Pendulum swing adoption of SAP S/4HANA with Selective Data Transition

Today’s business and IT leaders have multifaceted concerns and challenges and are looking for means to respond rapidly to address the market forces or internal drivers that are pushing them to modernize. Additionally, they are faced with overwhelming facts and opinions about why, when, and how to move to SAP S/4HANA as a way to build an intelligent ERP platform.

In this blog I’ll focus on the “how.” In my discussions with CxOs about SAP S/4HANA adoption, most of the time the Greenfield (new or SAP ERP re-implementation) versus Brownfield (system conversion) methods are considered, while the Selective Data Transition path is misunderstood. Stakeholders often wrestle with the conundrum of this perceived binary choice and with evaluating the importance of seemingly mutually exclusive transformation drivers. As organizations plan for business and IT transformation, they should reassess which options are truly available and what each can offer. They should look beyond the standard and well-described Greenfield vs Brownfield playbooks. With Selective Data Transition, organizations have untapped flexibility when considering a move to SAP S/4HANA. Like a pendulum that swings freely back and forth, selective data transition can cover the full range of scenarios between Greenfield and Brownfield which brings interesting new transformation approaches into the mix.

Furthermore, it would be a mistake to view your journey strictly through an IT lens. Instead, why not take this opportunity to completely revamp your processes and resolve the current business pain points? What if there was a way for your organization to keep the historical data that fuels your data-driven enterprise while simultaneously achieving process optimization and landscape harmonization? Be it optimizing structures, processes and the system landscape, or an expectation of being more competitive and agile through operational excellence, these goals must be clearly established to ensure a successful transition into your new digital platform with S/4HANA. Selective Data Transition gives organizations the flexibility to decide how to deploy SAP S/4HANA so that the IT step of S/4HANA software adoption is no longer the constraint. Extend the Greenfield or Brownfield methods to include Selective Data Transition, adopt SAP S/4HANA optimized business processes, and focus your efforts on reengineering the areas of your business that add maximum value and competitive differentiation. Based on their unique business requirements, enterprises have the option between a big bang go-live or a phased-approach whether on premises, cloud, or hybrid.

In my experience, global organizations often struggle with three common challenges that result in a swing from Greenfield to Brownfield and back. Selective Data Transition is the easy, but often overlooked, answer to these challenges:

• How to leverage existing investments (think solutions, systems, way of working) in SAP ECC, merge multiple ERPs into a single new or existing SAP S/4HANA, including specific historical data or to carve out specific parts of the business for a later spin-off all while adopting cloud S/4HANA?
• How to harmonize global financial data and bring structures (think company codes, profit centers, cost centers, etc.) in line with the business model to better leverage advanced analytics and reporting without the need for a complete reimplementation and quickly eliminate technical debt, drive a finance transformation, and adopt new finance functions by migrating Classic GL to New GL on SAP S/4HANA Universal Journey in a single step, independent of your fiscal year calendars without an upfront New GL project or separate project for subsequent activation of Document Splitting?
• Particularly for large enterprises, how to reduce business risk and move to SAP S/4HANA at the pace of the business with phased go lives while maintaining the majority of the working processes and data structures in the SAP S/4HANA environment so business end users are not slowed down by having to learn a completely new re-engineered process landscape in areas that are already running efficiently.

Select an approach customized for you

Organizations have different needs based on where they are on the journey towards becoming a fully digital, agile, and resilient enterprise. Organizations need agile practices and flexible methods for adoption of S/4HANA. There is no need to give up your chance for a business transformation driven data transformation. Consider Selective Data Transition in your Move to S/4HANA

Look out for more forthcoming blogs on S/4HANA Selective Data Transition.

Feel free to contact me

Join us for the S/4HANA Selective Data Transition  RoundTable on January 27 in collaboration with cbs: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7559103269624935696

Hans Dossche

Hans is an SAP S/4HANA solution specialist who collaborates with industry leaders to realize digital strategies and create new business value.
Hans finds it rewarding to collaborate with market leaders on a shared vision to generate value from SAP solutions and reach growth targets.
He is a Transformation Executive at Capgemini, responsible for pre-sales team activities and supporting our bid teams in creating effective go-to market strategies. He is focused on showcasing the value generated by S/4HANA to both our prospective and existing customer base. He also specializes in S/4HANA-enabled Intelligent Suite solutions, hybrid cloud multi-pillar solution architectures, and setting up roadmaps for a Renewable Enterprise aimed towards value realization.
Hans has more than 23 years of experience in SAP business applications and IT transformations across a range of domains, including supply-chain management, manufacturing, high-tech, consumer-packaged goods, and others. Throughout his career, he has lead large teams through end-to-end implementations with major companies in North America and Europe. Hans is an S/4HANA evangelist and frequent speaker at SAP Sapphire NOW and ASUG events.
Some of Hans’ recent work includes:
Establishing an S/4HANA adoption path with a selective data-transition approach for a large global client in life sciences
Defining an end-to-end customer experience and enterprise resource planning footprint for a global manufacturer in the industrial machinery and components industry
Creating a new digital strategy for a leading retail-service provider around a combination of equipment, field, and digital value-adding services.