Aim of this article is to highlight available tools to support your SAP S/4HANA Conversion project.
SAP continues to develop tools for both system conversions and new implementations to reduce complexity, increase automation, and make the tools easier to use. It's important to familiarize yourself with the available tools which can support your conversion project.
SAP Transformation Navigator
The SAP Transformation Navigator is there to provide guidance and not just to give you options, the tool can guide you through the digital transformation by generating a product roadmap of recommended SAP products and solutions tailored to your business. It can also help map your company’s aspirations through selecting value drivers which can help you build a business case for your transformation journey. The tool also provides information on customer proof points and successful adoption cases. The SAP Transformation Navigator can also be the first point of reference for potential license implications. On completion it generates a set of 3 guides (business, technical and transformation) with detailed information about products, licenses, integration, services and business capabilities.
SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA
Start your project planning by running the SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA, this tool gives you an overview and a planning baseline for important topics that needs to be taken care of, the related efforts and the required skills. Execute SAP Readiness Check well in advance of your planned conversion project to give your team time to assess the changes and associated impact. The tool performs functional and technical assessments, the functional assessment provides the basis for functional redesign necessary for system conversion. SAP Fiori section matches your system's current transactional load with available SAP Fiori apps and roles. Technical assessment includes sizing, data volume management, software prerequisites for conversion and more. Software section covers checks OS/DB versions, compatibility checks for industry solutions, activated business functions, add-ons and more. The dashboard's interactive feature lets you organise preparation work more efficiently with team collaboration, where members can set statuses and provide comments on work items directly on the dashboard. SAP Readiness Check is an essential tool and should be run as soon as possible.
Maintenance Planner
Maintenance Planner (MP) is an indispensable tool for planning a system conversion, so aim to run it early to confirm if your SAP ERP system can be technically converted to SAP S/4HANA. It will check compatibility of your add-ons in advance so that you can decide how to deal with each one, it also checks if unsupported add-ons can be uninstalled by SUM during conversion, if it can be uninstalled it'll prompt you and allow planning to continue, otherwise it'll prevent the planning process. When the tool is run for conversion it actually triggers the Maintenance Planner SAP S/4HANA pre-checks to check if following items are supported for conversion - any Add-Ons, any active Business Functions, any Industry Solutions - if it encounters any failures during pre-checks, you are directed to the summary screen where you can check results and also download the pdf that is generated, once you have addressed the issues you can return to Maintenance Planner to complete planning.
SAP Roadmap Viewer
The SAP Roadmap Viewer provides access to complete SAP Activate Methodology content, with all of its tasks, templates and accelerators. It also contains project experience from SAP S/4HANA implementations to support you conversion project with structured documentations for each step of the project. If you are looking for an approach that is consistent and proven you will find it here.
Simplification Item Catalog
SAP provides a simplification item list for each S/4HANA release, current release S/4HANA 1909 has 632 items. These items are used to describe which incompatible or disruptive changes occur in SAP S/4HANA compared to SAP ERP or to previous version of SAP S/4HANA. Run the Simplification Items check as soon as possible, as adaptation of complex business processes may require more time than expected. On average the simplification check report identifies around 50 to 80 simplification items as relevant for a given system. These items can be showstoppers so use the tool early to identity them to help ensure a smoother quicker conversion.
SUM 2.0 Prerequisite Check
To run SUM prerequisite checks you will need the stack xml file, so the Maintenance Planner plan will need to be completed first. Note that only SUM 2.0 supports system conversions. This prerequisite check should be should be a quick non-intrusive check to ensure your source system meets SUM tools requirements. Two checks are available with SUM 2.0, it can perform a 'Prerequisites Check' and also an 'Extended Prerequisites Check'. You can analyse the output and address issues before project start.
ABAP Test Cockpit
The ABAP test Cockpit (ATC) is SAP's check toolset which allows you to run static checks and unit tests for you ABAP programs. It is based on Code Inspector (SCI) checks. This is an essential tool to help you identify ABAP custom code that needs to be adapted to avoid potential functional issues. Custom code evaluation is critical task and often the complexity of managing it is underestimated. This is not something to work on at project start, adjusting ABAP to run on HANA is major task and needs to be worked on well in advance. The aim should not be just to identify unused custom code (this is the easy part), it should be identify what's important and to plan remediation and optimization. You definitely don't want to take all your custom code over to SAP S/4HANA, especially the underperforming ones but need to know that remediation and optimization of custom code can a major piece of work, it can be mini-project on its own.
There’s no doubt that System Conversion is a huge challenge, however SAP has provided some excellent tools and practical guides which should give us a peace of mind as we approach the challenge.
reference:
https://www.sap.com/jointhemovement
https://go.support.sap.com/transformationnavigator/ (SAP Transformation Navigator)
https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_READINESS_CHECK/200/en-US (SAP Readiness Check)
https://support.sap.com/en/alm/solution-manager/processes-72/maintenance-planner.html (Maintenance Planner)
https://go.support.sap.com/roadmapviewer/ (Roadmap Viewer)
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#sic (Simplification Item Catalog)
https://support.sap.com/en/tools/software-logistics-tools/software-update-manager.html (SUM)
https://help.sap.com/viewer/a24970c68fcf4770a64bf9a78e3719e2/1809.000/en-US/2b99ce231e7e45e6a365608d... (ABAP Test Cockpit)
SAP continues to develop tools for both system conversions and new implementations to reduce complexity, increase automation, and make the tools easier to use. It's important to familiarize yourself with the available tools which can support your conversion project.
