Lots of legacy? How to keep the S/4 stress curve flat

Sins from the past? Everyone knows them. Heterogeneous systems, inconsistent processes and data sprawl are widespread. At our One.Con 2018 customer conference in Heidelberg, the CIO of an automaker asked me:

"I need to clean up first. How can I tie this in with the S/4 switchover?"

Especially the cleanup should be closely aligned with the S/4 theme, I replied. This prevents you from ending up having to clean up not just once, but several times.

If I, as an IT manager, want to know quickly what a changeover to S/4 means for me, without having to involve the business departments, a technical system analysis is a good place to start.

On this basis, an S/4 Hana readiness analysis illuminates processes, data, systems and technologies - comprehensively, tool-supported and with little business involvement. Expert consultants interpret these results with regard to the impact of a conversion to S/4.

After that, you know: What do we have to do overall to bring the existing process and system world to S/4? Which must-do's do we have? What do we do and when?

This provides an overview and a factual basis for everything else. They can take a focused approach and turn the right screws. A clear view of reality also simplifies business alignment. The target landscape can be derived more precisely, and the coordination effort with the process owners is reduced.

Ensure smart load distribution

However, the first thing every IT manager must do: Create transparency regarding the changes S/4 will bring. Structure your project plan in light of the new Business Suite.

It is important to ensure that the burden is distributed wisely. So that the phase of the actual changeover can run as simply and smoothly as possible. Therefore, pack as little innovation as possible into the actual changeover phase.

Try to break up your tasks in terms of time. It helps to think in three phases: 1. preparation, 2. technical changeover, 3. follow-up. If you succeed in this, you can significantly flatten your stress curve for the transformation.

Back to the must-do's:

My advice would be to set up a control loop, create a work pile of task packages and get started. The list of must-do's is long. Much is changing with S/4. SAP has simplified. That means some adjustment effort, often enough without direct benefit.

Interfaces, add-ons that are no longer compatible, old company codes and documents that need to be archived. It's better not to postpone, but to structure, portion and tackle intelligently. Everything that I don't tackle now, I'll have to painstakingly drag through simplification later.

Innovations? No waiting for S/4

It is often suggested that the digital innovations only come into the systems through S/4. This is wrong. No one has to wait for S/4 to become digital. "Digital Now!" is the motto.

Innovations are realized not only in the ERP core, but also outside, in the cloud, with different technologies. There are industrial groups with an ancient ERP system that are already using apps developed on the SAP Cloud Platform, with Fiori technologies and more. A good way.

What does this mean in terms of the S/4 stress curve? Innovations can be realized meaningfully both before and after the transition. Experience shows: During the transition to S/4, people like to take on big things, often wanting too much at once.

Poorly balanced load distribution eats up an extremely large amount of energy. As project pressure increases, the scope is then often reduced. The stress curve was too high. Important topics fall by the wayside. Many opportunities for digitization are squandered in this way.