What’s happening?
OutSystems has become an official member of the SAP® PartnerEdge® – Build program, certified by the SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC). It consolidates the long-standing relationship between these two market-leading platforms, providing SAP customers with extra confidence around the easy integration of OutSystems with SAP solutions, especially S/4HANA® and SAP NetWeaver®.
What does it mean for SAP customers?
Migration to S/4HANA® requires SAP customers to review and update their technology ecosystems. According to CIO, SAP introduced S/4HANA in 2015, SAP’s cloud-based ERP suite, expecting its existing base of 35,000 customers to convert to the new ERP system. However, to date, just 12% of current and intended SAP ERP users have completed the transition to S/4HANA2.
One of the reasons migration has been challenging for existing SAP users is that over the years, many of these companies have extensively customised their SAP systems to fit their business needs. Rebuilding this customisation in S/4HANA makes migration to the cloud lengthy, complex, and risky.
However, for those customers trapped by heavily customised legacy versions of SAP, partnering with OutSystems can unlock the possibility of a simplified migration process. By easily and rapidly recreating custom functionalities previously embedded in their old SAP systems using the OutSystems platform, organisations can now migrate to a lean and clean S/4HANA.
Separating core systems and custom apps also brings the opportunity to improve existing functionalities and quickly develop applications stuck in backlogs, such as workflows, customer and employee portals, and mobile apps to name a few.
Separating core systems and custom apps also brings the opportunity to improve existing functionalities and quickly develop applications stuck in backlogs, such as workflows, customer and employee portals, and mobile apps to name a few.
For many years enterprise companies have been using OutSystems to complement their SAP solutions
While the official partnership is new, many global organisations have used this architectural strategy for many years. OutSystems and SAP have a strong track record of working together and complementing each other to deliver mission-critical software solutions.
In Australia, PhoenixDX – a leading OutSystems partner – has built custom applications for many Australian SAP customers, such as GPT Group, Serco, and Certis Security.
Two years ago, GPT Group adopted OutSystems as their platform for experiences and innovation, complementing their core systems, where SAP played a big role. In partnership with PhoenixDX, they have built an e-procurement platform, rent roll approval application, CAPEX approval workflow, financial data portal and other mission-critical solutions integrated with their SAP.
These custom applications can be easily modified, extended and evolved independently of their core systems’ roadmap and their migration to S4/HANA.
Many OutSystems global customers are SAP customers as well, such as Van Ameyde, Beeztees, Redington and EDP Group.
Van Ameyde used OutSystems to develop ECHO, a front-end system that delivers highly-customisable claims management workflows with SAP integration.
“OutSystems gives us the ability to integrate all business processes in an extremely short time period and in a highly flexible manner,” said Marco Valkenburg, IT Manager, Van Ameyde.
Beeztees, a wholesale distributor, is another example of an SAP customer that decided to expand the capability of their core systems by using OutSystems. Similar to GPT Group, they avoided having to customise their SAP systems by adopting OutSystems as their platform for innovation.
“With OutSystems, we add speed and flexibility to SAP. By combining SAP with add-ons and custom applications, developed using OutSystems, we can exploit the full potential of SAP and still make all our data applicable for web and mobile,” said Germa Zijlmans, IT Manager of Beeztees.
"OutSystems gives us the ability to integrate all business processes in an extremely short time period and in a highly flexible manner"
Beeztees, a wholesale distributor, is another example of an SAP customer that decided to expand the capability of their core systems by using OutSystems. Similar to GPT Group, they avoided having to customise their SAP systems by adopting OutSystems as their platform for innovation.
“With OutSystems, we add speed and flexibility to SAP. By combining SAP with add-ons and custom applications, developed using OutSystems, we can exploit the full potential of SAP and still make all our data applicable for web and mobile”
How do I find out more?
If you want to learn more:
- Watch our webinar Accelerate on Innovation in an SAP Ecosystem.
- View PhoenixDX SAP webpage and case studies Expand your SAP with connected solutions that drive results
