April 2022
Solution Spotlight: SAP S/4HANA Cloud
ERP Tip of the Month: Why Your Vendor’s Certifications Matter
Meet the Team: Amy Barnes
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with built-in intelligent technologies, including AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics. It helps companies adopt new business models, manage business change at speed, orchestrate internal and external resources, and use the predictive power of AI.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud enables every employee to make smarter decisions faster with capabilities that utilize next-generation best practices.
Let’s take a look at what it can do for your business...
Finance
You can increase the agility of your finance processes, gain end-to-end analytics and transform finance for dynamic markets.
Highlighted Features:
Unified transactions, analytics, and planning to enhance the entire lifecycle
Streamlined, intelligent automated processes for greater throughput
Subscription- and usage-based billing models to fit your business’ individual needs
Actionable insights and recommendations at the point of decision for real-time evaluation.
Asset Management
You can plan, schedule, and execute maintenance operations with integrated and optimized processes. SAP S/4HANA Cloud can transform asset management to excel operationally.
Highlighted Features:
Integrated scheduling to allocate and optimize resources, including people, tools, and materials
Comprehensive management of environment, health, and safety data, including response and analysis
Proactive task identification, management, and execution to improve safety, environmental impact, and operational results
Sourcing and Procurement
You can centralize and automate procurement.
Highlighted Features:
Centralized purchasing that provides flexibility and visibility across an organization
Embedded machine learning-based analytics to predict contract consumption for improved negotiations and material management
Automatic recommendations for new catalog items, contract creation for materials without an existing contract, and matching material group for the required free-text item
Automated payables matching and clearing with proposals for items that could not be cleared automatically
That’s just a quick overview of what SAP S/4HANA Cloud can do! To learn more, contact Meridian Partners and receive expert guidance to help you move to the SAP Cloud!
Why Your Vendor's Certifications Matter
At some point, almost every business needs outside expert help. This could be for strategizing and implementing a new system, understanding the latest technological advances, automating business processes, supporting an existing system, or a host of other important reasons. With a world of potential companies out there fighting for your business, how do you cut through the clutter and find an honest, competent partner that is up on the latest industry innovations?
A good place to start is to review the provider’s certifications.
Most established software vendors like Workday and SAP providers have programs that certify the competency of their official partners. Not everyone who wants to be a certified partner makes the cut.
Selecting a certified provider ensures that the company you choose to help you has well trained experts for selecting, implementing, supporting and servicing the provided software solution. That can mean faster implementation times, lower integration costs, and, ultimately, the confidence that your technology infrastructure matches your needs and is the most up-to-date and innovative solution offered.
Most certification programs require that providers go through a demanding application and review process, followed by training, testing and continued education requirements to stay up-to-date and in the program. In exchange, software vendors offer and provide exclusive ongoing solution support to their certified partners. This includes pre-sales support; demo systems; fast track implementation tools and processes; product configuration support; and access to the latest training and knowledge resources. This allows the software vendor to ensure that the companies representing them are providing competent and quality services, and it gives certified providers a level of orchestrated service and support throughout a customer lifecycle that is not available to non-certified partners.
Next time you’re considering a software purchase, make sure that you add partner certification to your checklist.
Meridian Partners is a top-tier solution provider certified by SAP, Workday-Adaptive and many other leading industry solutions and entities. Contact us today to learn what a certified software and solution provider can do for you.
Each month, we highlight a key team member making a difference for our customers. This month, we would like to recognize Amy Barnes from our Project Management Office.
Amy’s primary focus in the Project Management Office is ensuring that project teams succeed. She enjoys collaborating with client teams and believes success is only possible with quality delivery throughout the project lifecycle. Amy’s responsibilities include developing standard QA frameworks and managing key aspects of testing activities. Amy also assists with internal operations to ensure Meridian meets the same quality standards we deliver for our clients.
Prior to working with Meridian, Amy was a technical project leader in the telecom, entertainment, and financial services sectors, specializing in quality engineering and DevOps. Amy led diverse, cross functional teams developing data networking, digital streaming, enterprise SOA, cloud SAAS, and financial portfolio management systems.
When not at Meridian, Amy enjoys taking her dog on adventures throughout the Pacific Northwest, hiking and exploring. Amy works with local arts organizations and advocates for equitable art access and opportunities. Amy also supports local animal rescue groups and helps pets find their forever homes.
Meridian Partners is a minority owned company and SBA-certified 8(a) leader in providing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Intelligence, and Budgeting solutions. Meridian helps organizations maximize business processes to be more agile, efficient, and transparent through the optimization of their enterprise systems.