S/4 Migration Roadmap

It is more than a technical and functional release upgrade. SAP has made great efforts in recent months to make the transition from ERP/ECC 6.0 and SAP's Business Suite 7 to Hana and S/4 as transparent, escalation-free and secure as possible for its existing customers - but the challenge lies less in the technical tools than in the experience with such transformation projects and the volume of data.

Creating a Hana and S/4 roadmap without an experienced SAP partner is considered almost impossible in the community - that may not be fair, but it is the reality. Accordingly, the current sympathy for the Walldorf-based company is not particularly high.

The German ERP provider has thus been under pressure to justify itself for months. The international SAP partner community is a helper in this predicament. Over the past few years, this community has gained a great deal of experience and knowledge about how best to customize Hana and S/4.

With our own IT tools from the partner community, most migration projects now succeed without errors and in a stable manner. Thomas Failer and Tobias Eberle from Data Migration Services provide the most important parameters for a successful S/4 transformation in this E-3 cover story.

Deadline & master data

"When is the right time to move to S/4 is ultimately something each company must decide for itself"

says Board member Thomas Failer right at the beginning of the interview.

"In preparation for the changeover, cleaning up the required master data and improving its quality is a sensible, if not necessary, measure to optimally drive digitization with S/4"

he emphasizes emphatically and thus sets the focus on the data to be migrated from the SAP system. Another sensible task during preparation is to reduce the volume of data in the current SAP systems by means of archiving or rightsizing.

"In this way, the data volumes of SAP systems can be significantly reduced by around 70 percent, which makes the subsequent changeover much easier"

Failer knows from numerous successful projects and he adds:

"Another preparatory measure is extremely useful from our point of view, and that is the decommissioning of existing legacy systems, also known as historization - Application Retirement. These systems are often kept in operation in order to meet the legal requirements for data access.

With efficient and effective historization using our IT tool JiVS, existing operating costs can be reduced by up to 80 percent, while complying with legal requirements."

Data quality for S/4

Data Migration Services focuses on data quality and data management. CEO Tobias Eberle on this:

"Often, the focus of the S/4 roadmap is on functionalities or leveraging new capabilities with S/4. Easily overlooked is the fact that the amount of data and its quality play a key role in the adoption of S/4.

In addition, it is usually overlooked that after the introduction of S/4, the old SAP systems are still present and continue to be operated. Consistent inclusion of historization in an S/4 roadmap is advisable here."

Thus, the question arises: How can vulnerabilities in terms of data storage, data quality, data growth, misconfigurations be identified and remedied in the context of S/4 migration? Thomas Failer, owner of Data Migration Services, says:

"Yes, the move to S/4 offers an opportunity to review the data assets in terms of data retention, data quality, data growth, and to identify and fix misconfigurations. The brownfield or greenfield approach is suitable for this.

In principle, only the data that is required in the target system is migrated. A prior cleanup of the data stocks - especially master data - brings with it the possibility of correcting misconfigurations and improving the quality of the data.

The JiVS platform of Data Migration Services supports the customer in this process by easily analyzing the data assets to uncover vulnerabilities."

Before migration

"It is imperative that the preparation of master data takes place before the migration to S/4," Tobias Eberle emphasizes once again. In the experience of Data Migration Services, the adaptation of master data should take place with regard to the following points:

Sorting out master data that is no longer needed, cleaning up duplicates, standardizing and normalizing master data, and enriching master data with S/4-relevant information.

"The preparation of master data ideally takes place before the implementation of S/4 and can be started separately today and at any time"

Thomas Failer explains.

Without SolMan

Many existing SAP customers might immediately think of the standard tool SolMan, which has received an enormous increase in functions and possibilities in version 7.2 - but: "From our point of view, SolMan is not an option for data maintenance and quality.

Here we rather see the use of the SAP Migration Cockpit for the consistent import of data into the S/4 environment"

Eberle knows on the basis of many successful customer projects. In every migration project, the appropriate infrastructure approach is also discussed: Advantages and disadvantages of a greenfield or brownfield approach?

