Here at Corevist, we recommend that companies launch B2B ecommerce before they migrate from ECC to S/4HANA. But what about companies that aren’t on ECC? What if you’re coming to S/4HANA as a new SAP client?

In this scenario, you should implement Corevist in parallel with S/4HANA.

Here’s why.

1. Selling more stuff now can help fund your S/4 migration

B2B eCommerce is a powerful growth engine for revenue. And that net-new revenue can help fund the massive project of migrating to S/4HANA.

That’s good news, because 85% of B2B buyers will abandon a supplier with a bad digital experience. Whether you have an old B2B eCommerce site that’s hard to use, or you don’t have B2B eCommerce at all, your customers want an easier way to do business with you. They want to browse products, build and place orders, and track orders, shipments, and invoices. They want to do this when it’s convenient for them, on any device.

In fact, the impact of B2B eCommerce is significant. Here are a few surprising stats.

• Corevist clients regularly get B2B eCommerce orders valued over $500,000
• Some clients get orders approaching $1,000,000 in value

We also have great revenue growth stories, like Oregon Tool seeing 325% digital revenue growth—or LORD Corporation processing $1,200,000 in B2B eCommerce orders per week after launch.

So what’s the biggest reason to launch B2B eCommerce in parallel with S/4?

It’s revenue growth, plain and simple.

2. You don’t want to miss out on essential S/4HANA configurations

When you’re migrating from ECC to S/4HANA, your existing ERP gives you a blueprint for how you will configure S/4HANA. You may make intentional changes, but by and large, your goal is to replicate your ECC functionality in S/4.

When you’re starting from scratch in S/4HANA, you have a lot to figure out.

That’s where our perspective comes in.

Some configurations might make sense from an internal perspective, but they may not play well for your integrated customer portal or B2B ecommerce solution.

We might also know of simpler ways to deliver the value that you need in S/4HANA. These best practices will put your S/4 system in good shape for integrating with Corevist. They’ll also ensure your ERP is configured with a customer-centric approach, which is critical in today’s fast-paced digital climate. 

This is one of the biggest reasons that it’s best to implement Corevist in parallel with S/4. Our consulting perspective helps you align your ERP configuration with best practices for customer-facing integration. That means your customer portal or ecommerce solution hits the ground running—and it also means your ERP is better configured to support you through ongoing disruptions in customer expectations.

You can get to the same place if you implement Corevist after S/4HANA, but you may have to undo some work that was done in your S/4 implementation. That’s not a great use of resources, and it may cause business process changes that will ripple out through multiple departments.

It’s better to work through everything now, during your S/4 implementation. Ultimately, this path is more efficient and less disruptive to your organization.

3. You shouldn’t wait that long to give customers the digital experiences they demand

In today’s digital climate, 85% of B2B buyers will drop a supplier with a bad digital experience.

If you have no digital experience during your S/4HANA project, that’s not great. It’s even worse if you maintain a disconnected B2B ecommerce portal that can’t show pricing and inventory from your ERP. Implementing Corevist after S/4, rather than at the same time, will introduce a significant delay in addressing this problem.

What kind of delay are we talking about?

If you wait until you’ve launched S/4HANA, your Corevist GoLive will fall at least 3-5 months out from your S/4HANA launch. Your IT resources will be ironing out the kinks in the new S/4 implementation, and some team members may be taking vacations that were delayed due to S/4. 

In comparison, running the implementations in parallel puts your Corevist launch about 1 month out from your S/4HANA GoLive.

Two months is an eternity in today’s digital climate. Aside from the reduced ability to capture revenue, you’re looking at creating friction for customers who are already experiencing supply chain disruption and economic uncertainty.

In other words, it would be best if you had that B2B portal yesterday. But your S/4HANA project is the perfect opportunity to get a jumpstart on launching your modern customer experience.

4. Integrated UAT delivers both systems faster

You’re going to do UAT (user acceptance testing) for S/4HANA.

You’re going to do it for your Corevist B2B portal, too.

When you bundle these into one UAT initiative, the cross-pollination offers a more efficient path to a clean, stable launch in both systems.

This is significant, since Corevist reads and writes data to S/4HANA in real time. You want to uncover problems in both systems simultaneously so you can address them with a holistic view.

The end result? You’ll launch both systems faster, and you’ll get everyone onboarded sooner, both internal or external users.

The only question is when you plan to launch S/4HANA, and when you want to launch Corevist. We find that 1 month later works well, but we can align around reasonable goals.

The takeaway: Treat S/4 and your B2B portal as one transformation project

When you bundle your B2B ecommerce project as part of your S/4 implementation, you can roll it into a much larger transformational business case. Some organizations find it easier to get funding for an essential B2B ecommerce solution when it’s treated as a line item in the S/4 migration. This helps ensure that your customers and your organization get the solution they need. 

An integrated B2B portal also forces you to keep clean data and business rules in S/4HANA. In fact, the portal acts as a catalyst to push your organization toward best practices in data governance.

When your B2B portal “gets in on the ground floor” of S/4HANA, it provides the guidance you need to become a customer-centric organization. And being customer-centered definitely starts in your ERP. That’s why we recommend implementing Corevist and S/4HANA in parallel.