Migrating to S/4HANA is a big and complicated process for most organizations. It also represents a tremendous opportunity to update and align your tax strategy to meet the challenges of modern sales tax.
Sovos outlines best practices for SAP S/4HANA migration in seven easy to follow steps.
When SAP announced that it was extending support for its Business Suite 7 software suite until the end of 2027 many breathed a sigh of relief. However, doing so may be lulling yourself into a false sense of security.
While SAP adjusted its timeline, largely due to increasing customer pressure, it’s important to remember that governments have no such plans to alter their course of action and will not yield on integrating new regulatory standards for businesses to comply with. Especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the respite provided by SAP, the pace of global regulatory change towards continuous controls and digitization continues to accelerate. And many businesses, unless they take action soon will be left scrambling to meet the demands of new regulatory standards.
Tax is a critical player in generating increased financial transparency and ensuring necessary cash flow, yet they have lived on the periphery of many important IT decisions and organizations are doing themselves a disservice by excluding Tax as part of their S/4HANA strategy.
Tax departments continue to make do with legacy solutions which are ultimately not sustainable. Too often Tax is forced to choose between efficiency and accuracy. This is a losing strategy that results in either valuable resources being tied up for non-revenue generating activities or assuming the risk of noncompliance.
Considering tax early and correctly is vital, and this is the perfect opportunity to take ownership of your tax processes. The time for standing on the sidelines has long since passed.
Migrating to a new platform is hard. SAP understands this better than anyone. As Co-CEO Christian Klein has said, “We know that our customers have deep business transformations underway… SAP will provide additional flexibility to fully embrace the groundbreaking opportunities of SAP S/4HANA that reflects the individual pace and complexity of our customers’ projects.”
Translation, this is a long and complicated process. Companies need to start early to fully integrate with and launch the new platform.
Our advice? Don’t wait to get your tax and regulatory issues settled. No matter which course of action SAP decides, governments have made their position clear and they are full steam ahead with enforcement.
The future direction for most companies includes the move to S/4HANA and Sovos remains committed to assisting you in this process.