Digital Transformation, everybody is talking about it. What is it? Digital Transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet the changing business needs. Today’s business and market requirements require reimagining your business processes. Should your wholesale company create a strategy to digital transformation? What are the obstacles your company faces? Our customers’ have been asking themselves these questions and they’ve been asking us at DataXstream. For all SAP customers the answer across the industry is a resounding “yes” and SAP offers a road map to digital transformation. However when speaking with our wholesale customers we find that for many of them this transformation should begin with the separation of the sales process.
Most wholesale customers have created significant amounts of custom code around sales
On average, our wholesale customers report that 50% of their ERP resources are used to drive sales activity. As a result of this focus on sales and sales revenue, these customers have to create large amounts of customer code to run their sales processes smoothly. For many of our customers this custom code is the biggest obstacle to moving their business to SAP S/4. One way to reduce the project scope and to move forward is to decouple the sales process.
Address the sales process first and pave the way forward to digital transformation
Older, custom sales processes were not developed for the new digital economy. Traditional approaches to software are rigid and unable to adapt to changes in technology. Today, markets and consumer demands are constantly changing, and wholesale distributers need to be agile and anticipate these changes to stay competitive. The sales processes of today need to be web and mobile enabled. This is the goal of the digital enterprise.
The custom code that many wholesale and distribution companies run today are built on older UI technology unable to support online or mobile purchases. Because this technology is no longer supported, companies need to upgrade their platform, but with custom code in the way they are unable to perform the required upgrade. This is critical, as the inability to support commercial transactions on web and mobile platforms is holding many companies, including yours, back.
One way to address this is to use apps in the SAP App Center
DataXstream has found that SAP customers who use apps found in the SAP App Center can de-couple sales from the upgrade to digital transformation. How? SAP App Center Apps like DataXstream’s OMS+ are curated by SAP. Many of them are compatible with ECC as well as SAP S/4. This compatibility allows the wholesale company to move sales onto an efficient, user friendly SAP App before upgrading their entire SAP environment. Because the app is compatible with both instances, sales can be moved to the app with minimal disruption and customers can see the ROI within a short time. This allows the company to then map out a strategy to move the business to S/4 without disrupting sales, lowering the total effort in an upgrade and ultimately reducing the risk. Sales is positioned to immediately begin taking advantage of current technology and immediately offer a better customer experience to your customers.
The secondary benefit of an SAP App Center App is seen in change management resources. Many of the solutions in the SAP APP Center reduce the stress on It resources. By choosing a streamlined, user friendly SAP App, fewer resources are required for training reducing the drain on It resources still further.
If custom code is a major obstacle in your company’s move towards digital transformation we would suggest you consider this approach: Stage 1 upgrade sales with OMS+ from the SAP APP Center and stage 2 move the enterprise to SAP S/4HANA.
To learn more about DataXsteam’s OMS+ Order Management System for SAP please see :
