3 reasons to start your S/4 HANA journey today

Some say that it is good to procrastinate, but companies running SAP ECC need to take action this year. By 2025, you need to move to the new S/4 HANA platform. This not new news and also not fake news. You can have many reasons why you wanted to wait. If you wait too long, then you discover that insufficient resources will be available to support your transition. So better get started this year, especially when the following three reasons for procrastination will hurt your business.

You might believe moving from ECC to S/4 HANA is just a technical upgrade. This assumption underestimates the effort required. You might already move your ECC system to a HANA database, but that does not take you any closer to an S/4 HANA migration. Also, this conservative approach makes you forget that this new S/4 HANA system opens the door for new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine Learning and Blockchain. When your competition takes advantage of modern technology, then why should you remain in the 20th century?

You probably fear that all the custom code you have acquired over the past decades might not work when applying this in a new S/4 HANA environment. The new platform cannot always run the code that works perfectly on an ECC system. Some ABAP code statements will have to be adjusted. So the more custom code, the more rework is required. It seems like the perfect moment to assess what custom code is still needed. Maybe that assessment is the core reason why you hesitate the S/4 HANA migration in the first place. Waiting to start that analysis does not make it go away.

Of course, SAP ERP is not the only system in your landscape. There will be many other systems that you use to interface with SAP ERP. Unfortunately, your ECC system is the beating heart of your IT solution because of it being the ledger of your financial transactions and legal obligation to report to shareholders. You could be hesitant to perform a heart transplant in your IT environment. But if you want SAP supporting you in the future, this shift to S/4 HANA has to take place.

The time is not on your side when you still have no plan to migrate to S/4 HANA. As 2020 just started, make the New Year resolution to prepare for your S/4 HANA migration. Be ready to begin your transition in 2021 or 2022, allowing you enough time to deploy S/4 HANA before the deadline of 2025.

If you want to have some inspiration on your journey, then watch the YouTube video.