How To Upgrade Your SAP ECC System To S/4HANA & Transform Your Business Using KTern.AI

Krithik Sharavan S -

If you're running an older version of SAP ECC, you may be wondering if you should upgrade to S/4HANA. The answer depends on a number of factors, including your business needs and budget.

In this article, we'll take a look at the benefits of upgrading to S/4HANA and how to go about doing it.

Table of Contents

What is ECC and SAP S/4HANA?

SAP ECC:

The prior version of SAP's enterprise resource planning software is referred to as SAP ECC, or SAP ERP Central Component.

Multiple modules of SAP ECC are connected to create a single, customizable system that may be used with whatever database the user chooses.

When a firm uses SAP ECC, its business processes in the areas of finance, logistics, human resources, product planning, and customer support can all be optimised. SAP ECC has extensive modularity. Businesses can employ the components they require and arrange them in the ways that their environment dictates.

On a personalized technological stack, SAP ECC can also work with third-party or customized applications. This freedom, though, also presents complications.

A modification in one element of the landscape can and will change how other parts work since every component of the landscape interacts with one another. Therefore, it's crucial to thoroughly test your landscape before implementing any changes, including upgrades, add-ons, customizations, and enhancements.

It's also crucial to be aware that SAP ECC has run its course. By 2027, SAP intends to stop providing support for SAP ECC. ECC is already being phased down, and SAP ECC users are being encouraged to switch to SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA:

The SAP HANA in-memory database powers the business suite SAP S/4HANA. It is intended to make corporate operations easier in a connected and digital world.

All essential business operations software, such as enterprise resource planning, human resources, and accounting, are included in the suite. Predictive analytics and big data are only a some of the emerging applications that make use of the in-memory database.

There are many benefits that your business can experience by migrating to S/4HANA. Some of these benefits include:

1. Increased efficiency and productivity – S/4HANA can help to streamline your business processes, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity.
2. Improved decision making – S/4HANA provides real-time insights into your business data, allowing for better decision making.
3. Reduced costs

Moving to SAP S/4HANA

Before moving to SAP S/4HANA there are few questions that one should be asking before moving from SAP ECC To S/4HANA, in terms of

  • Business
  • Processes
  • Users
  • Landscape
  • Communications
  • Customizations
  • Training
  • Testing
  • Project Strategy
  • Approach

Important aspects of S/4HANA

The following are the some of the benefits of the SAP S/4HANA,

  1. Enhancing the user experience
  2. Reduced data model
  3. Combining information from many sources
  4. The ability to develop custom apps
  5. Higher business agility
  6. Strengthened data security
  7. Reduced prices for hardware

Getting ready for and upgrading to SAP S/4HANA

Any SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA migration must begin with the creation of a strong business case. Building the business case far in advance of the transition least a year is crucial. Waiting will result in greater S/4HANA licence prices, indecision, and a hurried S/4HANA migration with a significant failure risk.

Determine where you are headed and what you will gain there as you develop the business case for S/4HANA. Consider innovation, value, and the advantages for business and IT in addition to cost reductions. Finding out the size and scope of the project activities is also crucial.

If you're planning to upgrade to S/4HANA, there are a few things you should do to prepare. First, make sure you have a complete understanding of your current business processes and how they will be affected by the upgrade. Then, work with your IT team to create a comprehensive plan for the upgrade, including a timeline, budget, and tasks that need to be completed.

Finally, ensure that all your data is backed up and that you have a plan in place to test.

How to begin the move from ECC to S/4HANA in KTern

A product designed for the digital transformation of SAP S/4HANA is called KTern. It assists customers before, during, and after the migration with the aid of the SAP Activate Project Management framework, the "S/4HANAPEDIA" automation rule engine, a cutting-edge collaboration platform, and future-ready machine learning algorithms.

Before the migration, KTern supports the establishment of the business case and offers an automatically generated blueprint for the ECC to S/4HANA migration that is organization-specific.

A thorough automated SAP S/4HANA readiness assessment must be finished within 24 hours to deliver this. This blueprint will assist you in defining the appropriate strategy, effort estimate, system sizing, execution, project management, and quality for your ECC to S/4HANA migration.

KTern’s Readiness Assessment Report:

The Following are the some of the Readiness Assessment Report provided by KTern:

  • Conversion project roadmap
  • Suggested Execution plan with milestones
  • Effort Estimate
  • Simplification Item Checks
  • Fiori App Recommendations
  • Add-on Analytics
  • Business Function Analytics
  • Custom Object Analytics
  • Business Process Analytics
  • BW Extractor Checks

Tips for successful upgradation of SAP S/4HANA

  • Make sure your organization is ready for the change
  • Understand the different deployment options and choose the one that best fits your needs
  • Create a comprehensive project plan that takes into account all aspects of the upgrade
  • Assign adequate resources to the project and ensure that they are properly trained
  • Make sure you have a comprehensive testing plan in place
  • Have a contingency plan in place in case things go.

