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Is Rise with SAP a good fit for you?
The service Rise with SAP is likely a good fit for some organizations but not for others. Learn how to decide if SAP's new offering is right for your company.
SAP's new offering Rise with SAP could benefit various companies, but organizational leaders should learn more about the service before taking the plunge.
SAP is hoping Rise with SAP will sway users to migrate to S/4HANA. The service could be useful for some organizations, including new SAP users and those in particular industries like retail and consumer products. But it isn't a good fit for every company.
What is Rise with SAP?
SAP has bundled its S/4HANA Cloud ERP with hosting and infrastructure management, implementation and migration services, business process transformation and SAP Business Network access to create an offering called Rise with SAP. SAP calls Rise with SAP "business transformation as a service," and it's as much a go-to-market strategy as it is a new product offering.
The service launched in early 2021 and since then, SAP has released several industry variants and rolled out an independent software vendor certification program. Potential cloud hosts for Rise with SAP users include Microsoft and Google.
Like other software companies, SAP is trying to transition its users from the traditional ownership software model to one in which software is an ongoing service. Rise with SAP's ERP software is the central component of a larger services collection.
According to SAP, Rise with SAP simplifies the buying process because the service is available from a single vendor on a single contract.
Will Rise with SAP work for your organization?
The Rise with SAP program isn't necessarily a good match for every company. Here are some key questions to consider when evaluating the service.
Does your company require customizations?
Rise with SAP limits users to two S/4HANA deployment options. The S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition offers more flexibility than the S/4HANA multi-tenant version, but neither possesses the extensibility levels that many of SAP's larger users with more complicated needs require.
Does your company operate in one of these industries?
In June 2021, SAP announced the launch of five vertical Rise with SAP versions for automotive, consumer products, industrial machinery and components, retail, and utilities. Companies working in any of those areas will likely find Rise with SAP a good fit.
Is your company already taking part in a major initiative?
SAP intends to use its acquisition of Signavio to perform process mining, or redesigning and optimizing SAP software business processes, for its Rise users. But if a company has already launched a digital transformation initiative -- for example, transitioning to the cloud or integrating IoT -- changing course midstream is likely not a practical option.
New SAP users that would be carrying out a greenfield implementation are likely good Rise with SAP candidates, especially if their answers to the above questions suggest a good fit. Redesigning and optimizing business processes is one of the service's key focuses, and a greenfield implementation is a natural opportunity for that.
