As SAP professional consultants, staying up-to-date with emerging technologies and strategic directions is essential for both career growth and providing high-value services to clients. The SAP TechEd Virtual event, Oct. 2024 [SAP TechEd Virtual] and TechEd on Tour sessions offered a unique opportunity to explore SAP’s evolving landscape, from AI-powered tools to hybrid ERP strategies. These events serve as a window into SAP’s goals, outlining a future that merges the strength of legacy systems with modern cloud capabilities.

This blog provides an overview of SAP’s strategic directions based on insights shared during the TechEd events and observations from the field. As the SAP ecosystem expands, understanding these trends will be critical to positioning yourself and your clients for success.

SAP’s Vision: Innovation through AI, Cloud, and Process Optimization

At the core of SAP’s strategy is a vision to transform enterprises into intelligent, data-driven organizations. Several key initiatives were introduced at SAP TechEd, including AI-powered enhancements, cloud platforms, and business process tools. These developments reflect SAP’s commitment to bridging traditional ERP solutions with cutting-edge technologies.

  1. AI Integration: Joule and Beyond
    • SAP’s new AI copilot, Joule, is a central focus. Joule aims to deliver AI-powered insights across multiple domains—ranging from ABAP-based customizations to JavaScript and Node.js processes within SAP’s cloud ecosystem.
    • The goal is to augment business operations and automate repetitive tasks, empowering users with real-time suggestions and process recommendations. Joule’s versatility showcases SAP’s intention to infuse AI throughout its product portfolio, making AI tools an integral part of business processes.

Summary: AI is becoming a core component of SAP’s strategy, enhancing business functions across development, finance, logistics, and more. It is essential to explore how AI can augment ERP processes and improve decision-making in real-time environments.

SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP): The Cloud Foundation

SAP is promoting the Business Technology Platform (BTP) as a central hub for cloud solutions and data integration. This platform is critical in connecting on-premise systems, cloud services, and external data sources, enabling organizations to streamline operations across hybrid environments.

  • SAP BTP supports multi-cloud environments, helping organizations deploy cloud-native applications without being tied to a single cloud provider.
  • Data-driven applications built on BTP will benefit from native support for AI, machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics tools, ensuring that clients can respond to real-time business changes.

Summary: Understanding BTP’s architecture and capabilities will be essential in driving data integrations and modern cloud projects. Knowing how to leverage BTP’s tools will open doors to hybrid solutions, where legacy SAP systems interact with cloud platforms.

S/4HANA Transition: A Long but Inevitable Journey

A recurring theme at SAP TechEd was the migration from ECC to S/4HANA. While SAP encourages customers to embrace S/4HANA, the reality is that many organizations are still running legacy ECC systems.

  • The migration process is complex and costly, requiring data migrations, custom code adjustments, and process re-engineering.
  • SAP continues to offer support for hybrid solutions, allowing companies to maintain some legacy processes while integrating them with new technologies in S/4HANA.

Summary: The focus should be on providing migration expertise and helping clients navigate hybrid solutions. Mastering both ABAP optimizations for HANA and cloud-based extensions through SAP BTP will be key to supporting clients in this transition.

SAP Build and Signavio: Empowering Business Users with Low-Code Tools

SAP is expanding its low-code/no-code offerings with SAP Build and Signavio, focusing on enabling business users to streamline workflows and processes. These platforms reflect SAP’s commitment to democratizing application development, giving non-technical users tools to optimize business processes without needing extensive coding expertise.

SAP Build: Extending Applications with AI-Powered Copilot, Joule
  • SAP Build provides a low-code development platform that allows users to create workflows, applications, and business logic without requiring deep programming knowledge.
  • With the integration of AI copilot Joule, SAP Build users gain real-time assistance in workflow creation and business process automation. Joule offers intelligent suggestions to improve workflows, optimize data flows, and automate repetitive tasks.
  • Joule’s AI capabilities within SAP Build allow users to quickly design business logic by interacting with natural language commands, making it easier to create functionality across various SAP modules.

Summary: Knowing how to integrate SAP Build with core ERP processes and use AI-powered tools like Joule will open opportunities to collaborate with business users and enable faster development cycles.

SAP Signavio: Visualizing and Optimizing Business Processes
  • SAP Signavio focuses on business process modeling and analysis, providing tools to visualize, optimize, and manage complex workflows across the organization.
  • With Signavio, users can create process maps that outline critical workflows and identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or potential improvements.
  • The tool supports BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) standards, making it easy to document processes in a way that is understandable across departments.
  • Integration with SAP systems allows organizations to align process models with actual operational data, ensuring that performance gaps can be identified and addressed.
  • Signavio also facilitates collaborative process improvement initiatives, allowing multiple stakeholders to co-design and refine workflows in real time.

Summary: Familiarize themselves with Signavio to support clients in business process transformation efforts. With increasing focus on process efficiency and compliance, the ability to use Signavio for process analysis will become a key skill in business consulting engagements.

Navigating the Complexity of Multiple Development Environments

SAP now provides multiple development paths: traditional ABAP, CAP (Cloud Application Programming Model), and low-code tools like Build. This diversity reflects SAP’s attempt to serve both legacy customers and cloud adopters but creates some confusion about which tools to use for specific scenarios.

  • ABAP remains essential for core customizations, especially in S/4HANA implementations.
  • CAP (leveraging Node.js and JavaScript) enables the development of cloud-native applications.
  • SAP aims to integrate these environments with tools like Joule to reduce fragmentation and improve developer productivity.

Summary: Maintaining proficiency in ABAP while gaining working knowledge of CAP and SAP BTP. Staying adaptable across different environments will be essential as SAP’s ecosystem continues to evolve.

Looking Ahead: Preparing for the Future of SAP Consulting

The future of SAP consulting will involve balancing legacy expertise with modern tools. As companies transition to hybrid architectures, consultants must position themselves as guides through this transformation.

Key Areas to Focus On:

  1. Migration Expertise:
    Help clients transition from ECC to S/4HANA smoothly by offering technical and process expertise.
  2. AI Integration:
    Explore how AI-powered tools like Joule can enhance business processes and development workflows.
  3. BTP and Cloud Expertise:
    Develop skills in SAP BTP to enable seamless hybrid solutions and cloud deployments.
  4. Low-Code and Process Tools:
    Understand SAP Build and Signavio to support business users who want to optimize workflows and processes independently.
  5. Continuous Learning:
    Keep up with SAP’s evolving technologies to remain relevant in a dynamic consulting environment.
Conclusion: Bridging Tradition and Innovation in SAP Consulting

The SAP TechEd Virtual event highlighted SAP’s dual focus on preserving legacy capabilities while pushing toward AI, cloud, and process innovations. The key to success lies in balancing expertise in traditional tools like ABAP with modern technologies such as AI, SAP BTP, and low-code platforms.

By staying adaptable and engaged with SAP’s latest offerings is a key to becoming a valuable partners in helping businesses navigate the challenges of hybrid systems and digital transformation. The journey ahead may be complex, but the opportunities are immense for those who embrace both legacy knowledge and future innovation.