Determining the Distinctive Features of SAP S/4HANA System

SAP S/4HANA is not a successor release of the SAP Business Suite ERP system; SAP S/4HANA is a new product line.

The point is that there are some incompatible changes between an SAP Business Suite ERP System and an SAP S/4HANA system.

An SAP S/4HANA System is:

• based exclusively on SAP's Innovative in-memory database SAP HANA
• It has a new application Architecture and simplified application data model.
• Besides application functionality, which is contained in the so-called compatibility packs, many SAP S/4HANA applications have been re-designed
• You can now use a new UI technology, SAP Fiori.
• You can choose between two deployment models: on-premise and cloud (both private and public cloud versions are available)

Therefore, if you intend to replace your SAP Business Suite system/system landscape with SAP S/4HANA, you must know this is not just a release update.

However, this is not necessarily a disadvantage but a chance to consider to which extent you want to innovate and to which extent you want to keep business processes and applications still good enough.

Different approaches to move to SAP S/4HANA:

Type		Approach	Available for	Purpose
Reusing by in-place conversion		System conversion (Tool: Software Update Manager)		Bringing your business processes to the new platform A complete technical in-place conversion of an existing SAP ERP software system to SAP S/4HANA Adoption of new innovations at your speed
Reengineering with data migration	Standardized Customer tailored	New implementation (Tool: SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit)		New implementation/reimplementation Reengineering and process simplification based on latest innovations Implementing innovative business processes with preconfigured content on a new platform Performing initial data load Retiring old landscape
		Selective Data Transition (Customer-tailored service/consulting offering)		Value-driven data migration to the new platform You need more than master data and open items, such as transactional data, complete or selected by a time slice Migrate a selection of data (such as by organizational units), or migrate data from more than one system, or migrate application-related data into an SAP S/4HANA–based solution landscape

Why would you choose this option?

You would choose this option if your main goal is to bring your current business processes to the new platform, and/or you want to keep your investment in custom code.

A third reason for this option could be, that you want to mitigate the risk and investment of a big bang conversion project by reducing the scope of the transition project to a pure (as much as possible) technical conversion project, and plan to adopt new innovations at your speed at a later point of time and in a phased approach.

Technically seen system conversion is a complete technical in-place conversion of an existing SAP Business Suite ERP system to SAP S/4HANA, which means, that this process changes an existing system into an SAP S/4HANA system.

• It facilitates a database migration from a classical AnyDB to SAP HANA database, in case your SAP ERP system was running on a classical AnyDB.
• It migrates the ERP data model into the SAP S/4HANA data model with all the invented data model simplifications and data volume reductions.
• It replaces the old SAP ERP application Code with SAP S/4HANA Application Code

This scenario describes a fresh, new installation of an SAP S/4HANA system (either on-premise or cloud-based), also known as the "greenfield" approach.

Why would you choose this option?

This option is perfect if reengineering and process simplification based on the latest innovations are your primary focus.

This is especially a well-suited approach for customers planning to migrate:

• a non-SAP / 3rd-part legacy system,
• but also a good option for an SAP System, which may be
• of an older release and/or
• is highly customized/modified and/or
• does not meet the system requirements for a technical system conversion.

This is a value-driven, selective data migration to the new S/4HANA platform. So, the focus is not on migrating a whole system but rather on picking and choosing entities to carve out and move on to the SAP S/4HANA platform.

Therefore, there are several sub-scenarios available:

• for example consolidation of a current SAP Business Suite landscape (multiple systems, or selectively clients of multiple systems) into one global SAP S/4HANA system, or
• selective data migration based on legal entities, such as clients or company codes
• Implementation of SAP Central Finance Scenario

Why would you choose this option? Customers who want to consolidate their landscape or selectively transform data into a SAP S/4HANA system.

Benefits:

• Value-based migration: selective data transformation allows a phased approach focusing the first SAP S/4HANA migration phase on parts of the business with the highest ROI and lowest TCI
• Agility: stay on current business processes but move gradually to SAP S/4HANA innovations (Move to SAP S/4HANA at your own pace!)
• TCO reduction: system and landscape consolidation with harmonized/ simplified processes and unified master data lead to lower cost of operations

You want to move fully to standardization with the SAP S/4HANA scope of business suite processes. You can do this by ideally choosing the new implementation approach. As a result, you can benefit from the available best practice content and guided configuration support. This is possible for both on-premise and cloud deployment models.

However, if the available functional scope of the public cloud product version is sufficient, you can benefit:

• from getting rid of system administration efforts,
• efforts for maintaining custom code and modifications during every maintenance event and
• from faster delivery of innovations (new release available every 3 months) without impact on your running processes.

System Requirements

Your Source system has restrictions that do not allow you to move to SAP S/4HANA on-premise in a one-step procedure.

Re-design

Your focus is on (fundamentally) re-designing your business processes to enable the use of modern technology, such as predictive Analysis, business insight, machine learning, IoT, etc., as well as getting rid of outdated custom code, which makes every maintenance event more expensive and hinders the quick adoption of new functionality and technology.

Enabling with Investment Protection

Most of your important business processes still fit the current requirements. Still, you want to uplift them to the new SAP S/4HANA platform to enable your system to add/change applications in smaller portions in a phased approach.

Custom code relevancy

You have analyzed the current relevancy of your custom code, as well as the effort to migrate it, and you see the feasibility and benefit of taking over existing custom code.

