HANA’fication of SRM – A Point of view
With so much hullabaloo about HANA, what is in there for Clients who are currently using SRM?
Where are the business benefits envisaged? Is it just ‘improvement in performance’ or are there any process improvements just on account of HANA?
Performance perspective:
Firstly, with HANA’fication of SRM, SAP has clearly promised substantial performance improvement in areas where SRM 7.0x has historically been blamed for being painfully slow, as much as 6 to 8 times in various scenarios. For instance, the Personalized Object Work List (POWL) refresh and search speed for SRM Shopping carts and Purchase orders are indicated to go up by 7 times and those for SRM Contracts go up by 5 times, and Sourcing cockpit search speed goes up by 7 times.
Process perspective:
Secondly, from a process perspective, the one ‘strategic’ pointer we see coming from SAP now is that they are bringing in ‘shopping cart requisitioning’ within S/4 HANA itself (though there is no news about a road map on the rest of the functionality). The grand vision, from what one hears is that processes currently running out of SRM (and other external SAP boxes like CRM, SCM) would eventually get merged into S/4 HANA. However, this is possibly expected to happen in few years from now though it is not known how soon in the future.
Database perspective:
Thirdly, it is important to note ‘SRM on HANA’ does not involve ‘data model’ optimization as in the case of Simple Finance or Simple Logistics where SAP has optimized the number of database tables. In other words, it simply means SRM, instead of running on Oracle, SQL Server or other databases, once migrated, would then run on HANA database with the table structures remaining AS-IS.
All of the above perspectives in mind, as trusted partners to the global SRM clientele, how do we brace ourselves for a Client query on this important emerging topic?
At the outset, SRM can be HANA’fied only with SRM 7.03. In other words, if Clients are currently running SRM 7.02 or earlier version, there will be need for an upgrade to SRM 7.03 with migration to HANA.
Finally, on compatibility of an ‘SRM 7.0x with or without HANA’ system with ‘back end’ SAP systems? Depending on the Client’s current circumstances and immediate future plans, the following combinations will be fine:
- ‘SRM 7.0x’ (w/o HANA) integration to ‘SAP ECC EhPx on HANA’
(or)
‘SRM 7.0x (w/o HANA)’ integration to ‘SAP S4 HANA’ system
- ‘SRM 7.03 on HANA’ integration to ‘SAP ECC EhPx (on other databases)’
(or)
‘SRM 7.03 on HANA’ integration to ‘SAP ECC EhPx (on HANA)’
(or)
‘SRM 7.03 on HANA’ integration to ‘SAP S4 HANA’ system
- ‘SRM 7.03 on HANA’ integration to a mix of multiple back end systems, ‘ECC EhPx (on HANA or on other databases)’ and ‘S4 HANA’ systems
Make your recommendations accordingly – I hope the above note helps clarify some of the haziness in your minds!!!
Good one Sai
I couldn't make much out of the recommendation maybe coz our focus has shifted in moving the Ariba way and not push SRM thru too much steroid ....though I liked your approach and questioning SAP on the value proposition as they are unclear themselves ....unless there is S4 content for SRM with tangible data model not just DB it won't help the critical mass of customers that are still going to see partial gain with the 5x and 7x speed on existing resource rich queries and for me it has been the POWL, sourcing cockpit and also a eRFX with over 10,000 line items that need to be bid optimized etx .....speed is secondary the VALUE prop still remains primary and it has to be yet proven for procurement ...
On the Ariba Network side the value prop is still promising where HANA'fication is expected to give some runtime recommendations during scheduling of a sourcing event or evaluating a potential or cutting a huge contract taking billions of Businrsss network transactions into the HANA computational realm for the algorithm to spit some intelligence for downstream decisions....
Keep these coming !
Tridip - thanks for your encouraging observations. As always, you got it right - we are still looking for some strongly tangible value props for HANA'fication of SRM though, meantime, we got to have our minds clear on 'how next' when Clients do seek some direction going into the near future (whether it is about HANA'fication of SRM or connected system like ECC). And, of course, your points on Ariba are spot-on, the use cases there are more tangible.
Hi Sai,
Thank you for sharing such a valuable blog on the future of SRM. This definitely helps and gives us the clarity about the upcoming SAP S/4 HANA and its integration with SRM.
Regards,
Abhishek Kumar
Hello Sai,
Thanks for your inputs on the future strategy of SRM with S4 HANA!!
I would like to make a note about the future procurement solution for on premise clients as ARIBA ideally suit for On Demand (Cloud based) clients.
Further, what are the advantages/benefits of migrating SRM to ARIBA, if SAP promotes S4 HANA with ARIBA?
I have seen many of the clients who is implemented SRM are going to HANA data base to enable the Fiori applications such as Purchase order and Contract factsheet apps.
What will be the exact replacement for SRM as I can't see exact match meither ARIBA nor S4 HANA?
Please share your thoughts on this which will be highly appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Ramesh Kyla
Hello Sai,
What about earlier versions of SRM like SRM 4.0 or SRM 5.0? If they remain on non HANA db, are they compatible with S/4 HANA?
Regards,
Sandeep