Performing System Preparation Activities for System Conversions

As part of the RISE with SAP package, customers who purchase SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition receive the discovery edition of SAP Signavio Process Insights. The tool is hosted in SAP Business Technology Platform, and the "welcome email" sent to the customer IT Contact provides details about how to set up the connection between the customer's existing SAP ECC system and Process Insights. For a system conversion, the Process Insights analysis is especially beneficial in identifying inefficient and ineffective business processes. For new implementations, if can be useful for customers to run the analysis after business processes have been set up in the development system tenants to identify any additional improvement recommendations.

Please note, there are differences in functionality between the discovery edition and the full edition of Process Insights. The discovery edition provides customers with an analysis of a one-time data load, which expires after 6 months, where the full edition has continuous monitoring (updated daily) that does not expire, and a wider range of functionality. The discovery edition of SAP Signavio Process Insights is the successor of the Business Scenario Recommendation Report and Process Discovery.

The first step in identifying where to make improvements is process transparency. The SAP Signavio Process Insights analysis is specifically designed to identify if there are blockers that prevent business processes from running as efficiently as possible, and can even identify if there are certain units within the organization where processes are executed better than in other units, among other factors. This results of the analysis can be used to have discussions during the Fit-to-Standard workshops that address whether or not a larger volume of the business processes being converted from the SAP ECC system should instead be replaced with better, more efficient processes, such as those from SAP Signavio Process Navigator.

Watch the video below to learn more about how to use the SAP Signavio Process Insights analysis report:

Learn more about setting up and using SAP Signavio Process Insights in the SAP Help Portal.

The SAP Readiness Check assesses the functional and technical aspects of converting an SAP ECC system to SAP S/4HANA on premise or SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition by comparing the customer's actual system against the SAP S/4HANA Simplification Items.

The SAP S/4HANA Simplification Items describe the functionality change between the SAP ECC suite and SAP S/4HANA (changed, replaced, removed). The Readiness Check is not only beneficial when analyzing a system prior to conversion - it can also run an analysis to determine compatibility of a customer's existing SAP S/4HANA or SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition system prior to installing a release upgrade.

The SAP Readiness Check generates a report with the following information:

• Simplification Items - view new and updated data structures/architectures in SAP S/4HANA to determine if they are relevant to the customer's processes.
• Compatibility Scope Analysis - provides an overview of relevant compatibility packages, which offer limited usage rights to run certain classic SAP ERP solutions on SAP S/4HANA.
• Activities Related to Simplification Items - view a list of proposed project activities to address the relevant simplification items and the in-scope compatibility packages.
• Compatibility of Add-Ons and Business Functions - add-ons developed by partners or customers must be validated for compatibility with SAP S/4HANA before you can begin the system conversion activities. The same applies for business functions.
• SAP S/4HANA Sizing and Data Volume Management - get a sizing estimate for the new SAP S/4HANA system, taking into consideration future data growth, potential new requirements, and data archiving (to save space).
• Custom Code Analysis - provides a high-level perspective on the issues identified with the customer's existing custom code and how much remediation is necessary to resolve the problems before conversion.
• Integration (Interface Analysis) - provides a list of interfaces potentially impacted by the move to SAP S/4HANA, along with recommended follow-up activities to remediate the risk.
• Customer Vendor Integration Analysis - provides an overview of the master data for your customers, vendors, and contact persons that needs to be synchronized with Business Partner entities before the conversion to SAP S/4HANA.
• Planned Downtime Calculator - provides an overview of the expected durations for the individual phases of the planned business downtime for a system conversion to SAP S/4HANA within the same data center.
• Financial Data Quality - provides insights into the data quality and inconsistencies in general ledger, asset accounting, and material ledger. It's critical to identify inconsistencies in the customer's financial data and resolve them prior to the system conversion.
• App Availability - displays an overview of apps in the SAP ECC system that will be deprecated, unavailable, or available with a successor in the new SAP S/4HANA system.
• Recommended SAP Fiori Apps - provides the corresponding SAP Fiori apps that can replace the previously used transactions in the SAP ECC system; analysis is based on historical transaction volume and usage.
• SAP Innovative Business Solutions (IBSO) - provides a list of solutions that have been built specifically for the customer by SAP Innovative Business Solutions; this list is a starting point to begin evaluating if the solutions will be needed in the new SAP S/4HANA system.
• Business Process Discovery - displays a list of key figures for a selection of business process improvements. For example, the number of overdue documents that can be closed and archived. This helps customers identify unnecessary data that can be cleaned-up so as not to transfer it to the new SAP S/4HANA system.
• Innovation Potential - provides various business case stories showing the innovation potential in the customer's specific SAP ECC system. The business cases are based on quantitative characteristics that have been derived from the performance of the customer's existing business processes.

While the SAP Readiness Check provides a list of recommended SAP Fiori apps based on frequently used transaction codes, the SAP Fiori Apps Recommendations Report provides a dedicated report specific to relevant Fiori apps. SAP S/4HANA delivers more than 500 Business Roles based on real world jobs that customers can use as templates for their own roles. In the development system, customers can copy these templates as a starting point and customize and refine the roles to fit their needs. The interactive report is available free of charge for all customers on SAP maintenance.

While the SAP Readiness Check provides a first-pass estimate of the impact of custom code, the Custom Code Migration app provides a detailed analysis of a customer's custom code that will be impacted by the move to SAP S/4HANA. The app checks the custom code in the customer's system against the Simplification Database and shows developers a list of where the code does not comply with the structures in SAP S/4HANA. This helps the project team accurately estimate the effort to adapt the existing custom code to run on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition.

