Perhaps this sounds familiar: You want to focus on your business, but now SAP requires you to migrate your well-functioning ERP to SAP S/4HANA. Haven’t you just implemented a perfectly working ERP systems a few years ago? And now you have to do it all over again?
Yes, migrating to S/4HANA is no walk in the park. It can be challenging, resource-intensive, and potentially disruptive to your business operations. But don’t worry: You are not alone and there is support.
At FlowShare, we strongly believe technical know-how should be evenly distributed, so no one involved in the project misses family dinners in the heat of the migration project or worse – invests years of their time into a failed project that ends up in a long and weary lawsuit.
That is why we are building the easiest AI-digital adoption solution that enables experts to automatically capture their know-how and make it accessible to everyone in their organization. FlowShare solves crucial problems when it comes to big IT projects like migrations from legacy systems. A majority of our customers uses FlowShare to accelerate their migration projects, with results by an accelerated migration by up to 6 months and upskilling their employees.
To accompany you on your transformation to SAP S/4HANA and emphasize on how we can help you de-risk it, we have created a simple blueprint. Let’s dive in.
A Step Back: SAP S/4HANA Transformation, Why now?
Generally there are two big reasons for migrating to SAP S/4HANA:
- SAP is pushing for it
- It can significantly enhance business operation
First of all, SAP is ending support for its previous ERP system, SAP ECC, in 2027. After that, maintenance services for ECC will cost companies a two percent premium on top of existing support fees. This makes ECC expensive for companies without them knowing how long SAP will even continue to offer support for the old system.
Secondly, in addition to the subtle pressure that SAP exerts on its customers to switch to S/4HANA, the new ERP system S/4HANA also offers a number of advantages. Some consider it the important next step towards a digital future, allowing to accelerate queries and analyses on large internal and external databases and applying AI and other new technologies. So yes: S/4HANA can allow your business to become more agile and competitive – however, for that, it is a prerequisite that you complete the migration process successfully…
Migration Challenges and Risks
There is already a little history of SAP urging its customers to finally migrating their systems to S/4HANA. This is that SAP already announced the end of its support for the old system ECC for 2025. However, later the software giant postponed this initial deadline from 2025 to 2027 – the reasons for this shift were too low adoption rates of S/4HANA. For example, by 2022, only 29 percent of SAP customers had already made the transition to S/4HANA, while 16 percent were stating they did not even have plans for migrating.
This anecdote highlights an important point: migration to S/4HANA is not just a minor task that companies can quickly check off their to-do list. On the contrary, firms were hesitating and have stuck with their old ERP systems. They did this for a reason – despite all of the benefits S/4HANA offers. Because migrating the firm’s ERP comes with high costs and requires a large amount of resources.
Third Stage Consulting estimates that the average SAP implementation costs 3 to 5 times of the initial investment in software and 3 to 4 percent of companies’ annual revenue. Moreover, daily business operations are heavily dependent on ERP systems, so any delays or technical issues during migration could disrupt operations and reduce revenue. It is a well-cited (and sometimes misquoted) statistics from Gartner that more than 70 percent of ERP implementations fail to meet their initial use-case goals. 25 percent of these projects even fail catastrophically. Given this, it’s understandable why companies might be reluctant to embark on ERP projects. They cost the company a huge amount of money, involve major risks of failure and in the vast majority of cases do not even meet expectations.
However, the chances of a second postponement of SAP’s end of support for ECC are almost zero. So this time, the deadline is firm. Companies should now take the necessary steps to migrate their system and implement SAP’s S/4HANA.
Approaches of SAP S/4HANA Implementation
In general, there are three main approaches to implementing SAP S/4HANA:
1. Greenfield Approach: New Implementation
The Greenfield approach involves a fresh implementation of the ERP, meaning you rebuild your ERP within S/4HANA from the ground up. In this scenario, you configure and set up a completely new ERP landscape that is independent of your existing systems.
2. Brownfield Approach: System Conversion
The Brownfield approach, in contrast, involves a full migration of your existing structures to the new system. This means preserving all existing applications, workflows, and data structures from your old ERP and converting them to S/4HANA.
3. Hybrid Approach: Selective Data Transition
Lastly, the Hybrid approach is a blend of Greenfield and Brownfield (also referred to as “Bluefield”). Here, you apply a selective data transition, migrating some of the existing structures while redesigning others. This allows companies to follow a “best-of-both-worlds” approach, reviewing existing processes to decide which ones to keep and which should be redesigned.