"The two basic migration paths, greenfield and brownfield, have specific advantages and disadvantages, but these must be evaluated individually for each SAP legacy customer"

Thomas Failer is convinced and he explains in an E-3 interview:

"While the greenfield approach requires a new implementation, remediation of the - according to the dictionary - brown 'legacy' promises investment protection for the usually extensive and costly customizations of SAP systems by existing customers."

Greenfield or Brownfield

However, CEO Tobias Eberle warns: "More important than a recommendation for one or the other migration path is the observation that the calculations for both variants are not clean.

"Because in any case, companies have to make additional investments in SAP S/4, after all, they have to purchase new licenses and buy expensive hardware or take out subscriptions"

explains the CEO of Data Migration Services. Although the volume of data from the legacy systems is reduced when switching to the Hana database, the demands on the working memory are disproportionately greater, because the combination of classic infrastructure and archiving solutions becomes obsolete.

"It is precisely the migration in the company's own data center preferred by the majority of existing SAP customers - whether gradual or one-off - that is consequently proving to be a massive cost driver."

Thomas Failer emphasizes.

But the two managers have a solution: The problem is that the planned budget increases at SAP's existing customers will not be sufficient to provide the necessary funds for modernization and further digitization. The recommendation for both migration paths is therefore to shut down legacy systems that will become obsolete as a result of the migration, thereby making massive savings in operating costs.

Clean up & shut down

Accordingly, components that are no longer active can be found in SAP systems time and again. This applies to "forgotten" Abap functions from the Z namespace as well as to settings in the FI/CO area.

What are the options for identifying and decommissioning unused company codes?

"Company codes that are no longer needed are unnecessary ballast in an SAP system and it is desirable to remove them"

Tobias Eberle explains the situation with many existing customers.

"For legal reasons, the deletion of company codes is not easily possible. With the JiVS solution, however, secure deletion in SAP can be made possible. To do this, the first step is to copy the data from SAP to JiVS and set up the JiVS system to access the data.

JiVS offers 700 predefined business objects for SAP FI, CO, MM, SD, HR, etc., which allow access to the data to be set up quickly. SAP or other means can now be used to delete the company code in the SAP system. The data is then accessed via the JiVS web user interface."

Lean archives

How can the cost factor "legacy systems" be kept low? And keep the archive lean and agile? Tobias Eberle:

"The cost pool for operating legacy systems must be permanently reduced. The means of choice is called consolidation and decommissioning. Users have known this for years. But they shy away from it because of the costs involved."

Here, too, Thomas Failer has a logical answer for the SAP community:

"A prerequisite for a solution suitable for shutting down legacy systems to amortize the investments required for this in a short time and subsequently ensure permanently lower operating costs is standardization and automation."

These are precisely the characteristics of the JiVS solution from Swiss Data Migration Services. These properties are the result of a large number of projects on data migration and decommissioning of legacy systems.

In practice, JiVS has proven to reduce operating costs by 80 to 90 percent after decommissioning the legacy systems. With the remaining ten to 20 percent, the legacy data to be retained for compliance reasons, including SAP business logic, can continue to be used.

Tobias Eberle adds:

"Before the data and documents are historized, however, they are cleaned of duplicates. This usually leads to a significant reduction in storage volume. At the same time, this lowers the amount of information to be transferred to the live system."

Current master data

This means that an S/4 roadmap must also address the issue of infrastructure - and what questions need to be clarified with regard to hardware sizing and licenses concerning Hana and S/4? Tobias Eberle:

"It has to be clarified which data has to be migrated to S/4 and which data volumes result from this. Specifically, the question is whether historical data needs to be migrated to a new S/4 system."

Ideally, you can start with S/4 on the greenfield (see above) and only load the current master data to S/4.

"This allows all the baggage of historical data from previous years to be shaken off, which has a positive impact on hardware sizing and licenses"

Failer explains. The amortization of the investment in licenses and hardware should take place after three years at the latest, according to Data Migration Services.

"Faster amortization can be achieved, for example, through lower acquisition costs for licenses and hardware. This can be achieved by reducing the volume of data by means of rightsizing and lowering the operating costs for legacy systems with the aforementioned historization."

