How to Avoid Common Business Challenges to the SAP S/4HANA Migration

While SAP turns 50 this year, the enterprise software pioneer remains firmly focused on the future as it pushes adoption of its next-generation ERP platform, S/4HANA. In fact, it has given customers a deadline of 2027 to move off their old SAP ERP to S/4HANA.

No matter how cutting-edge your business system may be, every software product has a finite lifecycle, which means it will become obsolete sooner or later. This could be due to changing business trends or evolving business needs, outdated technology, or a change in business applications. Whatever the reason, it will become necessary to upgrade or migrate your existing data at some point. 

However, according to a recent survey, 61% of SAP customers say data management issues are slowing down process automation and impeding moves to S/4HANA. 

“Many organisations see moving to SAP S/4HANA or their wider digital transformation as an opportunity to automate more of their business processes. Yet, as our survey shows, data management challenges are slowing progress”, says Paul Cooper, chairman of the UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG)

Why Migrate to S/4HANA in the First Place? 

Before we explore ways to mitigate these challenges, here’s a quick reminder of the benefits of SAP’s next-gen ERP. 

The most important advantages include:

  • Real-time analytics on consolidated data.
  • Speedier period-end financial closings.
  • Access to the latest technology, including AI, chatbots and IoT.
  • Automatic updates every quarter.
  • A simpler UI.
  • Process automation; and
  • Easier-to-update business models.

How To Make The Migration Seamless:

Meeting the 2027 deadline for migration to the SAP S/4HANA system requires proper planning to mitigate risks involved and pave the way for a smooth transition. When it comes to migrating SAP systems, we believe that proper planning and understanding are key to ensuring preservation of your existing data, and limited interruption to your business. 

At GlueData, we’re breaking the trend of migration projects running over time and budget, with subsequent data quality issues that frustrate clients and compromise business continuity.

SAP data migration is the most critical dependency of a S/4HANA project, and the one that frequently causes the most delays and frustration for our clients. Without a properly defined data migration process, the project can easily spiral out of control, incurring significant unforeseen costs and operational challenges.

At GlueData, our deep experience in this field combined with our in-house accelerators allow us to deliver SAP migration projects of all sizes, across multiple industries, in record time. Our global team of experienced consultants are SAP-certified experts, and our methodology aligns with SAP’s Activate Implementation Methodology.

As SAP data experts, we’ve pioneered a unique process using our own tools, methodologies, and SAP architectural landscape knowledge to bring a high level of maturity in the ETL (extract, transform load) data migration process. This allows data migration design and errors to be identified and fixed at every stage of the S/4HANA project and KPI’s to be tracked at a data object level. It accelerates deploying new releases and innovation sooner and helps manage the pressure on business involvement in the project.

We’ve been steadfast in our goal to help our clients manage, migrate, and optimise their data since inception, giving us unparalleled depth of knowledge and experience in our specialist field. In our toolbox, you’ll find a suite of data migration tools such as the BI Accelerator – which assists in speedy discernment as to relevance of the available S/4HANA tools and potential value for the organisation – as well as the Data Migration Object Register, which is used to prioritise, plan, budget and track the S/4HANA data migration progress. 

The SAP S/4HANA Data Migration is not an easy task. Your first step should be to contact your preferred partner to help facilitate a seamless move. While a S/4HANA conversion is a major undertaking, the transformation will introduce incredible new values and functions to your entire business processes.