9 Steps for Your Successful SAP S/4HANA Migration
The migration to SAP S/4HANA can be divided into three main phases, with nine overarching steps. The complete process can take anywhere from six months to several years — depending on your capabilities, needs, resources, and the organization of the migration process.
3 Phases of Implementation
- Blueprint Phase: In this phase, you decide to migrate, get stakeholders on board, define the status quo, and analyze all existing processes and tasks within your organization. You also start designing the future state of the ERP, as well as a transition and implementation strategy.
- Migration Phase: The Migration Phase is where the rubber meets the road—you actually begin the migration process. This involves cleaning data, building the application, executing the conversion, and testing the application.
- Adoption Phase: After testing the application in a sandbox environment, you move to the Adoption Phase, where you apply S/4HANA in your live environment. This phase requires a comprehensive training and support plan to meet the needs of all end users. Additionally, you should monitor and track the adoption of the new system and intervene if necessary.
9 Step process for a successful SAP S/4HANA Transformation
To navigate the three phases safely and achieve successful implementation, it’s helpful to follow these nine essential steps.
Blueprint Phase
1. Status Quo: Capture Existing Architecture
Once you have decided to migrate to SAP S/4HANA (for example, more on this decision process here), it is essential to take another step back and review your existing ERP architecture. Document the processes you have been using, how they run, and which data and objects are involved. Evaluate what has been working well and what hasn’t. Which processes do you want to retain, and which need optimization? Involve all end users in this evaluation to ensure they are on board with the upcoming changes.
One tool to capture your existing processes is FlowShare. Our documentation software automatically captures the clicks you make and summarizes them in one document, making visible how the process works out and how it is executed.
2. Look Ahead: Review S/4HANA Functionalities
In the next step, you can set off for new shores by exploring the functionalities of SAP S/4HANA. See it like this: if you are making the effort to migrate, you should aim to maximize the benefits. Learn how S/4HANA works, what innovative features it offers and how these can benefit your company. Decide which version of S/4HANA (on premise, cloud…) best fits your needs and study best practices. You can use demo systems or user documentation to overlay new S/4HANA processes with your identified processes from step 1.
Here again, software like FlowShare allows you to visualize the steps of a particular S/4HANA process in a click-by-click documentation. Other tools like process mining tools can complement this by giving a broader overview about all the benefits the new ERP system offers.
3. Planning: Define Transition Strategy and Implementation Plan
After exploring S/4HANA, you can define your transition strategy and implementation plan. This step is crucial for deriving value from the migration process.
Based on your analysis in the first two steps, you can choose the Greenfield, Brownfield, or Hybrid approach. If you plan to transfer most of your existing practices, the Brownfield approach may be best. If S/4HANA offers opportunities that require process reorganization, the Greenfield approach might be a better fit. Often, companies opt for a mix of both—the Hybrid approach. Along with this decision, define your future target processes and data models to generate the most business value.
After setting up the transition plan, you should also define a comprehensive implementation plan for your transformation process. In this plan you elaborate phases, milestones, resource allocation, and timelines of the project. This also includes partners and tools that you want to involve, roles within your organization for project management as well as risk management strategies.
Migration Phase
4. Clean Up: Clean Existing Data
Entering the Migration Phase, start by cleaning up your data: remove all redundant, obsolete, or trivial data that shouldn’t be migrated to the new system. Automated tools can help by deleting duplicates and standardizing data, but you should manually review the results to ensure a clean, reliable database in S/4HANA.
In this step it can sometimes help to classify your data in categories such as hot, warm and cold data. The “temperature” here indicates how frequently you access the data and gives hints about historical or outdated data.
5. Crafting: Build Your Custom Configuration
Next, configure the S/4HANA system according to your specific business requirements, including your applications, custom objects, and programs. Decide if you want to integrate any third-party tools or products outside the SAP ecosystem, and identify how these integrations will work. Always refer back to the previous steps: Does the new model address pain points from your existing processes (Step 1)? Are you taking full advantage of the benefits S/4HANA offers (Step 2)?
6. Sandbox: Execute Technical Conversion
After designing the ideal configuration, it’s time to put the model into practice by performing the technical migration of your existing ERP system to S/4HANA. During this step, import the cleaned-up data and configure the necessary applications. Ensure you follow all steps outlined in your implementation plan and handle the data import with care. The first setup typically occurs in a sandbox environment, allowing for testing and adjustments before going live.
