Lessons learned on SAP S/4 HANA implementation

I have just wrapped up managing the SAP S/4 HANA greenfield ERP implementation at Mizuho OSI.  I believe this was my 16th SAP implementation and it has been been a great experience.  We actually went live a day early and completed the project within budget.  I would like to thank Lindsay Neill, Director of IT Applications at Mizuho OSI, for giving me this opportunity.  I would also like to acknowledge the excellent job that KPIT did on this project as the implementation partner led by Bimal Brahmbhatt.

No matter how many times I implement SAP, I always come out of it with some lessons learned.  This being my first SAP S/4 HANA greenfield implementation, was no exception.

Below are a few of these lessons learned.

1)  I have heard that it would be difficult dealing with SAP HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) hosting service.  Thankfully this was not the case.  As with most hosting partners as long as you submit tickets, the work gets done quickly.  HEC also dedicated a representative to help guide us through the proper ticket coding.

2)  The BP (Business Partner) transaction is a one-stop-shop for maintaining all business partners (customers, vendors, etc,).  At first I thought this was great, because it shows that the module silos at SAP actually got together an agreed on something.  But, we soon found that does not have sufficient authorization objects to properly segregate the maintenance of customer, vendors, contacts, and employees (as vendors for paying expenses).  SAP recommends having centralized master data maintenance model rather than a distributed model.  This may work for some companies, but many companies will have to either change their model or live with a monitoring / detective control rather than a preventative control.

3) I always recommend starting data migration efforts early in the project.  In this project, there was a lot of data transformation even though the company was migrating from ECC to S/4 HANA.  I hate to admit that we were caught off guard on this project partly due to the data structure changes and partly due to the data cleansing effort.  We were able to go-live on time, but there was added effort and stress that could have been avoided if we had dedicated resources to data migration activities.

4) The security roles had to be re-developed mostly because the company wanted to tighter security than they had in ECC.  We should have started on the effort sooner and had the users test it more thoroughly during UAT.  Most of the post go-live issues were access issues, but they were resolved quickly during hyper care.

We managed this project using an agile-like project management methodology.  It was similar to SAP Activate, but I added some things I picked up working on Salesforce ERP implementations and luckily KPIT also wanted to use an Agile-like approach.  We completed the project in 6 sprints followed by 2 mock cut-overs which each led into UAT (user acceptance testing) sessions.

Over all, I am very happy with this successful SAP S/4 HANA implementation and I am proud to have been a part of this project.

Dan Raven
Raven Business Practice, LLC.
dan.raven@ravenbp.com
http://www.ravenbp.com

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