Organizations deploying SAP S/4HANA in their business will benefit from keeping the solution as close to standard as possible, which allows for faster adoption of innovations that SAP delivers both for cloud and on-premise systems.
SAP experts often refer to this as a cloud mindset or clean core strategy To help customers execute this approach, SAP Activate includes guidance and governance for application of the so-called golden rules for implementing SAP S/4HANA. In this post, we will review the approach and rules in more detail.
SAP S/4HANA offers a high level of flexibility and extensibility options that are embedded in the solution and enabled with the full ABAP development environment. Some choices that the implementation team makes during the project could lead to increased total cost of ownership during the regular operations and upgrades of the environment later. As you implement the solution, SAP recommends project teams to stay close to the standard functionality and limit the use of some extensibility and custom coding techniques to absolutely critical cases where the solution needs to be adapted to support the business objectives.
SAP has published five golden rules for implementing SAP S/4HANA that provide project teams, architects, technical and functional consultants, and key users with guidelines to implement the solution in a way to make it easier to upgrade and continuously enhance.
We’ll walk through each of the golden rules in the following sections and explain how to apply it in your SAP S/4HANA project. First, let’s look at the rules at a high level and discuss their business benefits.
Rules and Benefits
Let’s begin with a high-level overview of the five golden rules and consider their business benefits. The five golden rules are as follows.
1 Start With Preconfigured Processes and Foster a Cloud Mindset by Adhering to Fit-to-Standard and Agile Deployment Detailed in SAP Activate
The following activities fall under this rule:
- Adopt SAP standard processes via SAP Best Practices, the enterprise management layer for SAP S/4HANA, SAP standard content, or SAP partner templates for fit-to-standard.
- Where the preconfigured processes don’t exist, process configuration and personalization should follow SAP's recommended configuration standards.
- Use SAP Fiori UX, predefined processes, and data.
2 Build Your Solution on Quality Data (Configuration, Master, and Transactional) to Leverage Innovations
To keep data clean and streamlined, follow these guidelines pertaining to this rule:
- Ensure data quality, including accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, validity, and uniqueness.
- Manage data volumes to optimize resource utilization and ensure data privact.
3 Ensure the Use of Modern Integration Technologies
To use modern integration technologies, follow these guidelines:
- Use public APIs (also known as allow-listed APIs).
- Provide no native access to APIs that aren’t public.
- Follow SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology and SAP Activate guidance for integration.
- Use SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) functionality for cloud integration.
4 Ensure Use of Modern Extensibility Technologies
To use modern extensibility technologies, follow these guidelines:
- Follow guidance to extend SAP S/4HANA in the cloud and on-premise with ABAP-based extensions: (1) extend solution using released remote or local SAP APIs; (2) extend SAP objects only via predefined extension points; and (3) leverage cloud-enabled and released technologies.
- Develop company extensions in a side-by-side approach using SAP BTP.
- Leverage key user extensibility for no-code extensions.
- Use developer extensibility to create custom code where needed.
- Avoid backend enhancements.
- Don’t modify SAP source code.
5 Ensure Transparency on Deviations
You can ensure transparency via the following methods:
- Clearly document any deviations as part of the implementation; this will help the company replace these with standard capabilities if they are offered in the future.
- Use the standard capabilities of ALM tools like SAP Solution Manager or SAP Cloud ALM to document the solution.
Companies that adhere to these rules realize the following benefits.
Adopting standard processes reduces the number of decisions and effort to configure, tailor, and test the solution, thus resulting in faster time and lower effort for implementation. This approach also allows for tailoring the solution when an organization will gain value from using a customized solution rather than the standard. In many ways, this is a balancing act of implementing the solution close to standard and maximizing the benefits the organization can extract from the solution.
Reducing the number of changes in the solution leads to cleaner software that is easier to upgrade and continuously enhance, thus leading to lower overall cost of initial implementation and ongoing upgrades.
A clean core allows your organization to innovate at a faster rate as you’re ready to leverage the regular innovations SAP delivers in your system. Organizations that adhere to the clean core strategy can leverage innovation more quickly and respond to changing business conditions faster.
Adopting standard software exposes your organization to less risk that could be introduced in custom code during the project, including potential security gaps.
By adhering to standard applications, organizations don't introduce potential technical debt in their processes, extensions, integrations, or data as they adhere to SAP-recommended practices, reducing the technical debt of the solution and increasing their ability to embrace innovation regardless of their transition path to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition or on-premise.
Rule 5 stipulates the need to document the key configuration decisions and any deviation from the golden rules. Having clear documentation of the decisions used to design the solution allows organizations to be less dependent on one system integrator and provides them with choice in the market.
Using modern technologies, such as open APIs for extensibility and integration, sets up the system for the future and allows organizations to benefit from the well-designed system longer as the technologies evolve. Using old technology will lead to them becoming obsolete, and organizations will need to invest in redesigning and rebuilding specific parts of the system that use old technology after they become obsolete or get phased out.
Related reading: "Mastering SAP S/4HANA Projects with SAP Activate: Expert Insights from Sven Denecken, Jan Musil, and Srivatsan Santhanam"
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book SAP Activate: Project Management for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA by Sven Denecken, Jan Musil, and Srivatsan Santhanam.
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