Plan4U: A Confident Roadmap to Digital Transformation

Many of you reading this article may feel like you are faced with a challenging choice. We all recognize and understand the implications of our SAP third-generation platform reaching the end of mainstream maintenance on December 31, 2027. But in Utegration’s experience advising utilities facing this challenge, this demarcation also provides an opportunity to improve, transform, and make our business ready for the next decade or more! 

We truly believe this is an inflection point. A point defining when to proceed with the S/4HANA transformation and where to focus investments for targeted effectiveness and efficiency gains.  Utegration advises that utilities not just consider this simply as a technology “upgrade.”  Moving to S/4HANA is an opportunity for strategic improvement and transformation. 

Why these perspectives?

We believe the SAP S/4HANA technology is a platform for innovation, built on data availability, process optimization, and user simplification. This next generation of solutions is focused on providing day-to-day users with increased non-technical capabilities. This allows users to manage and adapt business, customer, and field capabilities without strong dependencies on traditional information technology resources — it’s an agile environment enabling digital transformation. 

Now the reality check!

We did say when and where to start. Based on our collective experiences and insights from our customers, we have developed a focused S/4HANA transformation approach – Plan4U. The approach provides clarity for a the essential steps to migrate to the new technology as well as a visual understanding of how these new capabilities transform the end-to-end business, utility, and customer processes. To accomplish this in a short window of time, we leverage our S/4HANA accelerator, Utility4U™. With it, we show you visual demonstrations of persona-based, leading end-to-end processes and interactions, so you can see and fully understand how this digital platform enables your team for the future. 

Creating the path forward

The Plan4U efforts focus on building “your predictable path forward.” In other words, it’s a roadmap.  And as with any transformation journey, you must: 

• Prepare for the journey by executing “house in order” activities associated with code remediation, data transformation readiness, and technical preparations 

• Consider options to optimize any existing processes and transactions you plan to carry forward into the new footprint to achieve early benefits and readiness 
• Evaluate S/4HANA and its supporting technologies to simplify user interaction, provide visualization of data and information, and create efficiencies through automation 
• Identify your leading capabilities to carry forward and define a timeline for ongoing innovation enabled by the S/4HANA technology 
• Understand the timelines, resources, technologies, and costs associated with the journey to plan your budgets and projects 

At Utegration, we are focused on ensuring your company’s journey to S/4HANA generates the most value, is the least disruptive, and provides the greatest return on your SAP investment. Our recipe for getting you there provides your business and technical teams with a comprehensive roadmap (Plan4U) and a way to see what your future on S/4HANA will look like (using the Utility4U platform as a proof of concept). With these unique tools and our unsurpassed industry and SAP expertise, Utegration is confident we can help you take advantage of this unique inflection point and create the digital utility of the future. 

Learn more about Plan4U and Utility4U.