Time to value

You can go live pretty fast while keeping most of your current business processes and can realize smaller innovations quickly and independently from each other afterward, avoiding a longer-running big bang project effort.

1. How to decide on the right transition path?

2. How to reflect business strategy in data management strategy on IT platform? Architecture to get maximum value out of data?

3. How to improve data accuracy and quality for analytics and proper business decision-making?

4. How to identify which data quality measures can be made on the fly?
5. How to migrate archived data along with the move to SAP S/4HANA?
6. How to trace and validate the completeness and correctness of migration for auditing purposes?
7. How to ensure data compliance regulations ART 25 EU GDPR: "Privacy by design and by default"?
8. How to handle data in legacy systems that are not being moved to SAP S/4HANA?

In our time of digitalization, innovation, and fast-developing technologies, staying up to date is crucial. Migrating your data to SAP S/4HANA, today's Intelligent ERP can seem daunting. However, SAP is here to help with the Data Management and Landscape Transformation group, which can take your organization safely to your new SAP S/4HANA Software environment.

The following migration procedures can be used:

• EMIGALL (Migration Workbench)
• LTMC/LTMOM (Migration Object Modeler)
• SLO (CCW and CWB)
• nZDT (Near Zero Downtime)

During the transition from ECC to SAP S/4HANA Utilities, there are some changes to the tables:

New tables: due to the SAP S/4HANA Utilities architecture, there are new:

• German Specific Component = US4G (former /ID* namespace) only Germany
• Process Framework = APE
• Utilities-specific data = UCOM, APEU
• Tables must be transferred in different ways: 1:1, 1:N, 0:N, N:1 (N:1 can probably be neglected)
• New GUID IDs for tables (in the new SAP S/4HANA tables)
• Some of the tables are connected with PARENT_KEY

Tables FKKVK, BUT000

However, the same tables in ECC and SAP S/4HANA do not mean that all fields are available 1:1 in ECC and SAP S/4HANA (for example, FKKVKP-ISU2CI_CATEGORY).

This affects some new SAP S/4HANA Utilities tables.

Examples:

• /IDEXGE/T_SDTOSP → /US4G/INV_REF_H + /US4G/INV_REF_I only Germany
• /IDXMM/MEMIDOC → /US4G/MEMI_DOC, /US4G/DUN_HIST, /US4G/MGV_INFO, /US4G/MEMISTLLNK, /US4G/MEMI_STAT only Germany

This affects some new SAP S/4HANA Utilities tables.

Examples:

• /US4G/CAL* tables (calculation formula tables)
• /US4G/CAL_FTX, /US4G/CAL_MALO, /US4G/CAL_STEP, /US4G/CAL_USE
  • No tables exist for this in ECC
  • only Germany
• /APEU/* tables (tables for MCM Cloud)
• /APEU/INST_ACTOR, /APEU/INST_FORMU, /APEU/INST_MEAS, /APEU/INST_MODEL, /APEU/INST_POD
• No tables exist for this in ECC
• ACDOCA New G/L
  • Filled by the SFIN Conversion
  • Prerequisites and Customizing are required.

This affects some new SAP S/4HANA Utilities tables.

Examples: /IDEXGE/INV_REJ + /IDEXGE/REJ_NOTI -> /US4G/INV_REJINF

This could be omitted because complaints are currently no longer written to /IDEXGE/REJ_NOTI.

New GUID IDs must be used in various tables with SAP S/4HANA Utilities. Version as of June 2024:

• /APEU/INST_ACTOR
• /APEU/INST_FORMU
• /APEU/INST_MEAS
• /APEU/INST_MODEL
• /APEU/INST_POD
• /UCOM/MR_CONTACT
• /UCOM/POD_REL
• /UCOM/POD_REL_AT

  /US4G/CTR_HEAD (hat bereits im ECC die GUIDs, inkl BD und PARENT) only Germany

• /US4G/CTR_POS (hat bereits im ECC die GUIDs, inkl BD und PARENT) only Germany
• /US4G/CTR_TS (hat bereits im ECC die GUIDs, inkl BD und PARENT) only Germany
• /US4G/DEX_AMI only Germany
• /US4G/DEX_DEVICE only Germany
• /US4G/DEX_REG only Germany
• /US4G/DUN_HIST only Germany
• /US4G/ENGY_HDR only Germany
• /US4G/ENGY_USG only Germany
• /US4G/ENGY_VAL only Germany
• /US4G/INVC_REF_H only Germany
• /US4G/INVC_REF_I only Germany
• /US4G/MEMI_DOC only Germany
• /US4G/MEMI_STAT only Germany
• /US4G/MEMISTLLNK only Germany
• /US4G/MGV_INFO only Germany
• /US4G/MI_DEV only Germany
• /US4G/MI_HEAD only Germany
• /US4G/MI_PAR only Germany
• /US4G/MI_RUC only Germany
• /US4G/MR_MRP_MSH only Germany
• /US4G/MREDIREF only Germany
• /US4G/PCAT_RHH (SAP Standard Report available for filling the table in ECC) only Germany
• /US4G/PCAT_RHI (SAP Standard Report available for filling the table in ECC) only Germany
• /US4G/PRICAT_H (SAP Standard Report available for filling the table in ECC) only Germany
• TINV_INV_LINE_A
• /US4G/INV_REJINF only Germany

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