Alexander Kunevich, S/4HANA Conversion PM, ACBaltica
Why do you need to migrate to S/4HANA?
If you're still running SAP ECC, you're not just facing the 2027 support deadline but also missing out on the game-changing advantages of SAP’s new ERP solution. With S/4HANA, your entire IT landscape becomes simpler to manage – and way more efficient. Imagine reports generating significantly, dramatically faster, and real-time insights becoming your business's new normal. That's the power of S/4HANA's in-memory database!
S/4HANA is scalable, meaning it can grow with your business, effortlessly handling increasing data and transaction volumes. With built-in, real-time analytics, S/4HANA lets you make data-driven decisions on the spot without external tools, and brings you peace of mind with its robust compliance features.
It's also a massive leap in user experience — all thanks to the sleek and intuitive SAP Fiori interface. Whether your team is in the office or working remotely, they'll get the same seamless experience on any device. Plus, if you aim to integrate cutting-edge tech, like AI or IoT, with S/4HANA, you can do it all (almost) effortlessly.
Unlike SAP ECC, S/4HANA is really flexible: whether you want to stick with on-premise hosting or choose cloud-based options, S/4HANA adapts to your needs. And let's not forget about best practices: with S/4HANA, you can easily implement your industry's best practices and integrate specific modules, providing functionalities tailored to your line of business or customizing the existing features to your unique business processes.
Basically, migrating from the legacy SAP ECC to S/4HANA is more than an upgrade; it's a business transformation that aims to empower your company for future challenges and make it more agile and competitive.
The good news is that you can migrate to S/4HANA with minimal disruption to your business processes and near-zero downtime — all thanks to a Brownfield conversion. However, the success of the whole process strongly depends on preparation. In this post, we'll focus on how to minimize disruptions and ensure that the migration process is as smooth as possible.
S/4HANA migration process: preparation matters
Proper preparation for migrating to S/4HANA is truly crucial. Pay attention to strategic planning (like resource allocation) and detailed planning (readiness assessment, detailed conversion roadmap). If you skip these steps, you may have to deal with data inconsistencies, downtime, and project delays. Eventually, dealing with all these issues will cost you a fortune. With careful planning, you ensure that your data is clean, processes are optimized, and the migration runs smoothly, minimizing risks and disruptions to your business. Think of it as laying a solid foundation — you'll not only avoid headaches but unlock the full potential of S/4HANA faster, positioning your company for future growth and innovation.
Pre-requisites to conversion to S/4HANA
System and technical requirements
When it comes to the preparation of your system and technical requirements to convert to S/4HANA, there are three main points you have to consider: your SAP ECC version, Unicode compliance, and database compatibility.
SAP ECC version
Before migrating to S/4HANA, ensure your SAP ECC version is 6.0 or higher; with any enhancement pack from EHP 0 to 8: you won’t be able to migrate to S/4HANA from the earlier versions. So before the migration, update your current system, if needed.
Unicode compliance
Another key requirement for S/4HANA migration is that your system must be Unicode compliant (i.e. it can handle multiple languages and character sets seamlessly). If it’s not, address this first.
Database сompatibility
One of the main differences between SAP ECC and S/4HANA is databases: while ECC operates on legacy complex and "heavy" databases, S/4HANA is based on an in-memory database, SAP HANA, that has a much simpler and clearer structure. So before migrating your ERP system, you should ensure that it’s possible to migrate from your current DB version to SAP HANA. If you currently use Oracle database, you can migrate to SAP HANA starting from version 12 or higher. With MS SQL database, ensure that you use the 2012 or higher version. If you’re still using an older version, upgrade your database first).
Infrastructure and hardware
To ensure smooth on-premise deployment, evaluate your infrastructure and hardware to check if they can handle the system's demands and avoid performance issues in the future. If you consider cloud deployment, you’ll be discussing the options with your cloud provider.
Hardware sizing
SAP S/4HANA is a powerful platform that requires significant processing power and memory to deliver its real-time insights and performance. This is why one of the critical steps before migrating to SAP S/4HANA is ensuring your hardware can handle the system’s demands. Ensure your servers, storage, and network capacity are up to the task – otherwise, you risk slow performance, system instability, or even downtime (no need to say that all that can severely impact your business operations).
Below are the very basic requirements for the hardware (more specific numbers will be discussed after evaluating your needs):
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Hardware |
Powerful hardware infrastructure 256 GB RAM minimum Minimum 1 TB of storage |
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Operating System |
Preferably Linux Server Depending on the S/4HANA system version |
|
Database |
Must support in-memory database technology Preferably SAP HANA |
For more details, you can refer to this page.
Cloud readiness
For cloud deployment, assess your current infrastructure’s cloud readiness. Not all systems are automatically compatible with every cloud provider, so ensure that your chosen cloud service—public, private, or hybrid—aligns with your business requirements. Cloud deployment offers flexibility, scalability, and often lower upfront costs, but a lack of proper preparation can lead to integration issues, security concerns, or performance bottlenecks.
Data preparation and cleansing
To avoid migrating obsolete data, identify and archive or delete it before the migration. Unnecessary data can slow migration, increase costs, and complicate post-migration performance. These steps help you streamline the migration process and ensure your S/4HANA system runs efficiently while also reducing storage costs.
Custom code and add-ons
Custom code and third-party apps also need to be prepared for migration in advance, as proper planning for custom modifications helps avoid costly delays and ensures a seamless transition.
