Release of the year: from SAP ERP/ECC 6.0 to Hana with S/4

It was another five-year plan which, in Mao's view, was intended to eliminate the three major differences between rural and urban, head and hand, and industry and agriculture. The campaign was abandoned in 1961 after its obvious failure.

All for One Steeb sent out a press release entitled "Great leap forward", reporting on a release upgrade from ERP/ECC 6.0 to Hana with S/4 at existing SAP customer Carl Stahl.

The Carl Stahl Group is no small company: With 67 locations in 19 countries, the Group recently achieved a turnover of 289 million euros. For accounting, materials management, production, sales, quality management, human resources and service, 650 of Carl Stahl's 1,652 employees work with SAP ERP/ECC 6.0, introduced and supported by All for One Steeb via Application Management. This system was transferred to S/4 in just four months.

There are several possible explanations for this miracle: Firstly, the press release is an April Fool's joke and marketing gag. Secondly, a database change has taken place and the new database is now Hana with all the familiar SQL functions.

Thirdly, Carl Stahl realized that the ECC modules Materials Management, Production, Sales, Quality Management, Human Resources and Service were no longer needed and carried out a release upgrade from ERP Accounting to S/4 Finance.

A year ago at Sapphire Orlando 2015, Professor Hasso Plattner and SAP Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert explained that all SAP software can also run on Hana - just like on any other SQL database from IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.

However, Plattner qualified that in some cases the result is depressing because, by its very nature, the ERP/ECC Abap code is not optimized for Hana. Has All for One Steeb now transferred the SAP modules Accounting, Materials Management, Production, Sales, Quality Management, Human Resources and Service to Hana?

Does the result contradict Plattner's prediction? Stefan Aubele, CIO of the Carl Stahl Group, reports:

"We have known SAP R/3 for over 15 years now and have a direct comparison. The difference is enormous. Everything runs much faster and easier."

Miracles happen again and again ...

After the joy of the successful release change, the all-for-one Steeb press release reads

"The one-single-source-of-truth concept has been consistently implemented. Previously separate totals, index and document tables for financial accounting (FI), controlling (CO) and profit and loss and market segment accounting (CO PA) are now combined into a single universal journal. [...] The new asset accounting system also eliminates the otherwise time-consuming reconciliations between the general ledger and subledger."

This corresponds to the experience of the SAP community and is in line with the release plans published by SAP.

At the end of the press release, the redemptive truth comes to light.

"To date, Carl Stahl's finance and accounting has been converted to SAP S/4 with Hana. The next step will be logistics."

The world is back on the rails. Yes, Simple Finance or S/4 Finance has been proving itself on the market for almost two years and S/4 Logistics will soon be released. The S/4 roadmap is silent on other SAP modules such as HR/HCM.

SAP CFO Luka Mucic is always happy to announce what he intends to achieve in 2020 - including with Hana, S/4 and cloud computing. However, there is no viable roadmap for existing customers, but there are press releases that would have us believe that S/4 is a complete business suite. (pmf)