SAP S/4HANA has been SAP’s most significant contribution for many years. SAP S/4HANA assists enterprises in lowering their operational IT expenditures by optimizing their IT landscapes. An organization must have an adequate data migration strategy to accelerate its profitable journey toward SAP S/4HANA. Transferring the data into SAP S/4HANA would be difficult; hence, a tested data migration technique is necessary. During the planning stage for a shift to SAP S/4HANA, the business should evaluate data in its present framework to identify how to move, utilize, and manage data. Companies may reduce risk, maintain administrative consistency, and enhance ROI on their SAP S/4HANA migration with the help of a comprehensive data management approach integrated into the planning phase.
Let’s go through the most critical SAP data migration best practices. Following these best practices, you can ensure a successful data migration to SAP.
Extraction
Users will acquire all relevant business data for the migration to the target SAP system in the first step of the data migration process, based on “relevancy rules” or criteria such as business value filters, dates, scope filters, and more. Relevancy rules vary by object and are often used to acquire access to in-scope records for a specific migration object or to satisfy the prerequisites for moving source data to a new system. Users will establish staging tables that include pertinent migration objects and their associated segment names and relevancy rules once the data has been collected and the relevancy rules have been defined.
Recognize The Business Requirements
The data migration process is complex, and many things must be corrected. You must understand the business needs to effectively map the data, resulting in data loss or corruption. Understanding the business requirements will also assist you in determining what data needs to be moved and how it should be transferred. This information is essential for a successful data movement.
Transformation
The transformation stage is likely the most essential step in the SAP Data Migration process because it allows users to convert the relevant data gathered in the previous phase into a format that matches the target system’s criteria, such as structural design or process configuration. This step makes use of additional business logic, mapping, and source fields, such as:
Default: This field sets the default value for the selected data field.
Logical: This field applies conditional rules to the data field of choice.
Copy: This field enables one-to-one data mapping from the source to the target field.
Cross Reference: This field assigns cross-reference tables to each data value to convert the source value into the target value’s format.
Examine The Accuracy Of Your Source Data.
Data must be precise and full when migrating from one system to another. Otherwise, you risk contaminating your new system with bad data. There are several methods for determining the quality of your data. One option is to look at it and see if there are any obvious problems. Another option is to employ a program such as Data Quality Assessment (DQA), which can assist you in identifying issues such as missing numbers, inaccurate data types, and incorrect values. Once you’ve identified any issues with your data, you must resolve them before migrating it. Otherwise, you will transfer the problem from one system to another.
Validation of Preloading
After the initial data has been transformed, the preload validation procedure is accomplished before the newly transformed data is loaded into target fields and systems. These validations assist users in ensuring that data put into the target system fulfils system requirements and specifications, reducing the number of steps that must be retraced later in the process. The SAP system performs several types of preload validations, which are as follows:
Format: Validation checks for data formats such as date fields, pattern checks, and length checks for all relevant data are performed.
Check the configuration: Used to ensure that necessary setup criteria are met and that the system can load product master data and other important fields into the appropriate system area.
Mandatory: Used to determine whether the system and business necessary fields are filled with relevant business data.
Put Your Data Migration Process Test
Data migration is a difficult procedure in which even minor errors can ause huge issues. That is why validating your data migration procedure before going live is critical. Testing will assist you in detecting and correcting faults in your data transfer process before they become difficulties. It will also assist you in ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of your data migrating procedure. There are numerous methods for testing your data migration process. One option is to utilize a program such as SAP Data Migration Cockpit. This tool will assist you in transferring data from one SAP system to another.
Data Loading
The data is loaded into the target SAP system using preset load procedures that meet business requirements. The data can be loaded into the destination system using an integrated ETL tool or an in-built SAP tool such as the SAP Data Migration Cockpit, SAP LSMW, and SAP BODS.
Validation After Loading
The SAP Data Migration procedure is finished to guarantee that the data is appropriately loaded into the target system and that it can be validated in t-codes and tables.
For the migrated data, the post-load validation will yield three different outcomes:
Postload Pass: Reports that all records were loaded successfully and without errors.
Postload Fail: Reports that certain records failed and provided the error log for the failed records so that additional investigation can be conducted.
Postload Change: Indicates that some field-level values were compared between source and target data to ensure that no values were altered or converted during the load process.
How Can We Assist?
Data migration can assist you with outlining new implementation scenarios in your S/4HANA Migration Cockpit, navigating the direct transfer of business-critical data from legacy systems to a new SAP system, or simply using staging tables to model your migration objects. Our data migration services team has the technical expertise and functional knowledge to manage your SAP project requirements, from implementations to integrations, upgrades, enhancements, and everything in between.
