Preserving 15 Years of Financial History on SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud

When a company moves from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, the migration can quietly break the link to years of financial history. ACBaltica took full ownership of the planning stream for a sea freight company's migration, rebuilding budgeting and forecasting in SAP Analytics Cloud. By mapping 15 years of historical data into the new system and feeding it into a predictive model, ACBaltica gave the customer a running start on their 2026 budget – grounded in real seasonality and trends rather than built from scratch – and reached 87–93% forecasting accuracy for costs and revenue, with no manual adjustment.

Customer

The customer is an international sea freight company. For years, they were running their finance and planning system on a classic on-premises SAP landscape: SAP ECC without SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) 7.3 for reporting, and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) 10.0 for budgeting. Some of these systems had been in place for over a decade – and the setup still worked, though it wasn’t flexible enough and some operations took longer than the customer could afford.

As part of a wider move to the cloud, the customer migrated their core system to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud and their planning to SAP Analytics Cloud. Where to move planning was never in question – SAP Analytics Cloud was the clear choice.

ACBaltica joined as the confirmed partner for the planning functional block, working alongside the SAP implementation partner who led the SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud migration and reporting. ACBaltica was fully responsible for planning in SAP Analytics Cloud, for integrating SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud in both directions, and for delivering several custom reports.

Challenge

The customer wanted to carry 15 years of financial data into their new environment and put it to work for forecasting and predictive analytics. The migration made that harder than it sounds:

• Broken data continuity. SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud uses a company's currency based on its country of registration. The customer's company code had used the euro in SAP ECC; in the new system, it moved to the US dollar. Everything before the migration was recorded in euros; everything after in dollars.

• A completely reworked chart of accounts. At migration, the customer introduced a new chart of accounts. Account numbers have changed, along with the numbers of cost centers, profit centers, company codes, and company code currencies. Old and new records could be reconciled – but only by someone who knew exactly how the two code sets lined up.

• 15 years of data worth keeping. The customer could have left the old world behind the fence and simply started fresh in the new coding. But the data was extensive and of good quality, and they wanted to reuse it for predictive forecasting. That meant the history had to remain usable in the new setup.

Solution

ACBaltica migrated the customer's planning from SAP BPC to SAP Analytics Cloud and designed an architecture that kept the historical data alive and useful in the new system.

Key elements of the solution:

A dedicated data layer with a mapping machine

ACBaltica loaded the historical SAP ECC data into SAP Analytics Cloud in its original codes and built a "mapping machine" that translates it into the SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud codes. Forecasting runs on the translated codes. The tool works by source: data arriving from SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud passes through unchanged, while data from SAP ECC goes through the translation logic. So as new productive data starts flowing in, the architecture continues to work without rework.

A predictive model built on clean data

ACBaltica configured a predictive model in SAP Analytics Cloud and cleansed 15 years of data. Key users and project stakeholders went through it with the team, pointing out the periods when external, non-business events had distorted it. Those were left out of the forecast.

The model projects costs and revenue and hands the planning team a baseline budget. Planners now open the budget with numbers already in it, shaped by seasonality, trends, and outside conditions. They start by reviewing what the model produced.

Standard content, adjusted where it mattered

ACBaltica built the core functionality on standard SAP content. That kept delivery fast and put the solution on SAP best practices. A few things needed changing: the cash flow calculation logic, the chart of accounts hierarchy for planning, and a handful of extra calculation drivers.

Take inventory. The standard approach derives the inventory account from a turnover ratio. This customer doesn't work that way — they hold a steady safety stock and keep the account at a fixed level. So when planning shows $50,000 going out of inventory, the model buys $50,000 back.

A closed loop back to SAP S/4HANA

The approved budget is exported to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, where it supports day-to-day budget control and feeds reporting that compares actuals against the budget and the latest forecasts.

Project team

ACBaltica worked closely with a small, focused customer team:

Customer

• The finance director, who had been deeply involved in the SAP BPC project and knew it well. He was the key user in SAP Analytics Cloud and made every business decision for the project, from start to finish, with support from his planning team.

• A technical specialist – a network and Basis administrator – handled access and connectivity.

ACBaltica

• Three consultants – a senior and a middle SAP Analytics Cloud planning consultant, plus a senior consultant for reporting and integration.

Results and benefits

The project delivered modern planning without sacrificing the customer's financial history:

• 15 years of history preserved and reusable. The mapping layer kept 15 years of financial data usable in the new environment, so a migration to the new core system did not cut the customer off from their own past.

• 87–93% forecasting accuracy, with no manual input. Comparing the forecast to actuals in 2026, the automatically generated forecast for costs and revenue is 87–93% accurate before any manual correction.

• A stronger starting point for budgeting. Instead of starting from scratch, the planning team builds the budget on a projection that accounts for seasonality and trends.

• Fast delivery on standard SAP. By building on standard content and best practices, ACBaltica took the project from kickoff in June 2025 to go-live at the end of October 2025 – under five months.

Why choose ACBaltica?

As an SAP Platinum Partner with over 20 years of experience, ACBaltica brings deep expertise in SAP planning, SAP Analytics Cloud, and predictive forecasting. Whether working directly with customers or stepping in as a confirmed partner on a larger program, ACBaltica takes full responsibility for its stream and delivers measurable results.

Our competitive edge:

• Deep expertise in SAP Analytics Cloud planning and predictive forecasting.

• Experience with SAP data management solutions – both on-prem and in the cloud

• A proven approach to preserving and reusing historical data through system migrations.

• Flexibility to join a project at any stage and support partners with resources and expertise.

• A track record of successful SAP planning and analytics projects across industries.