SAP in 2025

[0:00]Welcome back, guys. Chris here and in this video, I want to talk about SAP as it currently stands. Now, anyone who's ever dealt with the other ERP systems should have familiarity with the fact that SAP in comparison is a massive ecosystem. And in addition to that, it's currently in the process of having a massive change in the landscape for SAP and its various products. So I want to really set the stage for that so you can understand where SAP is today and what it's going to look like moving forward. And before we dive directly into that subject, I also want to make it very clear that this video is actually part of a series of videos on SAP. It's an SAP introductory series. This is the second video in that series. So I already have a what is SAP video that is released. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already done so. And I'm going to have several other videos diving deeper into again that SAP ecosystem, what are the core things that you need to understand before you dive into very specific products, how to use them, etc. So with all of that mind, let's talk about SAP. And when you set the stage for where it currently stands, you also need to understand where SAP has come from. Because again, they're going through a transitionary period and it's important to look back on where they're coming from to understand where they are and where they're going to move forward to. So, I've already talked about this a little bit in my what is SAP video, but just to quickly recap over the years, because SAP's been around for decades, they had like many software companies, they had new products coming out every few years that were upgrading things, new technology coming out with a fully new ERP product. And that went on for many, many decades up until the release of S for Hana in 2015. S for Hana was really a pivot point and marked a major change because at that point, instead of recognizing that there's going to be new products coming down the pipeline, they definitively said, listen, this is now our flagship ERP product. And from here on out, we're going to take an approach similar to what you might see with some other systems like Net Suite, where it's one product and that product's going to be enhanced and improved as time goes forward. So they're not going to be coming out with these new additions time and time again. Now, it's not to say that it is the only ERP product for SAP at this point. There are still two additional options, you have business one and business by design. But honestly, first off, they're quite old. Business One is over 20 years old and business by design is almost 20 years old. So that is one thing, they're definitely not new software. And in addition to that, they're both in the niche of small to mid-sized businesses, which to be frank, that is not SAP's specialty. SAP specialty has always been ERP products for large enterprise-sized corporations. So those two products, although I'm sure in future videos I'll talk about them in their own right, it's just not relevant and it's not worth talking about in the grand scheme of SAP as it currently stands and where it's going. So let's just focus in on S for Hana. That marked a pivot change. That's where it became the flagship product and at that point, from 2015 on, for years, everything the marketing team was putting out from SAP was all about S for Hana. How amazing the Hana database was, how innovative the software for S for Hana and all the modules that went into it, how incredible that was. And it was incredible for the time. That went on for many, many years, when you went to the Sapphire Convention, it was all they talked about, and then if you come to today, right? If you go on the website for SAP right now, and I invite you to do so, you are going to be hard pressed to find the term S for Hana mentioned anywhere on the website. You'll find it if you look in the sections, especially for like customer testimonials, you'll see it here and there, but it's not put front and center as a product that S for Hana or I should say SAP is promoting. So why that change? Why is it gone from 2015 and the years following that where they constantly talk about S for Hana to the point where now, it's almost like SAP is downplaying S for Hana, not really bringing it up that much in the conversation and focusing more on other things such as the business suite. Why is that occurring? There's a number of different reasons for it, but there's really one main concept that I think is pretty easy to understand. And it's kind of the almost like the business model of how they're going to be selling products. If you think about it from an analogy standpoint, I would compare it to buying a car as opposed to buying a custom built computer. So if you buy a car, which I would say is kind of the way things have been, where you buy the car and S for Hana is the car. So it's like a main product that you're purchasing and on top of that product, you can buy almost like little features that attach on to that core product. So you can have like little modules and if we're taking the car analogy, that would be things like do you want the standard model of that car or do you want the luxury model? Do you want the sunroof or the leather seats or the high-tech dashboard? There's all these different features that you could add on to the car that you're buying. But if you compare that to buying a custom built computer, if you've ever had to buy one of those or gone through that experience, it is very, very different. It's true that you will generally find some kind of a model that you're going to be using as like a framework. But when you start going through the various parameters, you're going to come across CPU and the nine different options for CPUs that you can select. And then when you get to the RAM, there's six different options of RAM. The storage memory, a bunch of different options, same thing with the fan drive and the storage space, as well as the graphics card. Every single one of these categories that are main, you could say process areas or components of the computer are going to have numerous different options that you can select from. So it no longer becomes just buying a product and then turning on certain additional features, but really more like going through a shopping mall or you could say a grocery store where you've got all these items on the shelf and you can pick and choose what works best for you to compile something together. It really, you could say the product that you're getting at the end of the day with your ERP system is an aggregate of all of these different choices that you've made. So that is the shift that they're going in where they're coming away from just focusing on S for Hana and they're pivoting to look at all of these different products that we have and choose all the combination of them that's going to be best for your company. Now, if you want to kind of into it as to why they would choose that approach, there's many different reasons. You can take somewhat of a cynical view and say that certainly from a profit and revenue standpoint for SAP, it's much, much better to go with that model where you've got lots of different products you're selling as opposed to just a core product. And I would argue that for a lot of clients, this is actually beneficial for them as well. It allows more power of choice, more flexibility in constructing the system. Though, I wouldn't say it's beneficial for all clients, there's definitely older SAP clients that are now being forced to transition in many instances faster than they would like to onto this cloud-based approach and system. So, it's not beneficial for everybody, but in general, it's certainly a sensible decision for SAP and then for many of their clients and also looking into the future, it's the best direction to go into. And it's important to understand what that means from the product standpoint. So I want to pull up a graphic now. This is a graphic that SAP has officially released to try to give context in terms of their whole product ecosystem and how these various components work together. And as flashy and pretty and rainbowesque as it is, these is kind of a perfect example of one of these graphics that I think looks cool, but is not particularly helpful. If you already understand very precisely how the ecosystem works, you can look at this graphic and understand, oh, I see how these, you know, they're trying to play these things together. But frankly, if you don't know what's going on, I feel like people can look at this and come away really having no context of what is going on. So, what I would like to do in the upcoming videos in this series is really start to dive into, now that we understand, we've got this a la cart approach of choosing products and combining them together into a, a kind of an amalgamation of an ERP. Now, let's start going through the various products and the groupings of products so that we can start understanding what are we even dealing with. So that is what I'm going to be discussing in the next video, starting with what is still arguably the beating heart of any SAP ERP, which is S for Hana. In the meantime, if you found this video helpful, please hit that like button. And if you want to see more videos like this, I'm going to be releasing a new video for this introductory series every week moving forward. And on the heels of that, I'll be coming out with videos and full-fledged courses diving into specific SAP products. So if any of that's interesting to you, hit the subscribe button, check out my super training website if you're interested in full courses, and with all of that in mind, I hope to see you in the next video.