Standard support for SAP ECC will end by 2027, reducing a cornerstone of enterprise technology to legacy status as software updates and security patches grow prohibitively expensive and more enmeshed in overly complex contracting language.
This mandate to adapt and evolve beyond SAP ECC represents a crucial opportunity to rethink ERP implementation, and industry leaders have already begun crafting their transition plan to capitalize on this shift and establish a new foundation to build enterprise data innovation.
The bad news, of course, is that such a systemic transition requires meticulous planning. Timeframes can range from six months to two years, initial investments can be high, and migration is often complex and resource-intensive. Normally, companies agonize over these factors when considering when and how to transition to a new platform, but the end of SAP ECC support means there’s no longer any question of when to transition, only how.
Slashing Costs and Timelines by Moving Analytics Workloads to Snowflake
The good news is that with the right approach to SAP analytics, timelines can be expedited, and costs can be recouped through robust ROIs, leaving your organization with a cutting-edge enterprise platform that drives innovation. To realize this potential, organizations will need to think beyond merely replacing SAP ECC and instead build towards a more robust enterprise platform. That’s where the Snowflake AI Data Cloud comes in.
Whether your organization plans to transition to S/4HANA or choose an alternative ERP that best suits your unique needs, Snowflake unlocks deeper insights for your analytic workloads with endless potential for custom-built functions. It offers a cost-effective platform through which all your enterprise tools and data can coexist in one place safely and efficiently.
Let’s take a look at how organizations can make the most of the transitionary moment to shift away from legacy technologies and build a more robust enterprise platform that’s designed to drive insights and fuel innovation.
Harnessing the Power of SAP and Snowflake for Cutting-Edge ERP Implementation
While SAP is an incredibly powerful tool for structuring a company’s workflow and driving intra-organizational collaboration, it is at its most powerful when deployed in tandem with a powerful data cloud platform like Snowflake, which organizes data into rapid analytical insights and integrates them into SAP’s workflow in near real-time. Consequently, this pairing has become the model for innovative ERP implementation, with many innovative organizations already transitioning to this approach. For those looking to proactively plan for the coming end of SAP ECC, pairing an ERP tool like SAP with a cloud data platform like Snowflake represents the natural blueprint for building value through an enterprise modern data platform. Through Snowflake, structured and unstructured organizational data can be systemically organized into actionable formats, like demand forecasting, to drive strategy. This data can be produced at a daily cadence to provide the best, most up-to-date possible information to decision-makers, which will be incorporated into the SAP or custom ERP interface thanks to Snowflake’s built-in capacity for interoperability. This capability makes all the difference for organizations looking to set themselves apart from the competition, as it empowers them to make proactive decisions, reaping the benefits of actionable data to stay ahead of the curve.Unifying Your Enterprise’s Data Ecosystem
Snowflake’s ability to unify various data tools and platforms is unparalleled—a capability crucial to building a scalable, forward-thinking enterprise platform. For this reason alone, the incorporation of a data cloud platform like Snowflake is indispensable to a modernized ERP approach. Anything less leaves your enterprise platform beholden to SAP contract terms and feature release cycles.
Making the most of these tools takes expertise, naturally, which is why so many organizations turn to external support to bridge talent gaps, maintain organizational agility, and ensure a seamless transition when building their modern data platforms. You are not alone in choosing a Snowflake integration partner. Among organizations looking to modernize their data stacks in 2024, 79% expected to enlist “moderate” to “significant” outside help for this very reason.
The data models and analytical insights that your organization needs can be built by data consultants like Hakkoda, whose experts have facilitated data migration processes and constructed SAP-powered data platforms within Snowflake for industry-leading companies all over the world.
By collaborating with Hakkoda to build the scalable, innovative ERP platform you need, you can ensure your organization can transition its enterprise technology approach in a timely manner, protecting your internal resources to remain agile and unlocking powerful insight faster.