The transition to SAP S/4HANA® poses difficulties and issues that may be handled with careful planning. It’s worth the effort, since switching to the new system gives your company several choices for increasing the value of your digital operations. The time has come to prepare for and act on the digital revolution.
This discussion with Umer Zeeshan (SAP Solution Architect, Principal Consultant at Rizing) with Belinda deJesus from SAP’s Adoption & Customer Engagement, and Sheldon Edelstein, product expert from SAP S/4HANA Regional Implementation Group will be a worthwhile investment of your time
Sheldon: What are the key factors in an SAP S/4HANA transition project?
Zee: S/4HANA project is a major transformation effort for a customer.
I will highlight some of the top priority areas that the project team should focus on at the start of the project for both an existing client and a new SAP customer.
Having product leadership from the client to develop a clear goal is terrific. What is the project’s main goal? What are the main business objectives? What IT objectives must be met in this project?
All major project stakeholders should be aware of the project’s beginning and where it’s heading.
Another key is data quality. It’s a critical component in ensuring a successful SAP implementation. It’s helpful to do a data quality audit before the start of the project to identify the pain points. Certain data quality problems may not be relevant for the future SAP S/4 system could be archived to avoid additional strain during cutover.
Integration with external systems is another important area of focus. SAP isn’t implemented as a standalone system, it’s connected with other external systems to keep the business working.
These integrations must operate properly in a connected world. It’s beneficial to make initial contact with the key parties from the external systems throughout the project’s preparation phases. They may also provide us with input or call out some key areas based on their considerable expertise with their goods, which may benefit the project phase.
Rizing has a future reference solution or FRS, which is a preconfigured SAP system with predefined business processes built-in. We demo all these business processes to get the customer’s subject matter experts up to speed on what’s coming up during the next phases of the project. Hence, these demos of the established business processes are very useful to get this team on board.
Belinda: Should data conversion be considered in the SAP S/4HANA transition project?
Zee: Data conversion is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process.
Whether you’re coming from an SAP or non-SAP system, multiple data conversion procedures are involved. You may employ a variety of tools.
SAP, for example, offers its data migration cockpit. We have employed external technologies, such as middleware, to extract, convert, and load data in certain projects, but one thing that is consistent across the board is an emphasis on data quality throughout the project’s lifespan.
It’s important to have someone who can identify the main stakeholders, deal with data daily, provide clarifications, and manage all of the work in these specific data-related areas. If this activity is not done well, there will be inaccurate data coming into the new SAP S/4 HANA system, which sets you back after you go live.
Sheldon: Let’s move on to the build-out phase of these projects. For me, that’s always been the fun part mainly because you get some hands-on time to develop workable solutions.
Zee: As the project evolves from the design phase, it’s important to establish all the key cornerstones of design and identify all the key customization requirements needed to support the needs of the customer.
Documenting all requirements ensures that the work is properly planned and completed by the end of the billing.
In recent years, project teams have been experimenting with Agile methodologies. However, there are situations when ERP deployments have a vast scope that must be completed within a relatively short time frame. In that scenario, we are unable to deploy Agile across the board.
However, using the Agile approach is beneficial when developing a cockpit or things that require a lot of business user input.
When it comes to developing custom objects we adopt an on-site and offshore development model. The benefits, especially for tight timelines, are that the work can continue throughout the day and night.
We also advise having a small team co-located with the customer so that you can engage with subject matter experts and get quick resolutions while the development is underway.
Finally, it’s important to foster a strong camaraderie inside the project team. This grows the project team because it makes the job enjoyable.
Belinda: What about project timelines, project ending phases, or goal preparations for go-live, post-go-live activities, or monitoring?
Zee: As the project nears completion, it’s essential to tie up loose ends, make sure all testing is completed, and prepare for data conversion and cutover operations.
We did run into issues with certain integrations with external systems throughout particular projects. As a result, we’ll need to devote a little more time into testing and resolving all of the concerns.
As we implement newer versions of the product, there are often challenges with newer features to be adapted according to the customer’s business needs. In this case, the S/4 HANA customer care team was not very quick to respond to some of these quarrels and engage the right parties there.
In larger implementations keep higher-than-normal transaction volumes in mind. If a particular limitation has a large order book for sales orders or a large planning data collection, it’s important to detect them and ensure that the live environment can handle the load.
Sometimes we just have to deal with it once we go live. That’s just the nature of certain issues. For example, in an all implementation, you can plan for specific issues, and some of the challenges can be dealt with later. But having an insight into what areas could be potential trouble down the line, having an early insight into that can help you plan for these external sources that you may need post-go-live.
Sheldon: Can you share the future for Rizing?
Zee: Rizing likes to be engaged with fashion retail customers known across the globe.
We’ve had a lot of interest from clients or fashion brands who are integrating vertical chains. We are seeing a lot of greenfield implementations of companies coming from a non-SAP environment to an SAP S/4HANA Fashion environment.
Also upgrades from existing apparel and footwear customers with AFS solutions and non-AFS SAP solutions coming out as for S/4HANA. Businesses are eager to obtain SAP’s most recent and cutting-edge capabilities.
There’s a lot of customer excitement over the new Fiori App, and the integration with the E-commerce platform, SAP commerce, and the POS environments.
Being an SAP partner, we see a lot of fashion lifestyle companies investing in their digital core. These companies want to validate that they have a solid core to handle the retail and omnichannel business and the roadmap for their future years.
Sheldon: Rizing has been growing in the market. Can you tell me any interesting new developments?
Zee: Rizing is continuously improving the speed at which we can implement S/4HANA solutions. We are constantly developing our preconfigured fashion solution, updating it when SAP releases a new version of S/4HANA.
We have opportunities to implement solutions for fashion brands in the retail market. We recently merged with another retail SAP consulting partner, expanding our international footprint and capabilities in terms of features that we can install.
So, yes, the market is evolving. COVID continues to cause retail transformation with a strong emphasis on omnichannel solutions.
Belinda: What are some of your future plans with S/4HANA?
Zee: I’m looking forward to continuing with Rizing and SAP, learning about new innovations to benefit fashion and lifestyle clients.
Complete Discussion
Listen to the complete discussion on OpenSAP.com.