SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades

[astridtschense]

Dear All,

We are very happy to announce the availability of the new SAP Readiness Check tool for SAP S/4HANA upgrades.

For customers already running SAP S/4HANA 1511 or higher, SAP now offers SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades. This SAP Readiness Check tool provides an overview of the compatibility of the current system with the updated applications in the target release (for example, upgrading to SAP S/4HANA 2020) and the preparation steps that will be required.

Below, you will find more information about this new version of SAP Readiness Check. In addition, SAP Note 3059197 – SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades provides guidance on how to enable the data collection, as well as answering FAQs.

SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades

Customer experiences of SAP S/4HANA upgrades confirm that upgrading is a relatively smooth process if prepared properly. Statistics as of June 2020 show that technical upgrades to higher releases of SAP S/4HANA take an average of three to six months (as reported by SAP S/4HANA Customer Care Program).

With SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades, SAP provides a self-service tool to check the readiness of your existing SAP S/4HANA system in preparation for an upgrade to a selected target SAP S/4HANA release (including the selected feature package stack or support package stack) and to give you an indication of the required efforts. It helps to identify mandatory preparations and possible pre-projects for your system well before the upgrade project starts and enables you to understand respective implications. This early insight means that you can scope and plan your upgrade project with a higher degree of accuracy.

Similar to the conversion from your earlier ERP system to SAP S/4HANA, where you had to deal with a large set of simplification items to prepare the ERP system for the conversion, there are additional simplification items with every release and feature package as part of the SAP S/4HANA maintenance strategy.

With every feature package, different modules and processes are being renewed, resulting in a (small) number of new simplification items you may need to address. SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades shows the relevant simplification items based on your source and target release and feature package.

 

The following checks are available in SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades:

• Simplification Items


• Recommended SAP Fiori Apps


• Integration


• Custom Code Analysis


• SAP Innovative Business Solutions


• Add-On Compatibility

 

The Best Practices Guide “Upgrading SAP S/4HANA: Why, How, and Best Practices” distinguishes between a technical and a functional upgrade of SAP S/4HANA:

“The need to upgrade an SAP S/4HANA platform can come from your Business or IT departments or both. The identified needs will determine the scope and approach to the upgrade – namely Functional Upgrade or Technical Upgrade.

• A Technical Upgrade focuses on minimum mandatory changes, and defers taking advantage of new business value until later Continuous Improvement Projects

• A Functional Upgrade includes a Technical Upgrade, with added scope to take advantage of at least some new business functionality immediately”

 

SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades covers both areas, technical and functional.

Technical Upgrade

For the mandatory changes required for a technical upgrade, you may focus on the analysis of the following checks:

• Simplification Items
  This section shows the simplification items that have been identified as relevant for your specific source and target release. The check is mainly based on table contents and used transactions. The Effort Ranking indicates SAP's effort estimation for the corresponding simplification item.


• Activities Related to Simplification Items
  To get an overview of the project-related activities, you can filter by the following conditions:

• 
  
  
  
  • 
    
    
    
    • Mandatory activities: activities that need to be performed in any case.
    
    
    • Optional activities: activities that are related to simplification items, but their project relevance is subject to business decisions.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

• Custom Code Analysis
  While many of your custom code adjustments will have been made when you first moved to SAP S/4HANA, some further simplifications of ABAP have occurred across subsequent SAP S/4HANA releases, which may affect your custom code and require its adaptation.
  A custom code check using the ABAP test cockpit S4HANA_READINESS ruleset is required for results in the Custom Code Analysis of SAP Readiness Check for S/4HANA upgrades. (For the setup, see the implementation section.)


• Add-On Compatibility
  Incompatible add-ons can be showstoppers for your SAP S/4HANA upgrade if they are still in use and required by your business. Upgrades to standard SAP add-ons are delivered as part of the SAP S/4HANA release. Any add-ons installed in the source release system that are not yet supported on the target release will be shown as incompatible. If any third-party software present in the landscape requires an update as part of the upgrade, you may need to contact your third-party vendor to check on the status and expected delivery date of any updates.


• Integration
  This section provides an overview of BW extractors and blocked IDoc interfaces in the analyzed system that are affected by the upgrade. If the tile displays BW extractors as “Not Working”, check whether an alternative extractor exists or is planned for future release. If not, you may need to create a project-specific development to extract the data.


• SAP Innovative Business Solutions
  For the SAP S/4HANA upgrade, solutions developed by SAP Innovative Business Solutions need to be checked for compatibility with the target SAP S/4HANA release and for validity of the maintenance contract.

Functional Upgrade

The following checks provide some hints about which new business functionalities offer the most benefits for your business:

• Recommended SAP Fiori Apps
  In this section, you can find SAP Fiori apps that have been identified as relevant. The identification is based on the business processes and transactions used in the analyzed SAP S/4HANA system. Especially the SAP Fiori Lighthouse apps offer an immediate business benefit with simplification and efficiency increase of tasks and processes for the user compared with classical UI technologies.

• Innovation Potential
  The innovation potential in your specific SAP S/4HANA system is shown in business case story cards. The innovation potential for each business case story is based on quantitative characteristics that have been derived from the performance of your business processes. If the quantitative characteristics exceed a defined threshold, the corresponding card is active, and you can open it to find information about the current situation in the system and the identified innovation potential.

 

Preparation of the Data Collection for SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades

The preparation steps required for SAP Readiness Check for S/4HANA upgrades are described in SAP Note 3059197:

• Implement the listed SAP Notes to enable the data collection for SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA upgrades.


• Select the target SAP S/4HANA version.


• Select the data collectors and schedule the analysis.

 

• Download the analysis data.


• Upload the collected data to the SAP Readiness Check cloud application (landing page https://rc.cfapps.eu10.hana.ondemand.com).


• For the Custom Code Analysis, execute ABAP test cockpit and export the results to “File for SAP Readiness Check” as described in the Enable Custom Code Analysis via ABAP Test Cockpit section of SAP Note 3059197.

 

As always, we are looking forward to receiving your feedback!

SAP Readiness Check Team