Custom code analysis
Prior to the migration, analyze your custom code to identify what needs to be adapted for the new system – you can use ABAP Test Cockpit to discover code that’s incompatible or outdated.
Add-on compatibility
If you’re using third-party applications in your system, ensure they are compatible with S/4HANA. Some add-ons may no longer be supported or require significant updates. We strongly recommend a compatibility check early on to plan for necessary upgrades or replacements, ensuring that key functionalities of your ERP system remain intact after migration.
Modification adjustments
If, during the previous steps, you discovered that some of your system’s custom modifications are not compatible with S/4HANA, plan how you would adjust or replace those. Again, it’s better to do this in advance to ensure that your business operations remain efficient.
Functional and business process readiness
Before, we were only talking about technical requirements – but you should also check if your teams are ready for the shift. Develop a change management strategy and plan training for end-users to help them embrace the new system confidently, reduce disruptions, and maximize the benefits of the migration.
Change management
A smooth transition to SAP S/4HANA requires a solid change management strategy. Even though Brownfield conversion focuses on maintaining the existing business processes, S/4HANA may still introduce new working methods, which can be challenging for teams. Ensure the end-users are ready to handle these changes – all through effective communication, planning, and support. Otherwise, you risk lower engagement and productivity as users adapt to the new system.
Training needs
End-users and IT staff need training on new features, processes, and functionalities to use the system efficiently. Targeted training sessions not only build user confidence and teach the end-users how to leverage all the brilliant S/4HANA capabilities from day one, but they also allow you to avoid costly mistakes and save time on onboarding.
Project planning and governance
At the end of the day, the right people are the key to success. Assemble the right team, set a clear timeline, and proactively manage risks – and you're halfway there.
Project team
Ensure your project team is cross-functional, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. It should include members from IT, finance, operations, and other key units (depending on which departments use the ERP system in your company) to have perspectives considered throughout the migration.
Timeline and milestones
Ensure you have a clear project timeline with key milestones and deliverables. Otherwise, you won't be able to track progress and stay organized. Mapping out each phase of the migration (like system preparation, testing, and go-live) helps the team stay focused and accountable. These milestones also allow you to measure progress and adjust plans if needed, reducing the risk of delays.
Risk management
However perfect your planning is, you still need a risk management plan: it helps you identify and mitigate potential issues during the migration and be prepared to handle challenges as they emerge. No need to say that a solid risk management plan protects your investment and ensures that unexpected issues don't derail the entire project.
You can find more details on pre-requisites for conversion to S/4HANA in our recent webinar:
Steps to ensure a successful migration: SAP methodology
Since the introduction of S/4HANA in 2015, SAP has a proven methodology for migrating from ECC with detailed guidance through each stage – for a seamless conversion with minimal risks and interruptions.
1: Discovery
At this stage, the project team focuses on understanding the current system landscape, identifying business needs, and setting clear migration goals. Basically, you identify which systems, models, and functionalities will be converted to S/4HANA. The phase includes system analysis and SAP readiness assessment to see how well your current SAP ECC setup aligns with S/4HANA requirements.
2: Preparation
In this step, you enable your current system to carry out conversion to S/4HANA. So, you evaluate existing data, prioritize tasks, and set up the project team and its governance model. Typical steps at this stage:
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Setup of the project team
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Project governance model
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Simplification item checks to identify changes required for migrating to S/4HANA
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ABAP Test Cockpit to check the quality and relevance of the existing custom code
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Detailed project planning
3: Explore
The Explore phase is where the project team aligns the existing business processes with SAP S/4HANA's capabilities. The goal is to validate that those processes can be covered with S/4HANA’s best practices and, if not, identify those gaps where you’ll need to customize the out-of-the-box solution. However, the main task at this stage is the conversion in the trial (sandbox) environment –to validate all technical aspects without any impact on the product environment. At this stage, you also create a cutover plan – a step-by-step guide on the transition from ECC to S/4HANA, aiming to minimize disruption to the business. Sometimes, during the Realize stage, you may also perform conversion of the development system. It’s also time for you to start testing your new system.
4: Realize
The main goal of this stage is the conversion of the quality system. It’s also the stage when you keep involving the end-users for the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – all to validate that the system meets business needs. At this step, you also fine-tune the cutover plan developed in the previous step.
5: Deploy
At this step, all preparations finally come together, and the system goes live in the production environment. This is when you execute the cutover plan, which involves final data migration, system configuration, and thorough validation to ensure all functionalities work as expected. The project team monitors the system closely, resolves any issues, and provides support to end-users as they transition to the new system. The goal is to minimize downtime and disruptions, ensuring the business continues running smoothly throughout the go-live process.
6: Run
The run phase is the final stage, where the system goes live and business operations are fully transferred to S/4HANA. At this stage, post-migration support is crucial, as your team may need guidance and troubleshooting assistance as they adapt to the new system. Continuous monitoring, system optimization, and performance reviews in this phase help solidify the success of the migration and ensure that the system is operating as expected.
For more details on each phase, watch our recent webinar:
Conclusion
Changing your core system and migrating to a new solution is tough – let's face it. But with proper preparation and help from a certified SAP Partner, you minimize the risks and make the whole process as smooth as possible (also saving time and money!). We're here for you, and we can take over the whole process, from the early preparation to the end-user training and support afterward. Let's start that journey together! Explore our SAP Conversion Services to learn more.
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