SAP S/4 HANA Implementation

I have been working as a project manager on a greenfield SAP S/4 HANA implementation.  It has been an exciting experience and very educational.  Dealing with SAP HEC is different than working with other SAP hosting partners.  Learning the differences between ECC and S/4 HANA has also been interesting.  I appreciate the opportunity that Mizuho OSI has entrusted me with.

SAP HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) is easy to work with once you understand their ticketing process.  I have not been able get on a conference call with all parties involved in a change.  The Basis team, network team, server team, etc. are different groups often from different entities.  All changes require creating tickets which is normal when working with hosting partners.  However, because there are multiple parties involved, you need to create a ticket for each group.  Luckily we were assigned and account manager that guided us through all of the tickets that need to be created for a change.

Most people know about the Business Partner functionality in SAP S/4 HANA and that it replaces the Customer Master account groups and Vendor Master records.  It includes pretty much all types of accounts.  If you pay expenses to employees, then you will need to create employees as BPs as well.  I like the concept that pretty much every entity that your business deals with is created as a BP in S/4 HANA.  However, this has resulted in a fairly complex object with many Business Partner roles.  Hopefully SAP will find a way to simplify this BP beast.

I really like the consolidation of tables in SAP S/4 HANA, but it has created challenges in data migration, even from a legacy SAP ECC environment.  I always recommend starting early with Data Migration activities in ERP implementations and this is no exception.

The success of any ERP implementation depends on the experience of the team.  The consultants' functional and technical experience as well as the business team's business process experience.  These are key to a successful implementation.  Managing change is critical.  Business Process flexibility is critical.  It always comes down to people, process, and technology.

Dan Raven
Raven Business Practice, LLC.
www.ravenbusinesspractice.com