Mendix
applications
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SAP environment

Mendix on top of SAP

SAP Innovation means keeping up to date, adjusting in time. Constantly scrutinizing habits and processes to be at the forefront. To get the most out of yourself and your company. Appronto, SAP and Mendix know that better than anyone. SAP has been innovating for almost 50 years, while Mendix and Appronto started their journey in 2005 and 2013. The latest innovations from SAP like SAP S / 4HANA help companies worldwide in the cloud with an in-memory database that ensures unprecedented performance. At the end of 2019, SAP had 440,000 customers in more than 180 countries and 100,330 employees worldwide, generating a total turnover of € 27.63 billion!

Mendix is the standard when it comes to future-proof low code platforms. It allows developers and people from the business to easily build applications. And that while IT remains fully in control. The great thing about Mendix is that it works perfectly with the advanced systems of SAP. Both the ECC systems and SAP’s next-gen ERP system S / 4HANA. Mendix is a SAP Solution Extension partner, which is the highest partnership at SAP, and where Mendix products can be licensed via SAP. In addition, Mendix is the solution to replace your legacy systems and shadow IT without having to set up a mega operation.

Appronto has been developing Mendix applications on top of SAP for many years. The reason why Appronto, Mendix and SAP go together so well? Because Appronto speaks very well Sappian and Mendixian. We know everything about SAP and Mendix through and through. That is why Appronto is also recommended from SAP and Mendix.

Custom or standard solutions in the cloud?

The traditional way of customization is not sustainable for the long term – it is simply too inefficient. It mainly creates a lot of dissatisfaction and does not give the end results that are hoped for.

It is also not good for the relationships between the teams. Overworked developers do not feel understood by the business. In turn, the business is not happy because they see huge growth opportunities that can be addressed quickly. Why don’t developers want to see that? Frustration everywhere.

Count above the problem of legacy software. Do you still have outdated systems or systems fully automated based on Excel? Then the challenges are even greater.

Even if you still work with SAP ECC you still have to think about the future. SAP has announced that the mainstream maintenance of SAP ECC will end at the end of 2027. Before that, it is recommended to switch to SAP S/4HANA. And even though S/4HANA is very similar to ECC in many facets, it really is another beast that should be treated as such. SAP continues to invest heavily in its next-gen ERP system and if you want to benefit from the value of these investments, it is recommended to keep the system as lean as possible so that you can easily upgrade. This means saying goodbye to customization in the system, which SAP also refers to as “Keep the core clean”. It is not even possible to add your own software to a number of cloud variants of S/4HANA.

Customization thanks to “Mendix on top of SAP”

This does not mean that SAP prohibits customization and extensions, they will only be implemented in a different way. Instead of in the system itself, it is recommended to run it on the SAP Cloud Platform. It can also be stated that the SAP Cloud Platform also makes customization easier. The reason for this is that the SAP Cloud Platform offers many facilities that are discussed during application development. Examples include the integration of machine learning, workflow, authentication and single sign-on, connectivity with the on-premise systems, chatbots, RPA or other integration patterns.

As handy as these building blocks are, business logic will always have to be added, with Mendix’s low-code platform coming in handy. With Mendix, custom applications can be realized in a relatively short time that link with the existing capabilities of the SAP Cloud Platform and work as an extension of SAP S/4HANA. In fact, this same trick also works on SAP ECC, so that Mendix can even be seen as an enabler for the transition to SAP S/4HANA.

Incidentally, the longer you delay the transition to SAP S / 4HANA, the longer the organization will not benefit from the value and innovations that SAP has put into SAP S/4HANA.

Fortunately, there is a solution for this problem: Mendix on top of SAP.

You can replace custom work by turning it into future-proof Mendix applications. These applications then link via the APIs to the core modules of SAP. This way you can continue to innovate these applications or processes without jeopardizing the continuity of the main processing in the ERP system.

You can already use that Mendix version within your SAP ECC Business Suite and later transfer it to SAP S/4HANA when your organization is ready for the switch.

This works much more efficiently in terms of time and costs than traditional custom work and you are immediately ready for the future. Ideal!

SAP Solution Extension-partner

Mendix is a SAP Solution Extension partner, which means that SAP has fully taken over the Mendix platform as their platform for expanding SAP solutions such as SAP Business Suite, SAP S / 4HANA, SuccessFactors and more. The product name SAP uses for Mendix is SAP Cloud Platform Rapid Application Development from Mendix.

The SAP Solution Extension partnership means that not only can you purchase Mendix directly from SAP, but you can integrate Mendix with SAP in several ways, use a single point of contact for support, and build Mendix apps on top of SAP.

Fit to standard with Mendix

With S/4HANA, SAP prefers to configure over programming. They call this “Fit to standard”. S/4HANA therefore offers many more standard solutions based on best practices than is the case with the ECC Business Suite. However, it is quite possible that not all existing customization can be replaced by these standard solutions. That is why SAP advises to develop existing and future customization in Mendix.