Tobias Eberle describes the experiences from successful customer projects.

A comparison with the costs of the SAP cloud platform is of course permissible - in the end, every company must also face this question when deciding between on-premise and cloud. It should also be mentioned here that when switching to the cloud model, the question of the data volume that is initially loaded must be asked even more.

General Data Protection Regulation

The S/4 roadmap is significantly shaped by data management at SAP's existing customer, so the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation will also be directly relevant.

"When it comes to implementing the General Data Protection Regulation, as a specialist in historization, we focus on legacy systems"

Thomas Failer describes the scenario.

Many customers operate SAP, but not yet SAP legacy systems, in order to comply with the legal framework for data access. And Tobias Eberle emphasizes that the new General Data Protection Regulation adds the requirement to also delete certain data on request.

"This requirement is especially difficult or impossible to meet for legacy systems"

he knows from his professional practice.

"Either because the old systems do not support deletion or the implementation is extremely time-consuming. That's why we at Data Migration Services recommend the consistent historization of all legacy systems using JiVS.

This means that all data is stored on one platform and can be managed centrally there. With JiVS Retention Management, it is now possible to selectively and specifically delete data and thus meet the requirements of the new General Data Protection Regulation."

Only one in two companies in Germany has so far sought help from external experts in implementing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR).

According to the survey, just 48 percent of all companies with 20 or more employees say they have called in specialists from outside the company. This is the result of a representative survey of more than 500 companies commissioned by the digital association Bitkom.

External GDPR Help

External lawyers were most frequently called in, consulted by around one in three companies (35 percent) with a view to the GDPR. External examiners or auditors were called in by 29 percent of all companies, and external data protection consulting took place in one in five companies (21 percent).

"According to their own estimates, only around one in eight companies will have fully implemented the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation by the deadline. In view of this low proportion and the size of the potential fines, the rather low use of external help with implementation is rather surprising."

said Susanne Dehmel, member of the Bitkom management board for legal affairs and security.

"Virtually all companies are affected by the EU requirements, as they apply to all companies that process personal data. For companies that haven't done anything yet, time is starting to run out."

May 25, 2018 marks the end of the two-year transition period for implementing the EU General Data Protection Regulation. According to a survey conducted by the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) among its members, just over half of the companies surveyed have so far developed a roadmap for implementing the EU GDPR in their company.

Only live data for S/4

When it comes to data management, how do you see the situation in the German-speaking SAP community? Thomas Failer:

"We think the results of the survey are indeed representative of the situation. It will be difficult to comply with the regulation's provision if companies do not put an end to the uncontrolled growth in their application landscape and centralize data storage.

Taken together, the two mean centralization at both the systems and the information level. Only the live data is to be transferred to the new central application platform, the rest belongs in the data platform.

This thinking in platforms is the prerequisite for fundamentally changing the situation. In this way, the necessary modernization and the increased compliance requirements can be reconciled.

Although at first glance the new regulation may seem like a new, heavy burden on government agencies, it may ultimately prove to be a beneficial accelerator of innovation in the IT landscape of SAP's existing customers."

Save & delete

What is the significance of the aforementioned topic of data deletion in general and in particular with the General Data Protection Regulation?

"The ability to not only file and store information securely, but also to delete it, is critical to master data management worthy of the name"

Thomas Failer defines in the E-3 conversation and adds:

"Only those who can clean up duplicate records, often with small differences between them, and delete the redundant or incorrect records will ensure consistently high quality in their master data."

And CEO Tobias Eberle emphasizes that there are more and more requirements that explicitly demand this ability to delete.

"For example, for some time now, companies have no longer been allowed to keep job applications indefinitely; instead, they must be irretrievably deleted after a few years. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation marks a decisive turning point here.

Because from now on, companies must be able to identify and delete every personal data record. And not just when statutory retention periods expire, which must of course continue to be observed.

Rather, under the new regulation, data must be removed if a company can no longer demonstrate a legitimate purpose for retaining it. This flexibility to identify and delete individual records at the touch of a button is best provided by a centralized data management platform with built-in retention management functionality, including a delete function."

Eberle explains the upcoming scenario.