Planning security with the S/4 Hana Readiness Check 2.0

SAP's Readiness Check 2.0 provides the answer and thus provides essential support in successfully planning the conversion to the new SAP system version. The tool can be used across all industries - with a view to banks, it is unreservedly recommended for all.

Since banks will most likely opt for the brownfield approach and thus a software upgrade when converting to S/4 Hana, it is important to check how "ready" the existing application landscape is for the automatic conversion of data during the conversion.

To ensure that this runs smoothly, all possible sources of error must be identified, analyzed and eliminated in advance.

The check should be performed as early as possible and repeated every six months or so, in line with the rhythm of new releases and changes introduced by SAP.

It takes a close look at the business processes used, the source code and the database and provides an overview of the individual system status. In addition, the tool provides results and indications as to which components are not S/4-capable and when and how to react.

And it estimates the size of a database, gives an indication of what the database should look like, and makes suggestions about where data can be deleted.

At the end of the Readiness Check 2.0 there is a detailed, very well prepared and meaningful result document including dashboards. The tasks to be completed during the S/4 Hana implementation before, during and after the conversion are classified in the categories mandatory, conditional and optional.

With the appropriate SAP expertise, experience shows that everything can be completed in a single-digit number of person-days. This low effort is offset by a great benefit for the bank.

On the way to the smoothest possible changeover, the tool provides crucial information in advance and gives planning security. This was demonstrated in practice at a major bank in Germany.

The following are some important findings resulting from this: For banks that use SAP CML for loan management, object and collateral management is not applicable there when converting to S/4 Hana. For this, the bank must implement SAP CMS before the conversion and migrate the SAP CML objects and collateral there.

In addition, up to now it has been possible in the SAP systems, with exceptions, to manage a vendor or customer without a corresponding business partner, including all its roles. The readiness check showed that this is no longer feasible in S/4 Hana.

A business partner must be assigned to each vendor and customer. In banks, for example, this affects creditors such as suppliers or the complete synchronization or synchronization customizing of the business partner with the customer.

Like the SAP applications, the bank's own developments must also be checked for their S/4 capability. The check provides information on whether customer-specific developments are affected by the changeover and which simplification elements are relevant.

The SAP ATC component is then recommended for the detailed analysis, the so-called custom code check. The analysis is complex, but indispensable for banks.

The tool provides so-called findings, i.e. concrete code points that need to be checked before the changeover, and corresponding "instructions" on what needs to be done. Another very likely result at banks is that the data volumes are too large for the transfer to the new S/4 Hana system.

Different measures are suggested. In case of technical tables it is possible to reorganize data, in case of functional data their archiving before conversion is highly recommended.

Innobis recommends that banks conduct an early evaluation of their data assets and associated challenges with the goal of finding an appropriate framework.