7. Testing: User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Feedback
Testing is a sometimes tiring but essential part of your S/4HANA migration process. If there is one thing you can rely on, it is that it will never happen that everything works out in the first place. That is okay, as long as you identify the bugs and issues before going live.
Therefore, you should use this phase to perform comprehensive testing. First, your software developers and IT department should conduct initial tests. Afterwards and even more importantly, you should perform user user acceptance testing (UAT) and gather feedback from key users. They are the ones who will ultimately work with S/4HANA and know best how they want to use its features.
All executed tests should be logged and documented with notes. In particular, if errors or unexpected system responses occur, users should document such incidents with screenshots, descriptions and log messages. If you prefer not to do this manually, automated documentation tools like FlowShare can help capture the testing steps automatically, enabling developers to reconstruct how errors occurred. Users only need to keep FlowShare running in the background while testing and can then send the documentation to IT support if an error occurs.
Based on this testing and user feedback, your IT can adjust system configurations, fix bugs and ensure optimal performance before you go live.
Adoption Phase
8. Training: Create Learning Resources and Support Systems for Users
When your new S/4HANA system goes live, you should already have a detailed onboarding, training, and support plan for your end-users. The knowledge and skills of your users are crucial to the success of your S/4HANA migration process—internal user competencies are key to success!
One key group in the migration is your IT department. Ensure effective knowledge transfer between external system integrators (if you have engaged any) and internal IT staff, as well as key users in your company. By building these internal competencies, you can become independent from external consultants and regain full control of your processes and your company.
In the next step, early adopters within your company can train and transfer knowledge to other business units. To facilitate this, you can develop tailored training programs and materials for different user groups based on their roles and interaction with the new system. However, avoid overwhelming users with a flood of training options that might have only little relevance in their daily work. Instead, use on-demand training resources, such as online tutorials, tutorial videos, and documentation libraries. Create user manuals that your team will actually want to use. To track user progress and ensure everyone is adequately prepared for the new system, consider implementing Learning Management Systems (LMS).
A proven tool in this process is our automated documentation software FlowShare. It allows you to create training material in just a few clicks, capturing everything a user needs to follow a process. Manuals created with FlowShare can be exported in various formats, such as interactive and clickable demo formats, PDF, word, or any format you need for your Learning Management System (LMS).
9. Monitoring: Track Use and Adoption
Have you successfully set up your S/4HANA system and migrated old processes? Congratulations! However, it’s important to continuously monitor system performance, gather user feedback, and assess usage patterns. With key performance indicators (KPIs), you can measure the success of the new system and compare it against predefined business objectives. If necessary, adjust support and training materials to address any issues and continuously improve the user experience.
Perfect Companion in Your Migration Process: FlowShare
Throughout all three phases of migration, our software FlowShare can support your migration process. FlowShare is a lightweight documentation tool that allows users to record processes as they execute them.
- During the Blueprint phase, FlowShare enables you to document existing processes and create interactive demos of your future processes in S/4HANA
- During the Migration phase, FlowShare enhances your User Acceptance Testing (UAT) by automatically capturing test processes and documenting errors and bugs for your IT administrators
- During the Adoption phase, FlowShare assists you in creating comprehensive training materials and user guides and thereby distributing knowledge in no time
With FlowShare, early adopters gain the ability to effortlessly transfer their knowledge to colleagues and end users. These users can then access the resources created with FlowShare precisely when they need them. FlowShare empowers companies during their migration process to S/4HANA to become independent from integrators or external consultants and to regain full control over their internal processes and systems.
Summarizing FlowShares biggest advantages:
- High Compatibility: compatible with all desktop and browser applications
- Automation: record clicks and generate descriptions automatically
- Good User Experience: intuitive operation right from the start
- Efficient Editing: edit all screenshots at once if needed
- Variety of formats: export materials in a broad range of formats
- Data Protection: make sensitive data unrecognizable
- Customizable design: create individual guides in your corporate design
- Local installation: store data and operate locally
If you want to learn more about FlowShare’s benefits in your S/4HANA integration process, you can try out the software for free. If you have any question regarding the use of the software in ERP migration projects, feel free to reach out to us at info@getflowshare.com or read our case study on the topic.
