Beyond an ERP upgrade

Beyond the Upgrade: Turning Your S/4HANA Journey into a Platform for Innovation and Future Value

For many organisations, the move from SAP ERP to S/4HANA is positioned as a technical upgrade, one that promises speed, efficiency, and a more modern architecture. But this lens alone risks missing the much bigger prize.

S/4HANA isn’t just a new system, it’s a new foundation for your business. Done right, it can become a platform for innovation, exploration, and long-term value creation. The key lies in how you approach the preparation and planning phase not just as a means to exploit current capabilities more efficiently, but as an opportunity to explore new organisational capabilities, emerging technologies, and untapped markets.

This post explores how to unlock that potential and reframe your upgrade as a strategic business renewal.

A New Digital Core for a New Era

S/4HANA brings a lot to the table: real-time data processing, simplified data models, embedded AI and analytics, and tighter integration across business functions. But this isn’t just an IT refresh.

It’s about building a more adaptive, intelligent, and responsive business. A business that can sense and respond to change in real time, deliver superior customer experiences, and operate with the clarity and speed that today’s environment demands.

Don’t Just Replicate. Reimagine.

One of the biggest missed opportunities in ERP upgrades is the tendency to replicate existing processes “as-is” in the new system. That’s understandable, people want to reduce risk, stick to timelines, and avoid disruption.

But what if this transition is the best chance in a decade to ask deeper questions?

• Are our current processes really fit for purpose or just a product of past constraints?

• Where could we redesign for simplicity, automation, and intelligence?

• How can we build processes that flex for tomorrow’s opportunities, not just today’s demands?

Reimagining your core processes with S/4HANA enables you to shift from reactive workflows to proactive, insight-driven operations.

Explore as You Plan: A Better Way to Prepare

The planning phase of the S/4HANA journey is the perfect time to shift the conversation. Instead of focusing 100% on exploitation cost, efficiency, and risk—invest at least 20% of your energy on exploration.

This is your moment to:

• Test new organisational capabilities: What would it take to run as a more networked, learning, or ecosystem-driven organisation?

• Investigate future market spaces: Are there underserved segments, emerging business models, or adjacent verticals you could begin designing for?

• Assess new technologies: How might OpenAI, Joule, IoT, or blockchain reshape your offerings, your operations, or even your purpose?

This 80/20 mindset—80% exploit for today, 20% explore for tomorrow can significantly enrich the business case, increase engagement, and drive momentum. It’s not about slowing down the upgrade. It’s about future-proofing your decisions and expanding your lens on value.

Use the Project to Spark Strategic Innovation

S/4HANA projects are long, complex, and cross-functional. They bring together people from across your organisation. Use that scale to your advantage:

• Embed innovation design into the core of the project, especially early on.

• Run “exploration workshops” alongside process fit/gap sessions, looking at new capabilities, emerging tech, and future scenarios.

• Identify strategic areas to innovate, while standardising and simplifying others.

• Create innovation swim-lanes in your roadmap—time-boxed and budgeted spaces for experiments and pilots that run in parallel with core delivery.

This not only unlocks new ideas—it increases engagement. People get more excited about the future when they feel part of creating it.

What Leaders are Doing Differently

Forward-thinking organisations are using S/4HANA as a launchpad not a landing pad.

• A consumer goods company used their upgrade to embed sustainability tracking across supply chains, preparing for future ESG regulations.

• A logistics firm built in AI and IoT capabilities from the start, allowing them to optimise fleet operations and reduce downtime.

• A retail group ran parallel design sprints exploring how S/4HANA could enable subscription models, digital twins, and new partnerships.

These moves weren’t afterthoughts. They were intentionally designed into the upgrade journey from the very beginning.

A More Strategic, Engaging Business Case

By linking your S/4HANA journey to innovation, exploration, and future readiness, you create a more compelling business case, one that resonates across the boardroom and the broader organisation.

• For CFOs, it’s about unlocking value and future-proofing investment.

• For business leaders, it’s about preparing to lead in new ways.

• For employees, it’s about being part of something exciting, not just another system change.

And it shifts the dialogue from “how do we replace the old system?” to “how do we build the future we want to lead?”

Your Next Steps

Here’s how to begin reframing your upgrade as a platform for innovation:

1. Create dual tracks: One for core implementation (exploit), one for strategic exploration (explore).

2. Run capability and opportunity mapping: Where should we innovate vs. standardise?

3. Engage diverse stakeholders early: Include future-oriented thinkers alongside process experts.

4. Design exploration workshops: Use design thinking, foresight, and innovation frameworks to imagine new value.

5. Consolidate learnings into your business case: Make exploration part of your ROI.

In Conclusion

Your S/4HANA upgrade can be more than a technical milestone it can be a turning point. A chance to reset, rethink, and redesign for the next decade of growth.

The opportunity is there. The question is: will you take it?