The Business Transformation Center apps in SAP Cloud ALM are intended to support the process of transitioning from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA or SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition through a selective data transition.

To use these apps, first run the SAP Readiness Check for SAP ERP Usage and Data Profiling, which is different than the SAP Readiness Check for System Conversion or Upgrades. This report is accessible in SAP for Me → Systems & Provisioning Dashboard → ALM tab → SAP Readiness Check → SAP ERP Usage and Data Profiling, or through the direct link. Detailed instructions that prepare you to use the SAP Readiness Check for SAP ERP Usage and Data Profiling are in SAP Note 3112362.

In SAP Cloud ALM, upload the output from the SAP Readiness Check to the Manage Analysis Files app. Next, create a new blueprint in the Manage Digital Blueprints app to select the data file previously uploaded. The Digital Blueprint is the first major feature for SAP Business Transformation Center that provides an overview of the different types of data in the customer's SAP ECC system. The other apps in the SAP Business Transformation Center section allow you to further drill-down into this data. For example, in the Select Company Codes app, you may find hundreds of company codes in the customer's ECC system, some of which haven't been used for years. In this situation, you would flag these company codes as "out of scope" to make sure it wouldn't be transferred to the target SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition system. After confirming the Digital Blueprint, you can move on to the next steps to translate the blueprint into a transformation model. This entails data being selected from the source system (customer's SAP ECC system), then being moved to the target system and running post-processing cycles using the Software Update Manager. The purpose of this tool is to de-select business data that's not relevant to be converted and migrated to the target system, so the overall data volume can be reduced. Additional functionality will continue to be released for the Business Transformation Center.

Learn more about the Business Transformation Center capabilities in SAP Cloud ALM.

First, all pre-conversion projects identified by the SAP Readiness Check should be addressed and resolved. This could include:

• Data Management
• Synchronization of Customers/Vendors into Business partners (CVI)
• Reconciliation of Financial Data
• Cleanup unused custom code
• Resolve issues in custom code that will be converted

Find additional resources in this SAP Blog: SAP S/4HANA RIG assets for your functional pre-conversion projects: Customer Vendor integration and Reconciliation of Financial Data

Additional examples of pre-conversion projects are documented and explained in the SAP Blog: System Conversion Steps & Details - How to be prepared?

Next, determine the conversion method that will be used. The standard method uses the Software Update Manager (SUM 2.0), which can occur with or without the Database Migration Option (DMO) that typically reduces the downtime by handling the conversion of data to the SAP HANA database at the same time as the technical system conversion. Additional methods of reducing the system downtime are described in the Software Logistics Toolset.

Prepare the system upgrade by checking the latest SAP Notes for the Software Update Manager (SUM), and verify all prerequisites have been addressed for using SUM 2.0. Plan the conversion steps using the SAP Maintenance Planner, which includes running and reviewing the Simplification Item Check. in the customer's existing SAP ECC system. While both the SAP Readiness Check and Simplification Item Check are able to display information about the Simplification Item relevance and consistency, they serve different purposes and therefore are both required before the technical conversion begins. The master Simplification Item Catalog is located in SAP for Me.

Custom code must be addressed using the Custom Code Migration app, which runs on the SAP Business Technology Platform, and the ABAP Test Cockpit in the customer's existing system. Finally, the Software Update Manager 2.0 can be used to begin the technical system conversion. After conversion, there will likely be application-specific follow-up tasks, in addition to thorough testing of the converted system to ensure all business processes are functioning as expected.

The rapid activation of SAP Fiori serves as a quick start to set up the launchpad. Instead of running individual tasks with a variety of transaction codes, the Rapid Activation process speeds up the configuration of both the architecture and app configuration process dramatically. This procedure is necessary, because the Software Update Manager (SUM) does not automatically generate the SAP Fiori Launchpad UI during the conversion process. Therefore, the SAP Fiori Launchpad must be separately deployed through the Rapid Activation procedure.

The Rapid Activation process starts with the setup and activation of the SAP Fiori launchpad that will later host the SAP Fiori apps and make them accessible to end users. Then the process continues with scoping in the development system based on the template roles delivered by SAP, which are the basis for defining customer-specific roles and catalogs. The last stage is the activation of the customer-specific business roles in the quality system, and the transport of these roles to the productive system.

SAP_FIORI_FOUNDATION_S4 is a task list that is a part of the Rapid Activation process. This process uses a series of task lists with numerous tasks that are configurable by the administrator(s) running the processes. The biggest advantage of the Rapid Activation process is that delivered SAP Business Roles can be used to activate groups of applications and create test users with the appropriate authorizations. This enables them to provide input in further configurations that need to be made and the Business Catalog and Space / Page design.

The SAP Fiori Foundational Roles are created as a part of the Rapid Activation process. Two roles are created:

• SAP_FLP_USER role for SAP Fiori users
• SAP_FLP_ADMIN role for SAP Fiori administrators

During the Rapid Activation process, two composite roles are also created using a user-specified prefix. In addition, a customer specific copy of the single roles are created as well using the same prefix. For example, using a prefix of Z_ would result in the following two composite roles:

• Z_FIORI_FOUNDATION_USER
• Z_FIORI_FOUNDATION_ADMIN

Each of these roles contains all the necessary components needed by the appropriate users, as well as all the authorization objects that can be maintained by the security team. By creating them as composite roles, each customer can add other roles already configured for end users and administrators, simplifying the authorization grant process.