Prepare for S/4HANA migration: how to quantify SAP changes

Is your organization making or considering migrating to S/4HANA? Making the switch is a project unlike any other.

The issue is that there is no single approach to an S/4HANA migration that is appropriate for every organization. However, the better prepared your organization is, the smoother your transition to S/4HANA.

[su_quote]Large-scale migrations like S/4HANA take time and thoughtful planning. Whatever method you embrace to make the transition to S/4HANA, you must adequately prepare for the journey.[/su_quote]

Look at quantifying SAP changes, for example. Organizations need to quantify their critical processes for analysis and application to the S/4HANA environment at the planning stage.

SAP IT teams use various techniques, including WRICEFS or blueprint mapping to legacy functional requirements, to map needs. The method you choose depends on the maturity of your legacy environment and documentation standards.

There is no doubt that quantifying SAP changes at the planning stage is a must. How you do it relies on your approach to migrating to S/4HANA.

Quantifying SAP changes and your transition to S/4HANA

There are three approaches to shifting to S/4HANA. Each method – Greenfield, Bluefield, Brownfield – requires different practices and levels of preparation.

What does this look like?

Greenfield

Organizations adopting a Greenfield method start with a blank slate. So, it’s essential to capture new capabilities using WRICEFS or business requirements, for example.

The capabilities are built directly into the new S/4HANA environment. At the same time, organizations can utilize functionality in the new S/4HANA system in many cases to allow for enhanced capabilities.

Bluefield

The aim is to guarantee you can achieve existing requirements while leveraging new capabilities and preserving bespoke and custom functionality delivered via custom code. If custom code is required to achieve an outcome, it must be preserved and adapted to leverage the capabilities of the new S/4HANA environment.

Much of the planning for a Bluefield transition involves listing existing business requirements and determining how it is delivered. Common ways to deliver a requirement include:

• Via native S/4HANA functionality
• Adapting custom code to be compatible with new S/4HANA functionality
• Maintaining existing custom code
• Rewriting custom code in the S/4HANA environment to efficiently maintain the business requirement

Brownfield

In theory, this is the most straightforward path to S/4HANA. However, from observations at our customer sites it seems to have the lowest success rate.

A Brownfield approach requires making a copy of legacy systems and performing a technical upgrade to the copy. In this instance, all custom code is maintained. However, it may become incompatible in the newly upgraded S/4HANA environment.

While custom code may not be compatible in many cases, it still must be delivered across a legacy environment to ensure business continuity.

Any change that doesn’t pass code compatibility requirements has to be flagged in the lead up to the digital transformation. Flagged changes could require manual adjustment in the S/4HANA environment after the upgrade.

As a result, preparation should commence as soon as possible. Organizations must ensure the legacy environment runs code suitability checks via ATC or another code analysis tool.

Doing so ensures that the code is compatible post-upgrade and gives it the best possible chance of successfully migrating to S/4HANA.

How Rev-Trac can help

Whatever approach you adopt, Rev-Trac – an automated SAP change management solution – can be configured to provide as much technical information as possible.

At the same time, it ensures processes are followed to guarantee that requirements are not mismanaged during the preparation or dual-track management of the digital transformation.

Custom code can be rationalized and assessed for S/4HANA suitability as the organization prepares for the transformation. ATC libraries and integration are essential to ultimately shifting left.

S/4HANA suitability checks can commence early in the preparation phase, ensuring that developers are delivering code across the legacy systems with the best chance of being compatible with the S/4HANA environment.

Rev-Trac’s enforced process can offer critical benefits before, during and after the digital transformation.

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Organizations should start implementing suitable development practices up to five years before the shift to S/4HANA, and this needs to be part of the culture to get the best outcome. These practices can easily be enforced by Rev-Trac.

If you need more information on quantifying SAP changes and adequately preparing for your digital transformation, please contact one of our SAP change management experts.