SAP Tools to Support your SAP S/4HANA Conversion Project
SAP Transformation Navigator
The SAP Transformation Navigator is there to provide guidance and not just to give you options, the tool can guide you through the digital transformation by generating a product roadmap of recommended SAP products and solutions tailored to your business. It can also help map your company’s aspirations through selecting value drivers which can help you build a business case for your transformation journey. The tool also provides information on customer proof points and successful adoption cases. The SAP Transformation Navigator can also be the first point of reference for potential license implications. On completion it generates a set of 3 guides (business, technical and transformation) with detailed information about products, licenses, integration, services and business capabilities.
SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA
Start your project planning by running the SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA, this tool gives you an overview and a planning baseline for important topics that needs to be taken care of, the related efforts and the required skills. Execute SAP Readiness Check well in advance of your planned conversion project to give your team time to assess the changes and associated impact. The tool performs functional and technical assessments, the functional assessment provides the basis for functional redesign necessary for system conversion. SAP Fiori section matches your system's current transactional load with available SAP Fiori apps and roles. Technical assessment includes sizing, data volume management, software prerequisites for conversion and more. Software section covers checks OS/DB versions, compatibility checks for industry solutions, activated business functions, add-ons and more. The dashboard's interactive feature lets you organise preparation work more efficiently with team collaboration, where members can set statuses and provide comments on work items directly on the dashboard. SAP Readiness Check is an essential tool and should be run as soon as possible.
Maintenance Planner
Maintenance Planner (MP) is an indispensable tool for planning a system conversion, so aim to run it early to confirm if your SAP ERP system can be technically converted to SAP S/4HANA. It will check compatibility of your add-ons in advance so that you can decide how to deal with each one, it also checks if unsupported add-ons can be uninstalled by SUM during conversion, if it can be uninstalled it'll prompt you and allow planning to continue, otherwise it'll prevent the planning process. When the tool is run for conversion it actually triggers the Maintenance Planner SAP S/4HANA pre-checks to check if following items are supported for conversion - any Add-Ons, any active Business Functions, any Industry Solutions - if it encounters any failures during pre-checks, you are directed to the summary screen where you can check results and also download the pdf that is generated, once you have addressed the issues you can return to Maintenance Planner to complete planning.
SAP Roadmap Viewer
The SAP Roadmap Viewer provides access to complete SAP Activate Methodology content, with all of its tasks, templates and accelerators. It also contains project experience from SAP S/4HANA implementations to support you conversion project with structured documentations for each step of the project. If you are looking for an approach that is consistent and proven you will find it here.
Simplification Item Catalog
SAP provides a simplification item list for each S/4HANA release, current release S/4HANA 1909 has 632 items. These items are used to describe which incompatible or disruptive changes occur in SAP S/4HANA compared to SAP ERP or to previous version of SAP S/4HANA. Run the Simplification Items check as soon as possible, as adaptation of complex business processes may require more time than expected. On average the simplification check report identifies around 50 to 80 simplification items as relevant for a given system. These items can be showstoppers so use the tool early to identity them to help ensure a smoother quicker conversion.
SUM 2.0 Prerequisite Check
To run SUM prerequisite checks you will need the stack xml file, so the Maintenance Planner plan will need to be completed first. Note that only SUM 2.0 supports system conversions. This prerequisite check should be should be a quick non-intrusive check to ensure your source system meets SUM tools requirements. Two checks are available with SUM 2.0, it can perform a 'Prerequisites Check' and also an 'Extended Prerequisites Check'. You can analyse the output and address issues before project start.
ABAP Test Cockpit
The ABAP test Cockpit (ATC) is SAP's check toolset which allows you to run static checks and unit tests for you ABAP programs. It is based on Code Inspector (SCI) checks. This is an essential tool to help you identify ABAP custom code that needs to be adapted to avoid potential functional issues. Custom code evaluation is critical task and often the complexity of managing it is underestimated. This is not something to work on at project start, adjusting ABAP to run on HANA is major task and needs to be worked on well in advance. The aim should not be just to identify unused custom code (this is the easy part), it should be identify what's important and to plan remediation and optimization. You definitely don't want to take all your custom code over to SAP S/4HANA, especially the underperforming ones but need to know that remediation and optimization of custom code can a major piece of work, it can be mini-project on its own.
There’s no doubt that System Conversion is a huge challenge, however SAP has provided some excellent tools and practical guides which should give us a peace of mind as we approach the challenge.
reference:
https://www.sap.com/jointhemovement
https://go.support.sap.com/transformationnavigator/ (SAP Transformation Navigator)
https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_READINESS_CHECK/200/en-US (SAP Readiness Check)
https://support.sap.com/en/alm/solution-manager/processes-72/maintenance-planner.html (Maintenance Planner)
https://go.support.sap.com/roadmapviewer/ (Roadmap Viewer)
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#sic (Simplification Item Catalog)
https://support.sap.com/en/tools/software-logistics-tools/software-update-manager.html (SUM)
https://help.sap.com/viewer/a24970c68fcf4770a64bf9a78e3719e2/1809.000/en-US/2b99ce231e7e45e6a365608d... (ABAP Test Cockpit)
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