Introduction to SAP S/4HANA Upgrade

Technical and functional upgrade approaches – plan and run your upgrade project with SAP Activate

Customers who are already running SAP S/4HANA need to plan and run upgrade projects to the newest releases to keep their system current and leverage new features and functionality.

There is a very comprehensive Best Practices Guide available which gives you a great introduction to the upgrade topic: Upgrading SAP S/4HANA – Why, how and Best Practices

When it comes to planning and preparing your upgrade project, you should refer to the SAP Activate Methodology for SAP S/4HANA upgrade:

In the Roadmap Viewer we describe the activities and tasks that need to be considered to plan and run a successful upgrade project – for a lean technical upgrade on the one hand side and a functional upgrade that implements new functionality and innovations on the other hand side.

Although only a fairly small set of activities needs to be performed for a technical upgrade, still with every release or Support Package there is a set of simplification items from SAP which has to be checked prior to the upgrade, and customers need to analyze the compatibility of their existing custom code against the new simplification items.

Try out the new interactive Overview Presentation!

To give you an easy entry point to all relevant activities for a technical upgrade project, we have created this interactive Overview presentation where you can click the activities and jump into the right place in the Roadmap Viewer documentation:

The same overview is available for the functional upgrade project, which of course contains a lot more activities: In case you will implement significant functional enhancements in your functional upgrade project, your current technical architecture can potentially be impacted. Leveraging new functionality, Fiori apps and innovations can implicate a new or updated integration design, and you will need to run fit-to-standard and application design sessions, for example.

In addition, the presentation provides an overview of the major SAP Value Assurance services for SAP S/4HANA upgrade and also links to the right places in the Roadmap Viewer – the “How SAP can Support” sections where you find a lot more useful information.

I hope this gives you a head start for planning your upgrade project and selecting the SAP Value Assurance services which support you best in planning and safeguarding your SAP S/4HANA upgrade.