Bert Schulze

October 13, 2017 7 minute read

#S4HANA 1709 use case series: 6a – Tools for SAP S/4HANA 1709 (biz view)

Welcome back to our use case series. It is designed to offer a closer look at business value acceleration – driven by the design principles of SAP S/4HANA. The technology-induced implications of the digital economy are huge, though the technology itself is only a catalyst to achieve a fundamentally different business outcome.

The selected use cases, related to SAP S/4HANA Release 1709 are designed to emphasize and visualize the value behind this technological shift, that can be activated by you.

After looking at Transportation Management (use case 5a business, 5b technical) of SAP S/4HANA 1709, we will focus today on tooling, specifically how SAP helps customers to move to SAP S/4HANA.

Context of SAP S/4HANA

Now with SAP S/4HANA 1709 which was launched on the market on 15 September, the central question for our customers is no longer if they migrate to SAP S/4HANA, but how to perform the migration to gain the maximum benefit from it.

To address this challenge and to improve the experience when adopting SAP S/4HANA, SAP recently launched a new set of tools.

The SAP Transformation Navigator will help you during planning to determine your go-to solutions.
Customers can also take advantage of the SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA. This tool is available through maintenance. Customers can initiate their SAP ERP system analysis themselves. This helps customers by giving them an overview of the most important aspects and potential requirements of an SAP S/4HANA system conversion.
Next is the SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit, exclusively shipped with SAP S/4HANA. The purpose is to support the transition process of customers, who are newly implementing SAP S/4HANA. This tool includes the SAP S/4HANA Migration Object Modeler, a design tool for enhancements and modifications of pre-defined migration objects for SAP S/4HANA. This will provide more flexibility during the migration process for adding customer specific enhancements.

As SAP S/4HANA lets customers rethink their enterprise management via simplifying and running their organization in real time, customers also want to know the impact on their processes and what benefits from simplifying the functionalities they can have when migrating to SAP S/4HANA.

This blog will illustrate different tools and guide you to find the information you need for each phase for the preparation, implementation and migration. The next blog (6b – Technical view) will give you more insight into selected tools.

In the next chapters, I will summarize the collections of tools that SAP offers, displayed on picture 1, for the following three areas: “Build Your Business Case”, “Discover Your Destination” and “Execute Your Move”.

Build Your Business Case

The first part of this blog contains descriptions of the most important basic concepts which will be necessary for the customer to discover SAP S/4HANA. This part is also relevant for customers who have not yet decided on a concrete migration plan, but want to get more information about the various options and need a basic overview of SAP S/4HANA with illustrated benefits of this new solution.

SAP Fiori apps reference library [Link]

You can find a list of available SAP Fiori apps in the SAP Fiori apps reference library. By choosing SAP Fiori apps for SAP S/4HANA you can display the SAP Fiori apps that are available for SAP S/4HANA.

With the SAP Fiori App Recommendations Analysis in the SAP Fiori apps reference library, customers can identify the SAP Fiori apps that best fit on customer business processes (using a list of transaction codes uploaded to the SAP Fiori apps reference library).

Solution Explorer [Link]

The Solution Explorer allows customers to browse the SAP solution portfolio, organized by industry and LoB. It includes solution description and links to marketing assets.

Business Scenario Recommendations (BSR) [Link]

The Business Scenario Recommendations report will use customer’s current SAP ERP usage information to help customers to identify the most valuable digitized business scenarios, focused on SAP S/4HANA innovations.

Click on the [Link] to download a sample report.

SAP Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder for SAP ERP [Link]

The “SAP Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder for SAP ERP” is a report, which helps a CIO identify opportunities for his/her core ERP-system around: Innovations (SAP EHP, SAP Fiori apps, Cloud, SAP S/4HANA).

Click on the [Link] to download a sample report.

Discover Your Destination

The second part of this blog contains information about tools helping to understand which steps customers should consider when planning a migration project to SAP S/4HANA and how SAP can support. Customers cannot plan to migrate to SAP S/4HANA as an update or upgrade of an already implemented solution. The functional and business scope of SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA are similar, but this migration will introduce a new digital core to your enterprise that ensures future competitiveness. In this chapter, only four tools will be covered.

