A successful SAP migration: what to look out for?

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA can be a complex operation, which can become long and costly without the right decisions. It is important to understand the risks in order to achieve all the goals. What are the key points of focus to ensure the migration is successful? 

An ERP migration is not merely an IT process, but requires a collaboration between IT and business within an organization. It is important that IT and business teams work together to make strategic choices and determine together how technology can support the organization and move with changes in the future. 

Good preparation is essential for success. Both a clear business case and a connection to the organization's strategy are important. In addition, archiving legacy ERP data prior to the migration can help save costs and time. Estimating the duration of a migration is difficult and varies from one organization to another. Therefore, it is important to draw up a roadmap and define a realistic timeline based on the chosen approach.

Customisation or standard solutions? This is an essential question in an ERP migration. There is no need to develop a completely unique ERP infrastructure, as the so-called ‘industry best practices’ are already included in Cloud ERP and can be activated immediately. Therefore, the focus should also be on the adoption of these industry best practices. 

Most companies choose to migrate their ERP to the cloud. For embracing new technologies, this is a must. After all, all new software is developed with a cloud mindset. However, a cloud migration is a complex and time-consuming process. You have to deal with various choices and aspects – think of data cleansing, corporate culture, cyber & authorisation and GRC tools. A cloud migration therefore requires a clear vision and good guidance. 

Determine a good integration strategy. Integrating systems and processes makes an organization more efficient and streamlined. It enables easier sharing of data and information between different departments and systems, which improves efficiency in business processes. Thus, there is less duplication of effort and error proneness goes down. In addition, integrated systems and processes can lead to an improved customer experience by enabling faster and more accurate responses to queries and requests. 

Only the organization has the responsibility for data quality and completeness. Therefore, make sure you start data restoration on time and guarantee clean, good formats. That is the way to avoid duplicate and inaccurate data during migration. It's better to spend more than less budget on this. Remember: you are the ultimate owner, stakeholder and vision bearer. After the migration, you will be able to work more efficiently with your data than ever before.

Finally, it is important to get the most out of the systems by using the new and improved processes made available by SAP and also by providing users with regular training. Above all, train the trainers so that they can later pass on the knowledge appropriately within your organization – before, during and after the transformation. Users need refresher training with every new release.

All in all, a migration to SAP S4/HANA can be a complex operation, requiring the right knowledge around complex technology and experience with such transformations. KPMG's experts help organizations with end-to-end migrations. They do so by defining a clear vision and business case, setting up and validating future target operating models, as well as designing, testing and actually implementing the technical design. With proven models such as KPMG Powered Enterprise, we unburden our clients throughout the implementation or optimization. KPMG's SAP specialists help organizations transition to S/4HANA. This can ensure accelerated business transformations in the cloud, aimed at simplifying, unifying and standardising processes as well as faster and more risk-aware implementations.

Would you like to stay informed about new publications, insights and reports related to SAP? Leave your contact details in the form below and you will automatically receive the latest publications in your mailbox.