Today’s fast-paced business environment requires companies to work with greater agility, speed, innovation, and intelligent technologies. Gone are those days when businesses relied on huge piles of paperwork and hefty Excel sheets! Not only are they prone to several human errors, but are also time-consuming!
To cope with such inefficiency, companies have started realizing the importance of SAP HANA migration to seamlessly manage their core business functions. We can almost hear you say, “Why is this migration required? or “We cannot afford to waste any more time learning an entirely new platform!” and so on.
The good news is, anybody can easily migrate to SAP S/4 HANA while maintaining business continuity.
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What is SAP HANA Migration? Why is it Important?
SAP HANA migration refers to the process in which a company migrates to the SAP ERP system. In other words, the company migrating to this platform is shifting from the ECC platform to the more efficient and agile HANA platform.
The HANA platform works on cloud-based on-premise technology, enabling the SAP HANA system to provide real-time data analytics. In addition, SAP S/4 HANA is a complete ERP solution designed with intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, real-time analytics, and others.
SAP S/4 HANA stands for SAP Business Suite 4 HANA, which is designed to meet the ever-growing needs of modern-day businesses. The platform enables organizations to adopt changes and implement new business models while managing business change efficiently.
Advanced technologies like AI and ML in SAP S/4 HANA allow business managers to use predictive analysis to make effective data-driven decisions. The platform also enables organizations to leverage the power of both internal and external resources for maximized productivity.
Migrating to SAP S/4 HANA, therefore, is a wise decision that makes a company future-ready. Every modern-day company needs to expand its possibilities to ensure that it is ready to adopt new changes without hampering business operations.
Moreover, SAP won’t be supporting your existing ERP systems in the year 2027, which requires users to switch to this efficient in-memory system. Since the migration process takes some time before you can rely on the new system entirely, it’s better to decide now!
Although you will get complete guidance throughout the migration process, and the SAP HANA migration is relatively more accessible than other systems, why wait till 2027 when you won’t get enough time to adapt to a new environment?
Top 3 Approaches for SAP HANA Migration
So, we have learned that the SAP HANA migration has great potential for business growth. Now what? To answer that, we will make a proper migration plan based on either of the following approaches.
1. The Greenfield Approach
The Greenfield Approach involves a new implementation of the SAP S/4 HANA platform, and it needs a complete transformation on the part of the management. However, this approach can be time-consuming and needs some effort since you need to start the entire process from scratch.
One positive side of this approach is that you can simplify your core business processes and restructure your operations for enhanced output. What’s more, using the Greenfield Approach, you can enjoy the complete benefits of the S/4 HANA ERP platform.
If you are willing to take this approach, you need to ensure that you are ready for the entire organization and redefining process. Because for some companies, this can be quite tiresome, especially when they are focusing on short-term goals.
2. The Brownfield Approach
When the Greenfield Approach seems overwhelming or too tiresome, there’s always a second way out – that is the Brownfield Approach. In fact, SAP recommends this method for its existing customers to make the migration easier for them.
In this way, the current customers operating on the SAP ECC system can easily transform while still working on their existing databases without hassle. It makes the migration smoother, easier, and quicker.
The Brownfield process allows you to continue your business operations on your existing systems while slowly adopting the technologies of the new system over time. It helps users to adapt to changes more seamlessly without facing any business discontinuity or disruption.
Although this approach may come with the risks of experiencing more technical issues, the SAP system comes fully equipped with effective solutions to support a seamless flow of your business operations. The best part is, you will get complete guidance and conversion tools to make way for a risk-free migration.
3. Landscape Transformation
The landscape transformation approach doesn’t involve a conversion of the entire system. Instead, it focuses on the transformation of certain portions of the business process only. In other words, you can migrate only the processes you want and continue using the existing systems.
Therefore, the landscape transformation method allows you to make selective migrations or convert the entire system for a more consolidated workflow by integrating SAP and non-SAP systems under one roof. You can first select a particular process that will offer you the highest revenue in short periods. You can always migrate other business processes later as per your needs.
Benefits of SAP S/4 HANA Migration
Once you take the time to invest in this advanced ERP system, you will be amazed to see the benefits you reap sooner or later. The key benefits of SAP HANA migration include:
- It’s a future-proof solution as you can get quarterly updates for your SAP S/4 HANA cloud systems.
- The system is easy to use and comes with a simplified user experience, due to which one can make heavy usage of SAP’s new technologies without difficulty.
- The Business Suite data model of SAP has been largely simplified. For instance, SAP has been able to reduce the memory footprint of users’ databases, which makes the system run faster.
- Gain accurate business insights in real-time, thus enhancing your decision-making abilities. This has been made possible by the high-performing analytics engine and a simplified data model, which helps to optimize one’s business processes and work with higher agility.
Key Takeaway
Reinvent your business with a transformed working environment and get ready for the future with an optimized ERP solution. Embrace digital innovation through technologies like AI, machine learning, big data, IoT, blockchain, and more.
Accelerate and redefine your organization through three simple steps – a) adopt this new system, b) optimize your business, and c) make the ultimate transformation. So, are you ready to build a future-proof business?
