Is GROW with SAP Right for My Scaling Business? 

If you’re reading this, your company is growing—a promising sign for your business, employees, partners, and customers. 

However, growth, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, often brings challenges—but they are positive challenges because they arise as a direct result of your company’s expansion. And they are completely normal. Growing businesses face hurdles during this transition phase. You are not alone. 

The great news is, there are tried-and-true strategies to help you navigate these challenges and keep your momentum strong. Read on to learn common pain points scaling companies face and how you can overcome them to position your business for both immediate and long-term success. 

Top Challenges for Growing Businesses 

The first step to overcoming growing pains is being able to recognize them. Here are three common challenges growing companies face:  

• Inefficiencies and manual processes – As a company grows, so does the need for efficiency. However, growing businesses relying on spreadsheets or small point solutions often struggle to scale effectively. Take employee communication, for example: coordinating with three people is simple, but managing 300 without technology becomes significantly more complex. 

To grow, companies need supporting infrastructure that can keep pace with increasing demand. Without this critical component, cracks will begin to appear in the business foundation. For example, finance teams may lack real-time visibility, affecting cash flow and forecasting, while sales and operations teams might face process gaps, manual workflows, and isolated information. Challenges such as these can lead to slow decision making and inefficiencies across the board. 

• Complex problems with widescale impact – As the business scales, so does the complexity of addressing challenges. A problem that affects three people is much easier to fix than one impacting 300, where the stakes are higher, and the consequences more damaging if left unaddressed. 

Without a solid technology foundation, solving problems becomes resource-intensive—requiring more time, effort, and budget. Instead of driving growth, the company is forced to shift its focus and resources toward fixing foundational issues, creating a much larger opportunity cost. Over time, these inefficiencies can evolve into risks that hinder growth and business stability. 

• Current technology can’t support business vision – A company may have a clear three-to-five year business plan, but if its technology can’t scale to support that vision, roadblocks will emerge. Ensuring that technology infrastructure aligns with long-term business goals is critical to sustainable success. 

If any of these pain points sound familiar, know there’s a roadmap to follow to get your company successfully on the other side – and poised for growth! 

The Solution for Growth 

For many organizations, these obstacles result from trying to scale the business using spreadsheets and small point solutions. To overcome them, then, they must evolve to adopt a modern ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform that is tailored to their specific growth needs. An ERP is more than just a technology; it sets up companies for growth success. It does this by solving the chaos and disparity that companies experience as they grow; creating consistency and integration; and tying all the pieces of the business puzzle together to form a solid foundation upon which the business can scale. 

Many growing organizations understand the benefits of an ERP but associate it with technology only available to large, global enterprises. The reality, however, is that SAP is making it easier than ever for organizations facing growth to take advantage of its modern cloud ERP, SAP S/4HANA, to propel their business to the next level. SAP S/4HANA serves as an organization’s digital core, positioning them to take advantage of advanced technologies including IoT, AI, machine learning, and more.  

SAP offers various options for adopting S/4HANA so businesses can find the strategy that best meets their business needs. GROW with SAP is one of those offerings and is designed specifically as a public cloud option for scaling businesses. Here are just a few of the benefits GROW with SAP and S/4HANA brings to businesses that help them overcome traditional pain points: 

• Real-Time Insights: Scale the business seamlessly by leveraging real-time, informed decision making and adapting to changing market conditions 

• Operational Efficiency: Standardize operations on proven industry best practices and methodologies to reduce risk and downtime 

• Proactive Strategy: Gain maximum return on SAP investments while leveraging the latest functionality such as advanced analytics to mitigate risk, anticipate trends, and seize opportunities faster 

• Long-Term Growth: GROW with SAP is designed to evolve alongside a business, ensuring that systems continue to support growth without interruptions 

To learn more about the GROW with SAP offering, check out our recent blog post, “Future-Proof Scaling Businesses: The Right Solution for Growth.”

Breaking Misconceptions with a Trusted Advisor 

Navisite, part of Accenture, is a recognized SAP Gold Partner and Partner of Excellence and has been guiding businesses through their digital transformation journeys for more than 25 years, empowering companies to take full advantage of a modern cloud ERP to drive innovation and competitive differentiation. Customers spanning industries rely on Navisite’s deep industry, technical, and functional expertise and experience to modernize quickly, seamlessly, and without surprises.  

GROW with SAP Services from Navisite provide an end-to-end software and services bundle for S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, including technology and application licenses offered via a subscription model, implementation services, and post implementation managed services and support.  

Navisite and SAP work together to not only help scaling companies like yours navigate growth challenges but also to alleviate stress around misconceptions that may prevent businesses from considering an ERP in the first place. Below are some common concerns associated with implementing an ERP and how SAP and Navisite can address them: 

Misconception: An ERP will be too complex for my business. 

Reality: GROW with SAP is designed to start simple as an out-of-the-box solution. 

Misconception: An ERP will take too long to implement. 

Reality: GROW with SAP can be implemented in less than three months with an experienced team. 

Misconception: Our business doesn’t have resources to deploy, and learn, an ERP. 

Reality: Navisite has the experience and resources to help, including a pre-built best practices approach to reduce the impact on the business. 

Misconception: An ERP is too much to manage on an ongoing basis. 

Reality: As a public cloud solution, the GROW with SAP S/4HANA environment is managed by SAP, and Navisite can support with managed services to enable additional modernization. 

Misconception: Implementing an ERP is too risky. 

Reality: Navisite offers pre-built templates and “t-shirt sizing” to help you know exactly what to expect. By simplifying the solution and delivery, complexity and risk is drastically reduced. 

Misconception: An ERP costs too much. 

Reality: Navisite has a cost model based on your business needs. 

Misconception: I don’t need an ERP right now. 

Reality: It’s easier and less expensive to implement your platform in phases now and grow into it. Navisite offers the ability to start small and right size as the business scales. 

The Time to Act is Now 

To answer the question posed in the blog title, GROW with SAP is a great option for scaling businesses. With GROW with SAP, modern ERPs are now more accessible than ever before. And the dynamic combination of GROW and Navisite’s GROW with SAP Services help scaling businesses overcome growth pain points and common deterrents for moving forward with a modernized solution backed by a trusted software company like SAP. Organizations who select GROW with SAP can offload the technology burden and spend 100 percent of their time focused on growing their core business. 

Contact us today to assess your needs, determine a path forward and experience a whole new world of innovation while building a strong foundation for continued growth – today, tomorrow, and over the long-term.