SAP Roadmap Viewer

The SAP Roadmap Viewer holds the roadmaps for project deployments with the SAP Activate framework and methodology. Within each of the roadmaps, you will find all supporting content in the form of phases, work streams, deliverables, tasks, and accelerators for a complete end-to-end guided implementation experience. The last enhancement includes now best practices and feedback from our ecosystem to provide the latest content for the implementation project.

Click on the [Link] to asses to the SAP Roadmap Viewer .

SAP Transformation Navigator

The SAP Transformation Navigator is a self-service tool for customer to guide them through their digital transformation journey. The key highlights of this tool are:

Product recommendation for all currently used products
Suitable for landscape transformation, business transformation and greenfield approach
3 year roadmaps for on premise, rolling 4 quarter roadmaps for cloud products and solutions
Overview of necessary transitions and available services
Integration technology guidance paper
Integration guides
All products have capability based value drivers
Relevant licenses and conversion policies described

This service will become available to all internal as well as S-users from customers and partners

Click on the [Link] to asses to the SAP Transformation Navigator.

SAP Readiness Check

Before you are planning to convert your SAP ERP system to SAP S/4HANA or upgrade your SAP S/4HANA system, use SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA to check the following aspects in your SAP Solution Manager system:

Custom code impact with regard to reference, enhancement and modification to SAP objects
SAP S/4HANA sizing
Recommended Fiori apps to replace existing transactions
Relevant simplification items
Business process analytics

The SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA has been available since 29.05.2017. This cloud-based tool is available for free to anyone with a current SAP maintenance agreement. The readiness check reviews both your production (PRD) systems (or copies thereof) and your development (DEV) systems, determines their compatibility for SAP S/4HANA conversion, and provides the necessary conversion preparation steps.

Click on the [Link] to asses to the SAP Readiness Check.

Simplification Items Catalog

The simplification list is an important tool for planning the conversion project and should be used at an early stage. You can implement many of the necessary adaptations on your existing SAP ERP source system. As a result, you’ll be able to start the conversion project before actually installing any SAP S/4HANA software. Consequently, the simplification list is an important source of information to schedule necessary conversion project tasks and assign the required resources. The simplification list is supplemented by program-based analysis tools to help you identify relevant adaptation tasks, such as the Maintenance Planner or prechecks.

With the SAP S/4HANA 1709 release, the customer can use the the content from wiki based via an ”online tool”. This Simplification Items Catalog is the now central place for SAP to maintain simplification items; it is the central place for customers to find the latest simplification items for SAP S/4HANA.

Click on the [Link] to asses to the Simplification Items Catalog.

Execute your Move

There are various ways of deploying SAP S/4HANA in your new or already existing system landscape. This section describes only two tools helping you for the installation of SAP S/4HANA, but it does not describe the process.

SAP Maintenance Planner

We recommend that you use the Maintenance Planner to plan your installation. The Maintenance Planner creates a stack XML file with the support package stack information that you then hand over to the Software Provisioning Manager (the installer).

Note: The Maintenance Optimizer (MOPZ) cannot be used with SAP S/4HANA. It has been replaced by the Maintenance Planner.

Picture 8: Maintenance Planner

You access the Maintenance Planner tool and its User Guide on the SAP Support Portal [Link]

SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit

The S/4HANA Migration Cockpit (can be accessed via transaction LTMC) provide an integrated data migration function to upload data into SAP S/4HANA 1709, mainly for the transformation scenario ‘New Implementation’. The SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit is a new migration tool that is shipped exclusively with SAP S/4HANA. The tool is based on proven migration technologies and is available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition and for the SAP S/4HANA on-premise.

The SAP S/4HANA Migration Object Modeler (addressed via transaction LTMOM) is a design tool for enhancements and modifications of pre-defined migration objects for SAP S/4HANA. The focus is to give more flexibility during the migration process within the New Implementation transition scenario by adding customer specific enhancements. It is available for SAP S/4HANA on-premise, but not yet planned for SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Stay tuned when we explore the technical aspects of this use case and illustrate our upcoming use case blogs following over the next few weeks!

#S4HANA 1709 use case series: 6a – Tools for SAP S/4HANA 1709 (biz view)

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