How to avoid the common pitfalls of an S/4HANA migration plan
During an ERP migration, organizations can see how complex the technology supporting their business processes really is. Often, they will discover workarounds that were put in place by individuals whose names they do not even recognize. Institutional knowledge that was critical to the establishing process may be lost. It can feel like being in a perpetual state of scope discovery; with the ERP project team constantly uncovering new technical topics to be considered in the migration.
The more critical the business process, the more this holds true. This is because they are typically the ones that have financial implications. These processes need to be executed in accordance with stringent standards and security protocols that are dictated by the powers that regulate them. By nature, these are very specific and, from an ERP business process and technology perspective, usually require highly specialized knowledge to support them. Terms like “specialized” and “specific” are essentially synonyms for “scarce” when used in the context of describing IT project resource and knowledge requirements. This, in turn, makes these processes difficult to address during any ERP migration.
Additionally, critical process cannot be paused and restarted once they have been fully built and tested in S/4HANA. They require full process continuity during the entirety of the project, or the organization risks serious business consequences. Electronic payments and bank statement collection processes are good examples.
A disruption in the payment process means a break in the crucial exchange of funds for goods and services. This can affect the company’s suppliers, employees, contractors and even its customers! Critical business processes can be brought to a halt. Likewise, a disruption in the bank statement collection process could mean delays in reconciling and recording banking transactions, meaning an incomplete or inaccurate record of the company’s financial activities. Critical processes, therefore, need the right “specialized” resources to address these topics during migration, or even better before migration has even started.
Getting the bank connectivity up-and-running and developing the bank formats needed to transact in the countries where one does business can take years. Expanding companies must also add new banks and banking formats on a regular basis. Because it takes so long to get the processes to work as envisioned, most companies avoid changes in major banking relationships or to reopen the project for any reason. However, now that the time has come to migrate to S/4HANA, it is imperative that these processes migrate as well.
In this whitepaper, we will explore:
- The needs of the most important stakeholders during the S/4HANA migration and how to accommodate them for a smooth roll-out
- Which common pitfalls of S/4HANA migration plans you need to look out for and how they can be avoided
- How decoupling bank connectivity from the ERP migration can help you simplify the scope of the project and use your IT resourced more effectively
Download the full resource below to learn more!
