SAP S/4HANA migration scenarios - How to master the changeover
The migration to SAP S/4HANA is a decisive step for companies that want to modernise their IT landscape and optimise their business processes. A key success factor is choosing the right migration scenario.
Whether greenfield, brownfield or bluefield - each migration scenario offers specific advantages and disadvantages and significantly determines the success of the changeover. Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) and when exactly it should be activated is also essential. CVI is the data conversion of debtors and creditors in the direction of the central SAP business partner. Another important aspect is the cleansing and quality of the data to be migrated. A well thought-out sequence of these measures can play a decisive role in the migration. But which sequence is recommended here?
The migration of an SAP system to SAP S/4HANA is a complex process. There are risks, but also opportunities for optimisation, for example of processes and data.
The answers to the following questions will give you an idea of which migration scenario is suitable for your project:
- What does the current IT landscape (SAP and non-SAP) look like?
- Which SAP operating model - cloud, on-prem or hybrid - is preferred?
- Can IT processes be standardised?
- What resources are available for the migration?
- How much customising is available?
- The amount of the customer's own coding could also play a role in which scenario is chosen.
There are three migration scenarios to choose from
What role does Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) play?
The abbreviation CVI stands for Customer Vendor Integration. This is the interface between the SAP business partner and the dependent objects:
- Customer
- supplier
- Contact person
The CVI ensures a consistent and correct database in the respective objects for the vendor and customer master and the business partner. Nothing works in SAP S/4HANA without the SAP business partner. With the introduction of SAP S/4HANA, the SAP business partner becomes the central and leading data object for customer and vendor master data.
This data is still required as independent data objects in order to support selected applications and processes within SAP S/4HANA. However, these customers and vendors can only be managed via the SAP Business Partner.
Sooner or later, customer-vendor integration is therefore absolutely essential. However, it is advisable to activate it at the right time. If CVI is performed before data cleansing during brownfield migration, business partner duplicates are created in SAP S/4HANA.
This is because in the brownfield scenario, every customer and vendor is transferred one-to-one to a business partner with the same number range, unless the data has been cleansed. These duplicates must then be identified and cleansed at great expense.
It is generally recommended that data cleansing is carried out before data migration. Data cleansing should be preceded by a data conception. Only then is there a chance,
- gain a transparent overview of your own data,
- detect and eliminate deficiencies in data quality,
- eliminate deficiencies in the structural integrity of the data,
- identify and merge duplicate and multiple data,
- sort out and archive data that is no longer required,
- create the basis for the solution design and
- ultimately make data migration much easier with a cleansed and consolidated database in order to
- to be able to operate with full data power in the new system right from the start.
Without prior data cleansing, you save time in the short term. However, as all the deficiencies are transferred to the new SAP system, possibly creating further problems, the amount of post-processing work increases in the long term. SAP S/4HANA will never be able to realise its full potential until all difficulties have been resolved.
Identify duplicates in SAP S4/HANA®
Once the migration to SAP S/4HANA has been completed, a lot has already been invested in data quality as part of Customer Vendor Integration (CVI). It's a shame if you gradually destroy this investment and bring duplicates back into the system. In order to keep the data quality high in the long term, a reliable identity solution is required for central business transactions such as new creation or changes or fuzzy searches.
In the business white paper 'Identify duplicates in SAP S/4HANA quickly and efficiently', you can read how you can keep your data quality high in the long term by preventing double or multiple existing business partners in an error-tolerant manner.
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