DyFlex Solutions on track to move customers to SAP Cloud

SAP platinum partner DyFlex Solutions will see most of its customers already moved onto SAP Cloud ahead of the vendor’s end of mainstream for its older, on-premises version of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

According to SAP, it will stop providing full updates, bug fixes, and improvements for its ERP Central Component (ECC) versions EHP0-5 in 2025 and EHP6-8 in 2027.

In an interview with ARN, Perth-based DyFlex co-CEO Jason Heaney explained that it currently had only a handful of customers left on an on-premises SAP solution and expects them “all to be moved by the end of next year, well in advance” of those deadlines.

This was one of the reasons DyFlex entered a strategic partnership with private equity firm Five V Capital in early February to accelerate growth locally and across Asia, creating an opportunity to acquire a willing SAP partner.

At the time, DyFlex chief financial officer Angus Knapp said it was looking to partner with “high-quality SAP consultancies that want to take their business to the next level”.

“Part of our growth strategy was to get an investment partner to enable us to accelerate that growth and get into more customers, more reach, more geographies,” said Heaney.

He also said DyFlex was an early adopter of SAP Cloud technologies in the mid-market and has moved east over the years and expanded its offerings to cover all of SAP’s products.

“We started with ERP and now we’re doing the HR products, the planning products, the Ariba and the SAP Cloud ERP products,” he said.

“SAP has traditionally dealt with the big end of town and they have a large installed base of customers.”

Heaney said the partner is looking to acquire new customers “all down the customer size pyramid and get them on Cloud ERP in the first instance”.

“We’re heavily invested in trying to bring new customers to the SAP platform on Cloud ERP,” he explained. “For us to grow our business, [we] need to bring in the new customers … that is stream one; stream two is this large installed base they also need to move to the cloud.”

Heaney explained that a large percentage of that base will upgrade to the SAP Cloud with essentially the same underlying system and then progressively start adopting all other SAP products.

“For a lot of customers, this is a multi-year journey,” he said. “There might be an initial technical migration followed by innovation phases.

“A lot of it is about cleaning up the sins of the past, removing all your customisations, using other SAP technology for your extensions, which is known a business technology platform.

“It’s about returning to standard and adopting SAP innovation.”

There are a number of challenges customers face when dealing with older technology, Heaney said.

“They might have heaps of legacy tech, systems that don’t really matter, but most people have invested in frontline systems,” he said. “There’s always apps that are lagging behind and then they’ve painted themselves into a corner with without being current.

“A lot of systems then can’t integrate and take advantage of some of the SAP technologies.”

However, in the segments DyFlex deals in, Heaney considers that to be “that’s probably less of an issue”, as this has been its focus, claiming to be “one of the first service providers to bring SAP into the mid-market in Australia”.

“We’ve been dealing in the mid-market and moving up to the large enterprises,” he said. “The mid-market is very competitive with products and you [have] to be business focused.

“You had to be shown how you solved the business problem, not just a technology problem.”

DyFlex has always been early adopters of SAP’s products, Heaney added, with the service provider trying to make sure the it understands how it worked before it was able to sell it to customers and explain how they get value out of it.