Is your S/4HANA Phase Zero too scary to think about right now?

I knew as I came in to land that there was a slight problem.

My flight had been delayed in Chicago for technical reasons, the waiting accompanied by a percussion of vague announcements over a 90 minute period,.

Eventually, we left O'Hare well after midnight, well behind the original 22:40 schedule.

I slept mainly, but it's hard to get settled on short red-eye flights with a decent tailwind.

So, as we came in to land at Dublin, ahead of my short British Channel hop to Manchester, I was well aware that the delay had eaten into my time to catch my connecting flight. I'm pretty sure that my Manchester plan took off as my Chicago plane landed.

Ah well.

I've spent enough time in airports in my life to be able to kill a few hours with some work, or a decent book.

Or a beer.

And it was still only 11:00 AM - plenty of time for onward connections.

The connections desk cheerily told me not to worry - they'd get me on a flight tomorrow, Saturday, and put me up in a hotel for the night.

Whaaaaat?

No chance. I want to be home and I have a charity rugby match tomorrow. Not happening.

My brain kicked into Jason Bourne mode flicking through the potential routes home - flights to London and a train, flights to Liverpool, flights to Cork then Manchester, catch a ferry, swim. Anything but 18 more hours of travelling.

As my fellow travellers argued pointlessly, I decided to get my checked bags instead. In the meantime, I'd call Kyla Toher , my assistant and have her find me some options while I get ready to travel on with my luggage.

Kyla's phone rang out.

I tried again. Same.

Maybe she's on leave today?

So as I queued for my bags I did some research and soon found an Ryanair flight at 5 PM. But I knew I was up against it as the cost of the flight was well out of Ryanair's usual budget range, meaning that I was in Oasis ticket dynamic pricing territory.

Booking Ryanair flights with a laptop and a Gin in hand to calm your nerves is hard enough, but on an iPhone it's horrific. Their UX is both not designed for mobile, and designed to upsell you to everything possible at every step.

Eventually, I secured a ticket and headed out of one Dublin terminal only to walk into another as received a WhatsApp message from Kyla...

"Sorry, I was elbow deep in a pumpkin when you called. Is everything OK?"

It was. And I was right, Kyla was on leave. I felt bad for disturbing her.

She's Canadian and obviously Halloween planning starts early in her house.

As I walked through security, thinking of Kyla's pumpkin carving, I recalled a chat with my Uber driver in Chicago. She'd asked if we celebrated Halloween and I'd explained that we kind of did, but not like they do in the US, but it's bigger now than when I was a kid, and when my kids were actually kids.

There was an awkward silence and I explained that Bonfire Night is a bigger thing for us, knowing that I was opening a can of worms that was best left alone next to a blunt can opener for another time, or another person.

"What's Bonfire Night?"

I explained that we celebrate a failed terrorist by burning an effigy of him, setting off fireworks and eating apples coated in treacle or bobbing for them in buckets of water.

"Wow, that's pretty creepy."

She said.

"Well at least he was real, not like your celebration of made up characters."

I heard myself saying in a slightly childish tone, followed by an awkward silence.

I wondered if she thought that I was alluding to religion being made up in some tangential way and that I'd offended her on multiple levels. Each time I thought about breaking the silence with new conversation, I didn't make it.

Too awkward.

We drove through the traffic to Chicago O'Hare where this ramble kind of started.

As I waited for 4 hours in Dublin, I reflected on the S/4HANA Masterclass I'd just ran at SAP's offices in Chicago. It was our first in the US and a trial run for more across North America next year.

It'd been a really good, but tiring event. The content we cover in an S/4HANA Masterclass is immense. There's usually two of us, but this time I'd done it alone and wound up speaking for 6.5 hours with a few short breaks.

We cover everything SAP customers need to consider when moving to S/4HANA - essentially cramming 7 year's worth of knowledge into a day. It's an opportunity to level up attendees knowledge and enable them to ask stupid questions in a safe environment. The feedback is always great and people go away with a brain full of worry beads, but in a good way as every ￡1 invested during phase zero is ￡50 not wasted in Phase 1.

Add the requisite zeros and people who invest a day in an S/4HANA Masterclass save a fortune by avoiding pitfalls and travelling down consultancy funded cul-de-sacs.

One of the many topics we cover is Custom Code and Clean Core.

I was lucky that Ranjeet Panicker made the trip up from Austin to Chicago to help with this part of the sessions. Nobody knows more than Ranjeet on this subject so I was learning too, and went away with some new thoughts.

Which brings me back to Kyla's pumpkin.

Step 1 in carving a pumpkin involves the removal of it's skull cap. Luckily, nature has provided an convenient handle to remove this once the kitchen knife lobotomy has been performed.

Step 2 involves scooping out the innards and entrails using an implement or hands to remove the seeds and sinews that make up the core of the pumpkin. These can be placed onto some newspaper to dry and dealt with later.

Step 3 is slightly more surgical - using a spoon to get the more challenging chunks off the sides to create a nice clean surface.

Only now are you ready for Step 4 - the carving. And, you can't be too prescriptive with this - what you carve is up to you. It's your own creativity that decides what you do with your pumpkin. It could be face, a bat, a cat or something even more off-the-wall.

Finally, drop in a candle, refit the skull cap using nature's handle, then sit back and bask in the glow.

All of those dried out seeds and sinews can now be untangled and either used or disposed of - roast the seeds, make veg stock (yes, I know a pumpkin is actually a fruit) from the chunks, make a wig for the dog from the strands (he really hates that), and bin the hard pithy parts.

You can't create a decent Halloween pumpkin without cleaning out the core first. You need to know what you're dealing with before making those creative cuts and adding your candle.

And, when you do clean out the core, you've got to get elbow deep before you can work out what to do with the seeds and sinews that have been growing in there as it sat dormant in the pumpkin patch.

I'd had similar discussions with the SAP customers at our S/4HANA Masterclass last week without the pumpkin metaphor.

You need to understand what custom code you have in your current ECC system as part of your Phase Zero project. Building a detailed inventory now, before you get into Phase 1 enables you to plan properly. To mitigate risk with an initial perspective of the challenge head of you.

"If only you'd kept hold of all of those WRICEF spreadsheets over the past decade.."

You can then start to work out (if you're keeping the same Pumpkin) what you're going to do with all of the custom contents...

• Will you keep them?
• Will you remediate some?
• Will you put some in the bin with the hard pithy parts?
• Will you refactor some in BTP?
• Will you refactor some in something else?
• Are those Reports (the R in WRICEFS) really needed, or are there better alternatives?
• Are there better ways to build those Interfaces (the I in WRICEFS) - APIs, event driven?
• Will you replace some with standard S/4HANA functionality that's been created since you built them eons ago?
• Will you shift your ABAP to Steampunk? Embedded or not?
• etc.
• etc.

But, you'll only be able to do this if you get elbows deep in your ECC pumpkin and create that inventory of custom seeds and sinews (aka code) first.

If you want help knowing how to do this, using the tools and accelerators that'll help you create a prize winning pumpkin, ask Kyla Toher to find some time for us to talk.

Or, attend one of our next S/4HANA Masterclass events.

We also do private S/4HANA Masterclasses for you and your colleagues too - where we treat you and your team to a day of everything they need to think about ahead of your tricky move to S/4HANA.