OK, I wrote this beauty a couple of years ago. And then I thought about what has happened in the past few years now that SAP has laid down the law about migration away from ECC. 2025/2027 are the ‘new norms’ for SAP customers. So, here is my revision of what I wrote several years ago, and I hope for all of those involved in an SAP migration to S/4HANA read this like it is brand new!
In conversations about migration to SAP S/4HANA, everyone thinks about what strategy to take. Many SAP customers running 4.6, 4.7 or ECC are contemplating next steps to S/4HANA – and it scares them! Do we migrate what we’ve got (brownfield), start over (greenfield) (ouch!), or perhaps a combination of the two depending upon complexity of both the installed SAP system(s) and/or company itself. So, let’s take a couple of viewpoints on both sides of the camp.
What are those next steps? Well, there are a couple of serious considerations before getting too complicated. First, you need to assess your current environment (anyone thinking AI here?). You can put eyeballs on this which will take forever, cost a pile of cash OR, you can ‘run’ a migration assessment to discover how complex and/or customized (read: ABAP that you own) your existing environment is. Additionally, if the company is amid a major transformation to renew business processes, enter a new market or introduce new products, then these need to be considered.
Pulling this off is a super commitment by the leadership team of your company. A serious change management program needs to be in place to enforce a process and culture of no customizations. At a prior company I worked for, the CEO and CIO (me) were the change control board (CCB). Yes, just the two of us. The operating word at the CCB was ‘NO’ and it was up to the business users to try and convince the CCB that the changes would significantly impact revenue in multiple customers. Any requested changes by the business users had to be written up by the business themselves – not the IT team. So, the business leaders really needed to think through a process, impact on other areas, numbers of users impacted, costs, and real value to the company. How’s your company set up for this?
Using an amazing app like the West Trax Innovation App can help the C-Suite, the business users, the CIO, and the IT teams come together to actually visualize and understand what the current SAP implementation contains so they can think about what changes in culture and approach they need to instill before moving forward with S/4HANA. History has taken its toll on your company and the WestTrax app tells you key things like the percentage of standard SAP ECC is implemented, by functional area. Another lever is visibility of the custom code down to level 6. Yes, level 5 is the Tcode level, by user, by function. Level 6 is the document type. This is a wakeup call. A key deliverable of the WestTrax app is the exposure of how much custom ABAP code is hanging around. Can you imagine what your company has paid for ABAP customizations to find out they are no longer actually running?! To make matters worse, many companies are still testing this dormant code when making changes because they don’t even know the software is obsolete. Anyone getting a headache yet?
Another key area to consider in the SAP migration process is data. What’s the condition of the data? Does anyone ‘own’ it or curate it? A major consideration is just how much of this legacy data needs to be migrated or archived. We generally don’t give this a lot of thought and migrate everything, even though much of the data is never accessed and/or used. I know I am being generic here as there is lots of data to consider in any migration.
Also, what’s your company’s complexity? Global? Single country? Multilingual? Many instances? Different business units in different industries? Finally, what’s the integration between other systems in the environment, including perhaps other SAP instances? The teams working on the migration need to look at all the facts, to assess these parameters, to determine if the migration can be implemented as a brownfield.
Now, perhaps greenfield is a better option if a company is really looking at starting over, taking a completely new view as to how the company is currently operating, or perhaps if there are new ways of working in a more ‘standard’ way. Let’s be careful here. There is a culture shift required that needs to be addressed prior to any greenfield implementation. That shift is convincing the many stakeholders that things can be done using the standard functions contained with the S/4HANA environment. There are new functions, capabilities, etc. that can be used by a company. And that’s a good thing! However, many companies start the process of implementing a system as ‘standard,’ no (or very few) customizations (versus configurations) with perhaps the exception being technical integrations to external systems. A greenfield implementation essentially means starting over, throwing out the old conventions and previous ways of working. There are lots of compromises required to get users and stakeholders on the same page. Implementing the ‘80/20 Rule’ can be hard.
If your company can rework processes to comply with S/4HANA standard processes, then greenfield is for you. But remember that this will require up-front training of the team as to what greenfield means, boatloads of business meetings, agreements, and of course, increased costs and time. SI’s love this since they are going to be part of those meetings! I can smell the invoices from here! Maybe that’s why they call it ‘green’ field!
Seriously, there are serious considerations for both approaches. Companies need to assess where they are going, why they are migrating, what they expect to get as benefits, budget, and of course how this will affect their business processes, consumption of resources, people and technology going forward. S/4HANA is a reality; make the right choice for the right reasons and make sure everyone in the company knows why the selected approach has been taken. In any event, you need to use the West Trax app to give you the direction and facts to make the right decision. Check out westtrax.com. It may save your company.
