The News: In response to market changes and customer feedback, SAP announced it has revamped its RISE with SAP offering to include new enhancements around AI, low-code application development, and additional capabilities for the CFO suite, SAP Datasphere, and SAP Business Network.
You can read a blog post discussing the release at SAP’s website.
SAP Announces Enhancements to RISE with SAP Commercial Packages
Analyst Take: SAP announced it is revamping its RISE with SAP offering based on customer feedback and changes in the enterprise software market. The company has infused its two main packages with new enhancements designed to help businesses undertake digital transformation and migration to the cloud:
- RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, premium: This augments SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition with access to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), features for low-code application development, additional capabilities for generative AI, CFO suite, SAP Datasphere, and SAP Business Network.
- RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, premium plus: This extends the premium edition with advanced sustainability features, expanded access to generative AI capabilities, and CFO solutions.
Key Enhancements to the RISE with SAP Packages
SAP is launching several enhancements designed to improve productivity, facilitate users’ ability to interact with data more easily, drive seamless collaboration, and improve decision-making.
- Joule is now available to RISE with SAP customers: SAP’s AI copilot, natively integrated into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, is designed to enable interactions in natural language and improve outcomes for end users and businesses.
- SAP includes SAP AI units for its premium edition customers to pilot already delivered, advanced AI innovations such as SAP Cash Application, SAP Business Integrity Screening, and SAP Field Service Management.
- SAP Datasphere: Now included in the premium edition for RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, it provides seamless access to mission-critical data from both ERP and third-party sources. This can help supercharge insights and support more informed decision-making across the organization.
- SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning: Now part of the premium edition, it is designed to help customers enhance their financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting using data from their entire system landscape.
- Streamlined Supplier Collaboration: SAP Business Network is now included in the premium edition, enabling customers to create a networked ERP with a supplier portal. This simplifies spend compliance, improves cash flow, and drives business value by facilitating closer collaboration with suppliers and automating procurement and invoice transactions.
- Personalized Onboarding: To help ensure a smooth transition to cloud ERP, SAP introduced embedded launch activities in every RISE with SAP package, provided through an assigned SAP advisor. The advisor helps customers to navigate the implementation roadmap and can provide education on the overall journey, RISE with SAP Methodology, the clean core strategy, and the initial setup of tools and services.
SAP’s Enhancements Reflect the Challenges of Conducting a Large-Scale Migration
SAP has focused on helping its customers move to S/4HANA, its cloud-based ERP offering, using both a stick (penalty) and carrot (incentive) approach. The stick is the December 2027 deadline, after which it will no longer provide mainstream support and maintenance for older SAP ERP systems.
Conversely, SAP provides carrots, reflected in the most recent enhancements to RISE with SAP packages, by providing access to Joule and other AI capabilities, SAP Datasphere, and advanced analytics and collaboration tools only to SAP’s cloud-based adoption programs, RISE and GROW.
The question, of course, is what level of functionality customers will receive; SAP did not specify how many AI credits are included within either tier of the program, nor do they specify costs. As such, organizations must conduct additional due diligence to ascertain what ROI or value may be derived.
Ultimately, SAP has not shied away from insisting that a cloud-based, clean-core software approach is the future for companies that want to continue working with SAP. As the deadline draws closer, customers will need to decide whether to take advantage of these programs and lean all in with SAP or work with a different vendor altogether if they want to continue to use on-premises or a hybrid environment and still enjoy the benefits of frequent innovation.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
SAP to Acquire Digital Adoption Platform and AI Provider WalkMe
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Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
