Determine your transformation path with DXC and RISE

August 16, 2022

Companies starting to think about their transformation journey typically look at both the business and IT aspects of their evolution. From a business perspective, the top-of-mind areas to explore are process optimization, growth opportunities and global or regional expansion. From an IT perspective, they typically consider areas such as cloud, license, cybersecurity, platform flexibility, scaling and application modernization. 

Every organization will follow a different path to achieve the results they’re seeking. The question is, how to determine the right path?

DXC’s Intelligent Transformation Framework guides SAP customers in thinking through their transformation journey using RISE with SAP. RISE with SAP is a bundle of assets that offer customers business-transformation-as-a-service, aiming to simplify the process for adopting automation, transforming business processes, and connecting suppliers and customers by leveraging SAP S/4HANA Cloud with a subscription model. DXC works closely with SAP in all aspects of the RISE with SAP transformation, leveraging our cloud approach to help customers achieve the business outcomes they desire.

Many customers are asking themselves if RISE with SAP is right for their organization. Our Roadmap service offering is fundamental to assisting customers with understand the benefits and impacts (Figure 1). Typical questions run the gamut from whether they should move to cloud or choose a hybrid model; migrate existing SAP ERP via brownfield; start fresh with a greenfield or a hybrid approach; rethink business processes to better align to new ways of working; or improve their customer-facing portal to enable self-service interactions.  

Emerging RISE with SAP transformation use cases

We’re starting to see clear customer use cases for business transformations using RISE with SAP. Let’s look at 3 of them in a little more detail.

Transform to Run. In this case the move to RISE with SAP is often not a complex decision. Customers want to move to the latest SAP software version, to the cloud, and to a subscription-based license. They are typically on SAP S/4HANA or in an SAP S/4HANA-ready position. These companies can take one of two paths: renovate an existing system or choose greenfield, which is typical in the case of divestitures or when companies are undergoing significant changes from acquisitions or business expansions.

Run to Transform. Some companies might not be quite ready to take transformation on in one fell swoop, but that doesn’t mean they stop optimizing, generating cost savings and positioning the business for the future. A lift and shift of their SAP ERP system to RISE with SAP is a supported path in these cases. Choosing this path allows the business to continue to build their business case, clean up the core, transition to SaaS-based licenses and move to the cloud. This sets the stage for either a renovation or brownfield approach, a very practical way to get immediate savings. Most often a clear roadmap will identify future business impacts and likely changes required going forward to guide the overall journey. This approach also allows for subsets of processes to be optimized. For instance, the accounts receivable process could be optimized versus an entire macro process, like order to cash, depending on business requirements.

Not comfortable with cloud-based solutions. Some customers don’t want to move ERP workloads to a hyperscaler. These customers may be restricted in some form, perhaps having data privacy concerns or legal reasons to have an on-premise solution. They may also have highly integrated SAP and non-SAP systems that need co-location to other systems. How can they take advantage of RISE with SAP? DXC and SAP partner with providers like Dell and HPE to offer RISE with SAP S/4HANA® Cloud, private edition, tailored option for customer data center. In this option the customer selects the data center of their choice and can have a cloud experience with the benefits of a data center solution. DXC works to bring our state-of-the-art ITO services to provide a wrapper around RISE with SAP to ensure it complies with your legal, statutory and data requirements.   

Buying and contracting patterns for RISE take shape

We also are starting to see buying and contracting patterns evolve. These patterns are defined by the business and IT strategy of the customer. We strongly encourage customers to fit RISE with SAP into their business and IT strategy and NOT be defined by it. This enables RISE with SAP to help achieve success for the business, IT, SAP and partners.  

Let’s have a look at the following 4 customer patterns:

ITO strategy customers. In this case the customer has outsourced the management of the IT landscape and cloud workloads to an ITO partner. Customers often maintain strategic control of IT but leverage an IT managed services provider for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), IT operations (DevOps) and IT service management (ITSM) coordination across the enterprise. These customers are best served by leveraging the partner-managed cloud for SAP applications and technology solutions to meet their current IT operating model. This approach also has the benefit that the customer needs to sign only one contract with an SAP Partner like DXC to include migration and other related IT needs for a complete solution, leveraging RISE with SAP at the core. Additionally, using this approach allows the IT service provider to bundle RISE with SAP with other services to achieve the desired business outcome.

Advisory services customers. Another pattern is represented by customers who leverage advisory and transformation services from an IT service provider or consulting firm. These customers manage their own ITIL, DevOps and ITSM processes in-house and may even manage some workloads directly. However, they depend on consulting and other IT service providers to advise them and perform transformation or IT strategy projects with them.

Resell for midsize customers. In this case the customer has a simple IT landscape and is interested in having a partner provide some advisory services but is also interested in purchasing SAP services directly via an SAP value-added reseller.

Insourced IT without advisors. In this case the customer has a strong internal IT capability, managing the entire estate in-house including ITIL, DevOps and ITSM processes and defining their own transformation and IT strategy projects. Such a customer leans on partners only to execute projects providing skilled labor. These customers buy RISE with SAP directly from SAP, manage the implementation themselves and outsource parts of the project as needed.

Being a RISE with SAP provider across all models discussed above gives DXC a unique position to help our customers select the approach to their business transformation that best aligns to their business outcomes, IT operating model and partnering strategy. With over 800 SAP customers and 6,800 SAP systems managed by DXC, we have the experience to provide a holistic cloud approach to assist you with your overall journey, providing the optimum balance between business and IT objectives and outcomes.  

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