Ready when you are

SAP® S/4HANA migration – when and how? Michael Straub, Portfolio Director SAP Business CEE and Gerren Mayne, SAP Director, Digital Technology Services, UK&I.

To migrate, or wait to migrate – that is the question facing every organization using SAP® software. Right now, it looks like a game of ‘chicken’ – waiting to see who moves first – going on in the world of S/4HANA migration.

As one of SAP’s foremost partners, we believe that getting this timing wrong has severe implications for your business, as does taking the wrong approach to migration. That’s why I’m outlining the most pragmatic options for low risk, effective migration – based on real-world discussions.

SAP is one of the global software powerhouses, with a client list that includes 92% of the Forbes Global 2000 and 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touching one of its systems.¹ With a heritage stretching back to the 1970s, periodic major updates are essential and the latest – the migration to S/4HANA, now scheduled for completion by 2027 – is underway.

However, the ratio of customers currently running S/4HANA is still very low, at just 4% of total SAP customers by the end of 2020. For Europe, it made sense to wait for the dust to settle on a political settlement when it came to Brexit. And nowadays, worldwide, the COVID pandemic has played a big part here – with so much to be done to adapt to a world in lockdown

Then, we might call the psychological element: many people and organizations are naturally reluctant to make the first

move in significant changes, preferring to watch and learn from others’ experiences. It’s a sensible approach but one with its risks: Wait too long and suddenly everyone is chasing the same finite pool of resources. You are no longer in control of your timetable and prices start to rise. Remember Y2K, anyone?

With COVID vaccines now coming on stream in volume, a Brexit deal in place, and the new S/4 migration deadline now fixed, organizations have important decisions to make.

Why are we waiting?

¹https://www.sap.com/documents/2017/04/4666ecdd-b67c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html

Start small – think bigPut color field theory aside for a moment. The meaningful question is how can you most efficiently leverage S/4HANA as your ERP core and what that means for enhancing the intelligent enterprise – and the ability to lead your sector in the future. In our view, it’s essential to start small – get a complete handle on the situation – and look for the big, transformational opportunities.

We come at this from an agnostic point of view. We are engaged in our S/4HANA migration right now – currently the largest in the world according to SAP – which is best characterized as greenfield. That’s because we fit the pragmatic profile for a greenfield transformation: we are integrating multiple legacy ERP platforms and creating a new, standardized operating model.

With our Global Delivery Center experts, Fujitsu is also well placed for brownfield migrations that involve a lot of code updates. We feel this makes the best sense for customers if they have an SAP ECC v6.0 environment from five or six years ago, probably not too cluttered with custom code.

To be clear, we are not saying it’s bluefield or nothing. But in many cases, bluefield is the most pragmatic, lowest risk choice, and we are well-placed to deliver. Fujitsu is a Global Platinum partner with SNP, the leading provider of the software that assesses and prioritizes real SAP migration needs. Unlike other systems integrators, we have invested in training our SNP team, which will be vital as the S/4HANA migration crunch starts to bite.

We also keep the broader picture in mind. Vital as it is, S/4HANA migration is not the only story. As a system integrator, we look at the whole environment, including interfaces, data, security, and the services you will need to maintain your applications after you go live.

2027 sounds like a long way off, but when should you start planning if you want to complete it by then? I wouldn’t want to be dependent on a completion date beyond 2025. Resources are going to be very hard to guarantee after that.

If you accept that as sound advice, then you should be thinking about options now. What are the things you need to do first? Optimization, for example, so you don’t port across things that will only hold you back in the future. Look at your estate: How much custom code and how many redundant objects do you have. Start to prepare.

Waiting has some advantages, but it’s now a game of chicken. Don’t leave it too late. Find out more at: SAP Services: Fujitsu Global

When is too late?

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