Embracing Transformation Over Migration

“Embrace the process of transformation, for it is in the journey that you will discover your true strength and potential.” - Unknown

Since the launch, we have been talking about migrating existing SAP customers to SAP S/4HANA leveraging one of the three available approaches namely system conversion, selective data transition and new implementation. The noise around migration is growing stronger due to the impending support deadline of the existing SAP ERP. While thousands of customers have adopted SAP S/4HANA, there are still customers in double-digit thousands waiting to discuss and define their migration journey.

In the early days, the discussion was mostly around which migration approach would fit the customer. In 2023, SAP made its ninth release of the software. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since its launch in 2015. The world is changing fast and so are the needs of the enterprise too. In the early years of the decade 2010-2020, User Experience transformation was the talk of the town but now the industry has moved from automation to artificial intelligence to Business AI leveraging generative AI capabilities. We cannot be myopic thinking about how to cross the customer over to the other side and do away with our job.

Just thinking loudly, many customers who may be finishing their ERP implementation and rollout at the time of launch of SAP S/4HANA must already be a minimum of about 7-8 years old on their legacy ERP system. Also, for customers who are on the legacy ERP for a longer duration, migrating them over to SAP S/4HANA is not how they will derive their benefits but having a critical look at their current situation, business needs, industry level changes, and competition landscape will enable them to adopt transformation as required by them.

If you understand migration to SAP S/4HANA, it is not just about migrating SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA. ERP system landscapes are complex. Migration has a significant impact on the enterprise architecture either due to business or technology changes. In this context, there is no way one can stick the standard migration approach to a customer in today’s context. The conversation needs to change from deciding the migration approach to understanding the customer’s transformation requirements and crafting the roadmap for that customer.

How do you keep the focus on transformation when discussing a move to SAP S/4HANA with customers? Talking about transformation is not an easy topic when there is a deadline looming over for migrating to SAP S/4HANA and everyone is stressed about securing resources for the move in this tight timeline. There is always a chance of delayed decision-making by customers as transformation is a topic that requires larger socialization and engagement within the organization. I recommend building a transformation roadmap irrespective of the migration approach and showing a full picture to all the stakeholders instead of depicting the project as only about migration to SAP S/4HANA. In this roadmap, migration to SAP S/4HANA combined with mandatory transformation could be your first step and you have a plan and buy-in for remaining transformation implementation. You could also combine additional transformation such as data or org structure or process transformation together with mandatory transformation in the first step and continue with remaining transformation as part of your roadmap.

Transformation can range from changes in your business model to changes in processes, organization structure, data or underlying technologies or infrastructure. Transformation, regardless of its nature, cannot be all implemented by customers in one go irrespective of the migration strategy adopted. It is important to build its deployment roadmap and not only focus on migration to the SAP S/4HANA project.

Disclaimer: Please note that these are my personal views and not of my employer.