2-tier ERP – How to Hit a Home Run in Global Expansion

Your subsidiaries are probably a major component of your global strategy. Whether they were grown organically, or came into the organization through an acquisition, they are the lifeblood of growth. They can go where the opportunities are, quickly. But, leaving them to fend for themselves is usually not the best approach.

Where Intelligent ERP Comes into Play

Subsidiaries need to be able to scale quickly, at the lowest cost possible, often with very few IT resources. They need an IT infrastructure that helps them thrive locally, but also allows them to leverage services and resources from the corporate mothership to build competitive advantage. At the same time, Corporate needs to have a clear, real-time view of what is happening across their subsidiary ecosystem – From an IT perspective, a Finance perspective, and an Operations perspective.

Because organizations are finding that many of their smaller subsidiaries don’t need the sophistication of the ERP solution that Corporate uses, they are looking for alternatives. An intelligent cloud ERP solution is the perfect fit for this situation.

Maximizing Value and Increasing Visibility

When a company implements a different ERP for subsidiaries than they have at Corporate, the industry calls this a 2-tier ERP strategy. While a 2-tier ERP strategy, driven by stand-alone SAP S/4HANA Cloud, provides high value to subsidiaries, most companies are finding that the best way to maximize the value they receive from subsidiaries is to extend Corporate services, like HR and Procurement, and resources, like Manufacturing and Distribution, out to these subsidiaries.

To optimize this hybrid environment, increase Corporate real-time visibility into subsidiary activity, and support the management of cross organizational processes more efficiently, SAP has built integrations from SAP S/4HANA Cloud to Corporate SAP solutions. Available today are integrations that support Finance, Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, and Plan to Product. Pre-built integrations, combined with an extensive set of available countries, makes SAP S/4HANA Cloud the ideal solution on which to build a 2-tier ERP strategy and hit a home run in global expansion.