S/4 HANA: Between Migration and New Implementation

Based on SAP announcement to prolong mainstream maintenance until the end of 2025 for SAP Business Suite 7 core application releases including SAP ERP 6.0, SAP Customer.

“https://news.sap.com/2014/10/sap-committed-innovation-choice-sap-business-suite/”

This make moving to SAP S/4 HANA is only a matter of time.

SAP provides three options to have S/4 HANA system:

1- Conversion / Migration

2- New Implementation / Greenfield

3- Central finance implementation

This blog post helps to getting better decision for moving to S/4 HANA using one of first two options.

In order to provide appropriate recommendation for which method to use, we need to:

• First : Discuss , Explain and Get answers for predefined questions:

Here are Questions in more details:

1. Do you want to keep your solution enhancements (ABAP Code for Non-standard solutions / Functions)?
2. Do you want to keep your transaction data history (Not only open items or balances but full SAP ECC historical data)?
3. Do you need a phased business roll out (Ex. Introduce some firori apps as starting phase, not all S/4 HANA capabilities at once)?
4. Does your system fulfill all conversion prerequisites? (Like Update to latest version of ECC6 Enhancement package .There are several tools that can be used to check the prerequisites for moving to Suite on HANA or S/4HANA from ECC 6 Any DB)
5. Do You Perceive your current system as Key Asset (Percentage of Current system satisfaction is important key here)?

• Second : Answers analysis

If Answers for all previous questions or majority are YES, we recommend Migration option as it going provide following benefits:

▪ Faster move to SAP S/4HANA: Conversion mainly takes much less time than new implementation as SAP ECC system is up and running with all functions , Integrations and authorization

▪ Preserve historic data: All Historical data will be migrated and still reachable on current system (Note: Un-needed Historical data recommended to be archived to reduce migrated documents size)

▪ Investment protection: S/4 HANA migration will contribute to client new investment, will not start from beginning to start a new implementation

▪ Limit change management: Change management for migration and tracking delta are less than new implementation

▪ Prepare for business innovations: Massive innovation capabilities for S/4 HANA with new industry specific business processes and integration to the Cloud, SaaS applications, IoT and beyond.

▪ No initial load of data: All ECC system data will be migrated that’s why no more data upload needed either master data nor beginning balances

However, if the answers or Majority of them are NO, We need to ask following direct question:

1. Do you need a renewal of your complete ERP solution? If answer is YES

Hence, Going with Fresh S/4 HANA new implementation Option is recommended, with all new implementations considerations.