SAP HANA migration: 4 steps your team should take now

If your business relies on SAP R/3, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), ERP Central Element (ECC), or other older SAP platforms, now is the time to act and migrate to SAP S/4HANA.

In 2014, SAP announced that maintenance for many key products will end in 2025, requiring all SAP customers to migrate to the vendor’s new strategic platform built on top of its in-memory database, SAP HANA.

Moving to SAP S/4HANA is not just a matter of running an upgrade utility on your existing business processes and data. It needs a basic re-examination of your business processes, your data (and that of your clients), and your facilities. After that, you’ll require to re-implement everything on the new platform to fully realize the benefits that it will bring.

There are numerous business and technical challenges related to SAP transformation, especially around maintaining business connection, which is vital to any kind of organization based on SAP. (More on that listed below.).

If you have not yet begun your journey to SAP S/4HANA, below are 4 steps that you may require to address these challenges as you get ready for your SAP migration.

1. Re-evaluate your business requirements.

Your business engages with SAP every day, either straight via an SAP user interface, or indirectly with solutions delivered by SAP to other applications. Migrating these interactions takes a significant effort, but this is a possibility to take a look at your business processes to see what you need, and what has been carried around for many years but is never ever used anymore.

Part of any kind of SAP transformation is evaluating which functionality will be migrated “as-is,” what will be customized or updated as part of the transformation, and what will clearly be omitted of the migration task– since it’s not required, it’s obsolete, or it’s being or been replaced with other capabilities.

To minimize the risk of omitting and critical functionality, include your users and business experts throughout the transformation procedure. Entail them in gathering and refining requirements, and in confirming that the requirements have been met.

Testing is not to simply to figure out that the software functions properly; it is also to validate that it includes the appropriate functionality. Guarantee complete end-to-end traceability so that each requirement is mapped to the tests that report on its high quality, and review them regularly so that working software application is not affected by subsequent updates.

2. Take performance and safety right into account.

While it’s important that the functionality works as expected, the system’s performance and security are not less important. A new platform must improve both, yet you can not take that for granted. A lot additionally depends upon the architecture of the software that you build on top of it.

Include on your team personnel who have the necessary knowledge in SAP S/4HANA, in addition to skilled performance engineers and security professionals. Make them an indispensable part of the software lifecycle to ensure that requirements take performance and security right into account, and confirm throughout the delivery process to minimize the risk of downtime, slowdown, or security vulnerabilities.

3. Do not fail to remember the broader ecosystem.

SAP systems usually integrate with other systems, and if integration breaks, it can endanger your organization’s capacity to do organization.

Given that SAP systems don’t exist in isolation, screening should incorporate the whole landscape, which includes the SAP systems, the systems they depend upon, and also the systems that depend upon them.

To guarantee that you are able to text effectively, incorporate test automation within your testing environment that can mimic various application user interfaces, and engage with the various technologies and protocols that comprise the landscape.

4. Roll Out Changes Continuously 

As with any huge software project, there is always the opportunity of ignoring the amount of work required to implement an offered piece of functionality and delivering it beyond the estimated time.

Minimize risk via DevOps and constant delivery. As opposed to waiting until all functionalities are available, break the system down into small pieces and release them as soon as they are ready, to allow the team to get feedback quickly.

Leave the older system in place during the change duration to the brand-new system so that individuals can still access the functionality that has not been moved to the new system. Although this could not mitigate the delay, you can lessen the impact it has on your business.

Eight Challenges For SAP Migration

Business and technical challenges with SAP transformation includes maintaining the business continuity. Expect to face these business and technical challenges.

Business concerns

Unique requirements: Every SAP movement is unique, due to the many customisations that are applied and updated with time. There’s no single upgrade mechanism you can put on all SAP systems.

Absence of a qualified and experienced team: SAP specialists are difficult to find, and individuals with experience in SAP transformation are even more difficult to find.

SAP can not be “turned off” during the migration: Many companies depend on SAP for critical deals, and any type of interruption to SAP service can leave an organization incapable to run.

Quality and security: Even if you preserve business continuity, any errors in data can quickly circulate inside and also outside of the SAP system. At the same time, the information must be protected and follow business processes and regulatory demands throughout the makeover.

Technical problems

Traceability and governance: Many companies that run on SAP are greatly regulated and should keep end-to-end auditability, traceability, and governance.

SAP innovations: SAP incorporates lots of exclusive technologies– such as IDoc, RFC, SAP GUI, SAP UI5, SAP Fiori, and others– that requires comprehensive technical knowledge to program and to test.

Complex dependencies: The SAP landscape includes multiple applications, with dependencies that can slow down the software delivery process.

Diverse Platforms: SAP modernizations need to operate on a range of platforms, such as cloud and mobile devices.

Migrate now, but, use care

If you have not started migrating over to the new SAP systems, don’t wait any longer. SAP transformations have considerable challenges, however, by taking the methods described here, you should be able to overcome them.

You can deliver your organization’s SAP modernisation while providing solutions and functionalities that your company depends on.

Conclusion

Want to figure out more about SAP HANA migration and SAP HANA Cloud, feel free to visit our website.

At ZaranTech, we also offer a self-paced, online certification program on SAP HANA, mentored by some of the sought after and experienced subject matter experts. Browse through our course pages for further information.