Good SAP Consulting Leaves You with Decisions, Not Slides

“We need a new CRM” is a possible solution. It is not yet a diagnosis. If quotes wait three days for approval, a new screen may leave the same queue in place, only better looking.

TL;DR: Good business consulting before an SAP project reduces uncertainty rather than producing slides. Follow one real transaction end to end, then demand five outputs: a measured problem, a process decision with an owner, a system boundary between ERP and CRM, a testable first step and a scoped commercial decision. In S/4HANA Public Cloud, where SAP’s standard is the default, this work is what keeps the fit-to-standard phase short.

Good business consulting should reduce uncertainty before implementation starts. You should leave with decisions that a delivery team can build against and a business owner can defend.

Follow one real transaction

Bring a recent quote, order or service request. Walk through it with the people who actually do the work. Where did it wait? Who copied data? Which rule required an exception? Include the handoff to finance, not just the part visible to sales.

An illustrative example: a quote waits because nobody owns discount approval above a threshold. The first change may be an approval rule and a named deputy. An integration could still help, but it cannot settle an unresolved commercial policy.

One transaction is not a statistic, so repeat the walk-through with two or three cases that took different paths. The pattern across them tells you whether the problem is a rule, a missing system function or a handoff between teams.

Ask for five tangible outputs

1. A measured problem. Define the metric, its source and the baseline. Separate waiting time from time spent working.
2. A process decision. Write down the standard path, exceptions and accountable owner.
3. A system boundary. Decide where prices, customers and order status are authoritative.
4. A testable first step. Specify the acceptance example and the evidence needed to continue.
5. A scoped commercial decision. Show assumptions, exclusions, dependencies and how changes affect cost.

A fixed-price assessment should have a clear boundary too. Agree which processes, interviews and sample data it covers. “We will understand everything” is not a useful deliverable.

Decide the ERP and CRM boundary early

Most costly surprises in SAP programmes sit between systems, not inside them: the quote whose price the ERP does not recognise, the order that will not post, the service case with no material behind it. Deciding the boundary is a business question before it is a technical one. Which system is the master for customers, products, prices and order status? Which team owns each record when two departments disagree?

When S/4HANA Public Cloud and Sales Cloud V2 are both in scope, both build on SAP’s Business Partner concept, which makes the answer easier but does not make it for you. Our overview of the integrated S/4HANA Public Cloud and Sales Cloud V2 stack shows a typical split of responsibilities. It also matters who answers these questions: when one team designs both halves, the boundary is settled once; our guide to the best SAP partner for Cloud ERP and CRM in Switzerland explains what the two-vendor alternative tends to cost.

Prepare the fit-to-standard phase

S/4HANA Public Cloud is implemented against SAP’s preconfigured best practices. In the fit-to-standard workshops of SAP Activate, your processes are compared with that standard and the gaps are documented. SAP publishes the scope items and process flows in the SAP Signavio Process Navigator, and the S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition documentation describes the standard scope.

Business consulting belongs before those workshops. If the organisation has not decided who approves discounts, how credit blocks are released or which exceptions it really needs, the fit-to-standard sessions turn into policy debates with the implementation team in the room. Arriving with those decisions made keeps the workshops focused on configuration, and makes it visible which gaps genuinely need an extension on SAP BTP.

Put a price on the problem carefully

Use your own volumes and observed handling time. Multiply transactions by avoidable minutes to estimate capacity that could be released. That is not automatically cash saved: someone must decide how the time will be used. Keep revenue assumptions separate, and test them rather than treating a spreadsheet scenario as a forecast.

Compare at least three options: change the process, configure the existing system, or introduce a new capability. Sometimes the best recommendation is to build less.

AI makes this work more valuable

AI can help prepare workshop material, classify sample records and draft acceptance tests. It cannot accept responsibility for your pricing policy or decide which department owns a disputed record. A senior consultant should make those choices explicit with your team, then validate the proposed flow with representative data.

What an assessment with us looks like

For companies moving from ECC to S/4HANA Public Cloud, our five-day S/4HANA readiness assessment follows this approach on a fixed price from CHF 12’000, credited against the transformation when commissioned. It covers a scope workshop with an inventory of the current system, custom objects and interfaces, the greenfield fit, a phased plan with a cost range, and a decision brief presented to leadership. It is also the usual first step of an ERP and CX transformation that includes the customer-facing side.

The practical result is a plan you can challenge: what happens first, who owns it, what success means and what could change the price. See how we work, or bring us one bottleneck for an assessment discussion.