Here’s How To Get Your S/4HANA Migration Plans Under Control

Given the present price of shopper conversion, fewer than 50% of SAP ECC clients may have accomplished their transformation to SAP S/4 by 2027. Moreover, about 13,000 ECC clients are on EHPs 0–5, with assist solely as much as 2025 and calling for an much more pressing resolution on the way forward for their ERP. Furthermore, 90% of S/4 clients are working the primary model on which they deployed, and variations 1511, 1610, 1709, and 1809 are all out of assist by now. Enterprise demand for S/4 migrations is making a bottleneck and an unavoidable abilities scarcity; in response to the Americas’ SAP Customers’ Group (ASUG), 26% of organizations see abilities in supporting, creating, and upgrading SAP methods as their primary problem in working with the know-how. No matter stage you’re at together with your migration planning, take these steps now when you haven’t already:

Consider SAP as a cloud vendor. SAP has adjusted its industrial mannequin to turn out to be a cloud enterprise. The most recent figures present that greater than 50% of the S/4HANA licenses bought in 2023 have been by way of RISE. That is now the commonest method and a big pivot for mature SAP ECC customers. They are going to be procuring extra from SAP and shifting away from the on-premises world. There are accounting remedy adjustments to think about while you transfer from the on-prem world, the place the licenses have been purchased after which capitalized to a subscription opex mannequin.
Have a dialog together with your database provider to make certain of your deadline. S/4HANA solely runs on an SAP database (HANA), and there’s no different technique to run it. You possibly can not choose every other database, and simply since you are on prolonged upkeep or customer-specific upkeep for ECC doesn’t imply that your database will get assist. Some Oracle and IBM Db2 (11.1 or 10.5) variations will likely be going out of assist already in 2025. There are some go-to releases reminiscent of 19c for Oracle and 11.5 for Db2 that ought to get assist till 2027, however even these might transfer into prolonged upkeep earlier than the 2027 deadline.
Select whether or not and methods to RISE — or select to not RISE. ECC and S/4HANA purchasers can resolve emigrate to the cloud utilizing the RISE program. Shoppers with SAP ERP can migrate to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Non-public Version and protect their current configuration, customization, and historic knowledge. S/4HANA clients can transition their SAP system as is — from their knowledge middle to an SAP knowledge middle. Whereas credit can be found for brand spanking new purchases of RISE with SAP signed earlier than December 31, 2024, remember that the financials will not be in your aspect when planning a migration. There are different issues that you’ll have to make to justify this endeavor, from the supply of innovation to longer-term wants by way of integration and new improvement.
Resolve which method to take: hybrid/bluefield, greenfield, or brownfield. Selecting the method is a key start line for the migration. Clients working particular business options generally go greenfield for lack of alternate options, and purchasers desirous to go pure software program as a service don’t have any different possibility however greenfield. Shoppers desirous to consolidate and go from a number of ECC methods to 1 S/4 have to think about a hybrid/bluefield migration. The scale of the HANA database may even affect your deployment resolution; if in case you have a lot of knowledge in your SAP setting or you might be bringing a number of ECC environments collectively, you do not need to pay an enormous database invoice for knowledge with which you aren’t going to do something — and it’s possible you’ll not need to migrate some knowledge in any respect. Should you’re on this boat, the hybrid possibility or the selective knowledge transition will work higher for you.
Guide your service supplier ASAP. With 30,000 ECC clients shifting to S/4 by 2027, that is going to create a bottleneck within the companies supplier house. Discovering folks and consultants would be the biggest ache level, however main companies suppliers do have packages in place to assist together with your migration. You should utilize The Forrester Wave™: SAP Implementation Companies Companions, Q2 2022 to make a extra knowledgeable resolution.

Transferring your present SAP ECC setting to the cloud generally is a cumbersome endeavor, however you possibly can depend on our analysis. Whether or not it involves choosing your path to SAP within the cloud or selecting a companies supplier to your migration, e-book a steering session or an inquiry with me to get began or to judge how your working migration goes.