Various approaches to implementing S/4HANA

There are different approaches are there in the SAP S/4HANA implementation, some of them are,

System Conversion of SAP S/4HANA

The system conversion approach makes deploying SAP S/4HANA easy for businesses who are currently using SAP (ECC).

When supported by effectively established processes and system conversion tools, an existing SAP ECC instance can be converted into an SAP S/4HANA instance with all the historical data.

The procedures for carrying out this typical and well-established migration scenario are in-depth and include various technical stages to get to SAP S/4HANA as well as processes for code optimization for the Custom code written in the existing systems.

With 12 built-in modules, KTern is an All-in-One Digital Workplace for SAP Projects that is intended to completely automate and manage SAP S/4HANA Migrations.

Technical Walkthrough of SAP S4HANA System Conversion

Before Conversion

To understand the business, functional, and technical effects of switching from the current SAP ECC system to SAP S/4HANA, KTern offers a thorough SAP S/4HANA Readiness Assessment within a week.

During Conversion

KTern is the ideal toolkit for the SAP S/4HANA Conversion. A thorough project management kernel, a cutting-edge module for managing custom code, and a test suite with RPA support are just a few of the features that come standard with KTern for SAP S/4HANA Conversion.

After Conversion

Landscape & System Management, Business Process Optimization, and License Auditing & Optimization are just a few of the modules that support organisations live on SAP S/4HANA. Unlike most tools on the market, KTern is a highly intelligent product that continues to provide value even after the migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA.

New implementation of SAP S/4HANA

An intermediary step to SAP S/4HANA Finance can be used to perform the migration to SAP S/4HANA.To emphasis this, such migration is made possible in a single step, and this requires a Unicode system. Additionally, SAP provides ABAP reports to determine whether this kind of migration is necessary. The local SAP ERP system must run this report.

Why you should switch to S/4HANA for your ECC system?

There are few reasons to upgrade the ERP system to S/4HANA are listed below

1. S/4HANA is the latest and most advanced ERP system from SAP.

2. S/4HANA offers a significantly improved user experience thanks to its modern user interface and Fiori apps.

3. S/4HANA is much faster and more efficient than previous versions of SAP ERP, thanks to its in-memory computing technology.

Some of the advantages of moving to SAP S/4HANA are,

  • Business process simplification to enable real-time execution by removing background tasks and aggregate tables
  • Planning, execution, report generation, and analytics for improved performance using real-time business data
  • Simplifying the entire IT landscape
  • Decrease in total cost of ownership
  • Capability to process massive data sets in a single system, saving money on hardware, operations, and time.

Challenges in SAP S/4HANA Conversion

In Change Management

Any project involving digital transformation has an impact on every aspect of a company and introduces changes that may be liked or hated; the IT Director would clearly prefer to avoid the latter. Organizational change management employees a variety of activities, such as changing the way business is conducted and preparing end users to adopt the new system.

As a result, it's not just crucial or essential to it's get the staff on board with and habituated to impending changes now.

In Custom Code Management

Any SAP ECC customer benefits from having custom code. Many customers employ custom code development as a quick and effective approach to expand the default SAP software and satisfy certain business requirements.

Since a lot of SAP code within SAP S/4HANA is streamlined and in some cases updated in an incompatible way during system conversion, bespoke ABAP code must be modified. In order to ensure that S/4HANA functions properly, there is a question in our mind that how do you transfer all the custom codes there?

Problem-solving strategies: KTern.AI

KTern in Change Management

  • KTern takes the initiative to recognise the important parties involved in an SAP S/4HANA conversion project.
  • To help users quickly adapt to the system, KTern also offers customised degrees of training and instructional courses for each customer. The built-in Training Hub of KTern will take care of this.
  • It contains pre-emulated lists of all training situations loaded with interactive lessons, frequently asked questions, and training materials.

KTern in Custom Code Management

  • The only significant aspect that can successfully complete or fail an SAP S/4HANA migration is custom code management.
  • When determining if an ECC system is ready for the SAP S/4HANA conversion, KTern's built-in Custom Code Management engine analyses each line of custom code by simply reading the existing system.
  • To examine the custom code, you don't need to have a running instance.

Conclusion

At the end of this blog, I hope you have gained some information about the ECC to S/4HANA migration.

If you want to know more about the features of KTern.AI, Get Started with us.

If you have any queries, feel free to Contact us.