GRC Tuesdays: Announcing SAP’s plans for a next ge...

T_Frenehard · ‎2023 May 09

Vishal Verma – Head of Solution Management, Risk, Compliance and Tax, and Jochen Thierer – Head of Development for Governance, Risk & Compliance at SAP announced today plans to roll out a next generation Governance, Risk, and Compliance platform, successor to its current SAP GRC solution in use by thousands of customers worldwide.

As highlighted in the Latest Trends in Governance, Risk, and Compliance Technology blog released a few weeks ago, in addition to global trends that impacted all processes and systems of the organization, there are also some underlying currents that are having a specific impact on GRC.

Such as the need for a more integrated approach to GRC, still being able to select best of breed when and where it makes sense, but also cross-system integration and the quest for autonomous and analytical GRC for instance.

To address this outlook, and to help companies future-proof their Governance, Risk, and Compliance processes and automation, SAP is announcing a new version of its GRC platform: SAP GRC edition for SAP HANA.

Building on over 20 years in market and thousands of satisfied customers across the globe and in all industries, and on its position as a leader in various reports such as Chartis RiskTech Quadrants or KuppingerCole Leadership Compass, and while SAP provides dedicated SaaS applications such as SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance and SAP Financial Compliance Management for instance, for customers preferring a private cloud or on-premise deployment it was time for SAP to reinvent GRC software to accompany customers for their challenges of the next decades.

Leveraging state of the art technologies and redesigned workflows and structure, this is precisely what SAP GRC edition for SAP HANA will offer.

From today until its release planned in Q1 2026, SAP will work with customers, partners and analysts to build SAP GRC edition for SAP HANA as a successor solution to its current SAP GRC version 12.0 platform that includes SAP Access Control, SAP Process Control and SAP Risk Management.

What can you expect?

* Improved user satisfaction thanks to consumer-grade user experience with SAP award winning SAP Fiori interface and fully redesigned business workflows for access governance, risk and control management

* Augmented decision making thanks to real-time insights and advanced visualization capabilities available at your fingertips turning casual users into GRC experts, and GRC experts into business advisors

* Future ready thanks to a fully redesigned technical and functional architecture making it easier to quickly adapt the platform to fulfil new regulatory requirements or business process adaptations

* Proactive risk management with integrated data-driven automation in every business process step providing a single contextualised perspective of the risks

* Effortless upgrade path from SAP GRC version 12.0 to SAP GRC edition for HANA so that you can start benefiting from all improvements, rapidly.

* The same dedication to GRC from SAP. As explained by Vishal Verma: “Our objective is to propose a long-term vision for GRC technology that customers can look forward to, and is fully inscribed within SAP’s strategy. We strongly believe that SAP GRC edition for SAP HANA will provide customers with the advanced technological platform they need to manage the business challenges they face in what will most likely continue to be an unprecedented time”. This dedication to the GRC topic was further reinforced by Jochen Thierer who resituated the new platform in the context of the long SAP GRC history “For over 2 decades now, SAP has supported customers on their GRC journey. With this new GRC built exclusively on SAP S/4HANA Foundation and SAP S/4HANA, we’re continuing this long-term partnership with them”.

* Within an open ecosystem of partners!

The new version has also been announced in SAP Note 3326989 - Announcement of the Upcoming Release of SAP Access Control, SAP Process Control and SAP Risk Management and is planned for the 1st quarter of 2026. Regular updates will be provided in the GRC Tuesdays blogs.

[Update 17/05/2023] Breaking news – upcoming release of additional SAP solutions for GRC has also just been announced!

In addition to the new version of the SAP GRC platform that includes SAP Access Control, SAP Process Control and SAP Risk Management mentioned in this blog, SAP has also just announced a new SAP S/4HANA version of SAP Audit Management, and SAP Business Integrity Screening (previously known as SAP Fraud Management). This update is also planned for Q1 2026.

This means a complete new suite of solutions for Three Lines (of Defense) planned for early 2026!

In addition to being built exclusively on SAP S/4HANA Foundation and SAP S/4HANA, this new release will deliver a technical landscape harmonization and an effortless upgrade path for existing customers.

More details on SAP Note 3334350 - Announcement of the Upcoming Release of SAP assurance and compliance software for SAP S/4HANA

[Update February 2024] Mainstream Maintenance for version 12.0

As per SAP Note 3326989, mainstream maintenance timeline for SAP Access Control 12.0, SAP Process Control 12.0 and SAP Risk Management 12.0 will be until end of 2027, with extended maintenance until 2030, and customer-specific maintenance only from there onwards.

[Update June 2024] Customer Engagement Initiative

The SAP Customer Engagement Initiative for SAP GRC version 2026 is now open, with its registration closing on July 11th 2024.

Goals and Activities include:

Gather requirements and use cases
Identify existing pain points
Validate our concepts and plans (sounding board)
Prioritize potential features / processes

Note

The content in this blog post is all subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this blog post is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality. This blog post is for informational purposes and may not be incorporated into a contract.