Recently I was asked to speak at an ASUG webinar on the topic of "Building a HANA Business Case," and one of the tools I mentioned was SAP’s Value Lifecycle Manager (VLM). I've been asked to give some more information both on the topic and the tool, so here goes.
Business Value from HANA
Business value is created by delivering improvements to how things are done today. The critical steps required to estimate the value impact of any technology enabled change initiative include: an assessment of the current state, a description of the capabilities / changes to be delivered, and a value model to quantify potential benefits. The best business cases go beyond just economic analysis by aligning to a company’s business strategy, prioritizing key capability requirements, and outlining a compelling case for change.
We see many companies leading with the solution before their business problem has been defined. This often sub-optimizes the opportunity to deliver business improvement since the focus is on replacing legacy systems with new technologies. The resulting analysis, limited to an IT TCO (total cost of ownership) comparison between these two options, is not a business case – because it has nothing to do with the business!
The real promise of HANA usually requires broader level thinking. Our experience has demonstrated that focusing at a business process level helps to uncover step-change improvements that impact revenue, COGS, SG&A, and working capital. These discussions begin with a business dialogue (e.g. where are the “blind spots” in how you operate today; Where do you have data that can be better leveraged in decision making; What are the key constraints to compressing cycle time; etc.), prior to architecting the right technology solution.
Value Lifecycle Manager
VLM was designed and developed to address this challenge, by identifying and measuring the expected value of SAP initiatives. VLM allows you to benchmark the health of your business relative to peer companies, diagnose the causes of performance gaps, and develop high-impact strategies for business value creation. VLM is an online tool that provides content and capabilities to explore in the context of your industry or line of business, assess process maturity, prioritize areas for improvement, and quantify the benefits of investment opportunities.
The platform, offered at no cost, is available as a self-service tool and covers the breadth of business and industry processes. SAP and ASUG have taken learnings from thousands of engagements through its Industry Value Engineers, and put them into one fully integrated on-demand platform.
You can collaborate with SAP Industry Value Engineers to scope and build business cases using pre-defined templates or by selecting the KPIs, value drivers and pain points you need from the tool’s vast content library.
Apart from benchmarking and business case creation, the Value Lifecycle Manager can be used to map key metrics performance against the top performers in your industry, and compare their metrics to yours, all in a confidential manner.
The content in the tool is constantly updated and includes templates to enable creation of Business cases for SAP HANA related initiatives, including the following areas:
- Suite on HANA (Business Case Template)
- BW on HANA (Business Case Template)
- High Performance Analytics Benchmarking Assessment
- Business Intelligence Benchmarking Assessment
- Big data & Advanced analytics Maturity Model Assessment
- Big data & Advanced analytics Architecture Assessment
How can you access the SAP Value Lifecycle Manager?
SAP Value Lifecycle Manager is a self-registration platform. Anyone can register on the platform to gain basic access to the resources available on value management.
Simply go to https://valuemanagement.sap.com to learn more or sign up.
What other support is available for business cases?
SAP’s Industry Value Engineering (IVE) team is available to address more complex business cases. IVEs are industry experts and strategy consultants that specialize in tying together business strategy with technology, working with customers to jointly develop strategic, fact-based, Board-level business cases. Simply contact your SAP Account Executive and ask to be connected to your Industry Value Engineer, or email valuemanagement@sap.com
by
Imran P Siddiqi, Sr Principal, Industry Value Engineering for HANA and PSG
