users on board before the start of the implementation itself. You must train them right from the start and not keep them in the dark. This will help them appreciate the necessity of change.
  • Once you convince the end-users and employees of how the change will make their lives simpler, the adoption, utilization and success of the new S/4HANA software will follow quickly.

Therefore, as the first step, KTern provides Training Scenario Recommendations in the Discover phase of the Activate Methodology itself to help plan your transition and the change management better.

KTern’s Training Scenario Recommendations

  1. KTern’s Training Scenario Recommendations feature analyses the connected system.
  2. KTern automatically identifies the business processes which have undergone changes in S/4HANA enabling you to train the end-users to adopt to these new changes.
  3. KTern also identifies the relevant training scenarios along with the stakeholders who must be trained. This will enable the Project Managers to keep an eye on the training of the end-users and effectively govern the change management process.

The objective of the training scenario recommendations is to identify the enablement scope for end-user training. It involves the following steps:

  • Run the first assessment on the training requirements which arises from the SAP transition project
  • Gather information about the SAP S/4HANA system conversion project, and identify affected organizational units
  • Conduct interviews regarding training strategy elements
  • Identify training relevant user groups (Project Team, Key User, End User)
  • Evaluate the high-level enablement scope for End User Training

Features of KTern’s Training Scenario Recommendations

  • KTern is an all-in-one product suite built for SAP Digital Transformations .
  • With decades worth of SAP Tribal knowledge combined with automation, governance and collaboration capabilities, KTern is built to help the existing ECC customers migrate to S/4HANA.
  • KTern covers the entire lifecycle and guides you before, during and after the conversion.
  • Its inbuilt S/4HANAPEDIA rule engine combined with several modules eases the transition from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA

As seen in the above picture, KTern provides an analytical view of the number of training plans and the training scenarios. It also provides a distribution of the training scenarios by the respective modules. Hence, it gives a fair idea to the Project Managers about the most impacted modules and the most relevant modules for training.

KTern analyzes and documents the training requirements for the key users and end-users , automatically providing the training scenarios for each module based on the impact of change in S/4HANA.

It provides a clear description, status of each training scenario in S/4HANA, and the reference SAP Notes (which has all the changes with respect to that business process).

One of the most important features of KTern’s training scenario recommendation is that it identifies the key stakeholders of each business process. They are ranked based on their usage of each scenario.

For example, all the MM consultants use Goods Withdrawal process of Material Management module. This functionality is unavailable in S/4HANA, but an equivalent exists. Hence, you must train the end-users to adopt the new process. KTern provides a list of all the users who use this process and ranks them hierarchically according to their usage. Hence, based on this analysis, you can design and execute a training plan in the subsequent phases of the project.

The stakeholders can then create a training event and assign it to the relevant functional and technical consultants. The training event will contain all the relevant training materials and documents for a particular scenario. Additionally, the stakeholders can also upload files and create CTA’s. Hence, they can monitor the training process throughout the duration of the system conversion project.

Inferences from KTern’s Training Scenario Recommendations

Initial Enablement Assessment

This initial enablement assessment is the analysis of learning and enablement related aspects of Digital Learning in general and with respect to your actual situation. The assessment helps to get an understanding of the general learning management situation, your enablement capabilities to support the digital transformation process and the alignment with the project scope and timeline. Based on the results of the training scenario recommendations, specific training management activities will be identified.

KTern's Training Recommendations

KTern also provides recommendations to enable a successful enablement delivery. It is particularly relevant at the beginning of a project. Doing this analysis in the Discover phase itself helps the project managers to determine the timeline and effort required for training.

Enabling Training to End-Users

End-user training is a very manual process. All users are given generic training at the end of the project. But, with KTern, you can have a clear overview of who should be trained, when they should be trained and in what they should be trained. Even after the Go-Live of the system conversion project, users can undergo continuous training in the application itself. Hence, it saves a lot of time & effort and all the users are given relevant training only

And, the best part is that no other contemporary product in the market offers Training Recommendations.

Next Steps

Now that you know how to KTern provides the Training Scenario Recommendations and the deductions you can make out of it, you might want to get a first-hand feel of KTern and its other features which help automate and govern SAP projects from start to finish. You can get started with the same at https://ktern.com/get-started. Alternatively, if you would like a guided demo of the product from one of our product engineers, kindly get in touch with us by submitting a message at https://ktern.com/company/contact.

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Sabareesh S R

Helping organizations undergo smooth and effortless SAP Digital Transformation.

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