How to make the SAP S/4HANA move as quick and smooth as possible

It’s tempting to believe that 2025 is far into the future. Only five short years from now, for some businesses, that date inspires urgency. That’s because 2025 is when SAP will end mainstream maintenance of SAP Business Suite installations that occurred before the launch of SAP S/4HANA.

This end of maintenance deadline impacts those who use Business Suite SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and its related modules and components. After 2025, the company will only support business applications on SAP S/4HANA

IBM is helping its customers prepare for this deadline by offering three solutions that simplify and accelerate the transition to SAP S/4HANA.

IBM SAP S/4HANA Impact Assessment

This thorough and detailed impact assessment provides objective insights into how the transition may affect your business processes, master and transaction data, system configuration and interfaces. The IBM SAP S/4HANA Impact Assessment delivers a roadmap that is based on your specific business needs.

This tool offers insight into five key areas.

Functional assessment. This step identifies processes currently in use in your SAP ECC and the expected innovations that will result from the change to S/4HANA. You’ll learn what is new, what will change and what will become obsolete.

Technical impacts. The technical impact assessment provides custom code inventory of your current SAP system. The assessment describes if code is used or unused and the effect new HANA database code will have on current systems. This step reveals what needs to be remediated and also details the security impact of the migration.

Simplification impact. This step uses the simplification database to highlight the programs and code affected by the new data structure. This process also identifies areas most affected by the transition. With this information, your organization can prioritize resource allocation during the implementation.

Project scope reduction. This process analyzes application versions and infrastructure requirements. It also reviews production usage statistics. This information allows you to reduce project scope to what needs to be fixed and tested most urgently. For example, you can choose to do targeted testing only on areas that have changed.

Identification of training requirements. IBM offers training recommendations as part of the assessment. With this as data an organization can know now what expertise will be needed later and plan accordingly. The business can close subject matter expertise gaps by securing additional personnel or training existing teams.

At the end of the assessment, you’ll receive a summary of all key findings and be able to access benchmark data from hundreds of other assessments performed by IBM.

IBM Impact Industry Solutions

In 2016, IBM and SAP partnered to create tools to accelerate the digital modernization journeys for their joint customers. From that partnership arose an effort by both companies to specifically accelerate SAP S/4HANA implementations. This partnership now delivers solutions that can increase S/4HANA implementation speeds by 20 to 30 percent 1.

SAP offers the SAP Model Company, a complete end-to-end industry solution that customers adopt as a baseline reference model. IBM became the first partner of SAP to expand on the SAP Model Company by including cross-industry and industry-specific content defined as IBM Impact Industry Solutions. IBM Impact Industry Solutions offer industry-specific accelerators that combine and enhance the strength of existing IBM and SAP services. These solutions paired with an IBM Impact Assessment simplify the transition process and lead to faster adoption of SAP S/4HANA. IBM draws these solutions from its work with 200+ clients. They offer process documentation, test scripts, training materials, SAP Fiori and analytical applications, data migration assets and defined security roles.

IBM Rapid Move for SAP S/4HANA

IBM Rapid Move for SAP S/4HANA allows a business to use its existing SAP investments to execute a one-step move to SAP S/4 HANA from any source. The solution uses automation to accelerate the migration process with minimal risk. That automation executes S/4HANA configuration, code remediation and data reconciliation to reduce the complexity of the implementation process. IBM Rapid Move strategically targets process redesign and standardization only where it is needed, so businesses can transform current SAP investments without having to fully redesign their legacy systems.

IBM Rapid Move for SAP S/4HANA comes with an integrated delivery framework from SAP, which includes the SAP Value Assurance program and SAP Model Company service. IBM Rapid Move helps organizations accelerate digital transformations and use the new platform much faster than a traditional deployment plan. The result is improved performance of complex and time-critical business functions, including real-time planning, execution, reporting, analytics and forecasting drawn from live data and a personalized and simplified user experience.

Uniquely positioned to make SAP S/4HANA transitions easier

IBM draws on 40 years of SAP services and expertise to serve customers. The company has completed more than 150 SAP S/4HANA implementations and advised more than 200 companies on the S/4HANA journey. Its experience crosses multiple industries and addresses each organization’s unique needs to deliver a personalized approach that can simplify and accelerate an SAP S/4HANA implementation.

Source: ibm.com