Either an existing SAP customer or a new-to-ERP organization; your upgrade to S/4HANA’s intelligent ERP has become an essential in every SAP perceiving organization. So, when we speak about the transformation it’s all about feeding your intelligent ERP systems with ages of accumulated data into the digital space empowering the intelligence to deliver accurate solutions.

And this feeding of data is known as DATA MIGRATION, to sound more technical,

“Data migration is the process of moving data from one location to another, one format to another, or one application to another.”

This blog entails the tools offered by SAP to simplify your Data Migration process, they are

  • SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit
  • SAP Data Services (SAP DS)
  • Syniti’s SAP Advanced Data Migration Cloud Edition

SAP’s recommended solution for SAP S/4HANA data migrations in new implementations is the SAP S/4HANA migration simulator. As previously stated, you may additionally want to employ complementary technologies in the following situations:

  • The number and types of data sources are many and diverse.
  • Data transformations and business rules are required.
  • The amount of data to be built with quality.
  • The size of the project team and the amount of collaboration.

Let’s look into each of the tools in detail.

SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit 

SAP recommends utilizing the SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit for SAP S/4HANA data migrations as it is the sole way to move data from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA Cloud.  SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit is available for both SAP S/4HANA on-premise and SAP S/4HANA Cloud without the need for an additional license or expense.

There are three different migration methodologies that can be adopted as per your need, they are:

  • The first process allows you to migrate data between SAP and third-party systems while guiding you through the entire migration cycle. Automatic migration program development is a migration simulation model that allows you to:
      1. Evaluate data quality.
      2. Assure error-free data loading
      3. Provides cross-object value mappings
      4. Ensure data consistency, progress monitoring, and more.
  • The migration cockpit in SAP S/4HANA 2020 features a uniform data load using XML template files and staging tables is the second method. Here you can populate the staging tables with either the well-known XML template files or directly with the ETL tool of your choice.
  • Direct transfer is the third method, which allows you to move data straight from your old SAP systems to a new instance of SAP S/4HANA without any intermediary storage. A remote function call (RFC) connection is used to retrieve data from the source SAP system in this situation.

All of the above migration techniques are now included in the SAP Fiori app’s “Migrate Your Data” to SAP S/4HANA. Some of the key features to utilize the SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit are listed below:

  • The SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit comes with a set of migration objects and rules that are ready to use.
  • In SAP S/4HANA, a migration object represents a business entity like a customer, sales order, or invoice.
  • It encapsulates the functionality for creating certain business entities using SAP S/4HANA’s related APIs.
  • All migrated items are available for usage right away.
  • With the SAP S/4HANA migration object modeler, you may expand current migration objects and rules and develop custom objects.

The SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit is simple to use and does not require development knowledge to develop your migration objects or transformation rules. The SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit has largely replaced SAP’s legacy system migration workbench with it’s widespread flexible innovations.

SAP Data Services (SAP DS) 

Customers who opt for transition to their SAP S/4HANA instance are offered with multiple third-party data migration tools to streamline the data migration difficulties. Data migration should not only relocate and change data, but also enhance data quality so that you can go live with clean, valid, and trustworthy data.

SAP Data Services is SAP’s premier ETL solution for profiling, extracting, converting, and improving data quality. When you use SAP Data Services in your migration project, you’ll benefitted with the following,

  • From simple technical profiling to extensive cross-table checks, profile the source system data to detect quality concerns inside those systems.
  • Efficiently extract data from source systems and change it into the SAP S/4HANA format and structure.
  • Apply data filtering.
  • Implementation of data validations against the target system configuration, to guarantee that the transformation logic is technically aligned.
  • Deliver the data to the SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit in the proper format to minimize the amount of work required there.

Syniti’s SAP Advanced Data Migration Cloud Edition  

Large and mid-sized projects need substantial collaboration among the data team and other stakeholders due to the requisite in data orchestration, data extraction, transformation, and data quality activities. These activities are required to migrate complex data to SAP S/4HANA which is provided by combining SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti, cloud version along with SAP Data Services.

SAP Advanced Data Migration is designed to automate a best-practice data conversion process and orchestrate the migration of SAP and third-party data to SAP S/4HANA. It provides a collaboration platform, that allows all stakeholders to do their work in a supervised, regulated, auditable, and secured manner.

The following are the solution’s primary features:

  • A unified picture of everything your team is working on, including mappings, data purification, data building, and sign-off procedures, among other things. The solution includes all of the measurements and KPIs you’ll need to keep track of your project’s development.
  • The software automates up to 80% of the production code and reports required for data transfer.
  • The SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit receives the ready-to-load data in the form of files or staging tables. This comparison assessment of source and target data and the approval of the migration process by the company owners are supported by technical reconciliation capabilities.

Final Thoughts

In an SAP S/4HANA data migration, there are a few critical considerations. It’s also important to understand how you can improve the value of your SAP S/4HANA by influencing data, which is an important step in the digital journey. There are a variety of data migration tools available to simplify your data migration procedure.

Do get in touch with us, to know more about the S/4HANA new implementation projects!