How to prepare for a migration to SAP S/4HANA without jeopardising operations

When discussing a migration to SAP S/4HANA, it is common for all attention to be focused on the go-live date. However, those who have been involved in a project of this kind know that go-live is just one stage among many. What really determines the success of the migration takes place in the months leading up to it.

This was precisely the case in the project carried out in partnership with Cafés Candelas, where thorough preparation enabled the transition to SAP S/4HANA RISE Private Cloud to be managed with clear planning, whilst minimising the impact on day-to-day operations.

Analysing before making decisions

No two SAP environments are the same. Each company has adapted its system as its business has evolved, incorporating in-house developments, integrations and specific processes.

Before planning a migration, it is essential to understand how that environment is structured. It is not just a matter of reviewing technical aspects, but of identifying which processes are critical, what dependencies exist and what changes will need to be made before starting the conversion.

At Cafés Candelas, this work began with a Discovery phase that enabled the project scope to be defined and a realistic roadmap to be established from the outset.

Each step paves the way for the next

A migration is not simply a matter of running a conversion and hoping that everything will work. Between the initial analysis and go-live, there are many decisions that determine the final outcome.

In this project, it was necessary to first implement the SAP Business Partner model and carry out various conversion cycles in the development and quality environments. Each iteration served to test the system’s behaviour, rectify issues and prepare for the next phase.

Working in a phased manner enabled us to go live with a thoroughly validated environment.

Testing is also part of the migration

One of the most common mistakes is to think that testing is the final step before go-live. In reality, it is one of the phases with the greatest impact on the project’s outcome.

Functional validation, user testing and the dry run carried out on the production environment enabled us to verify that the processes continued to respond correctly and that the integrations continued to function as intended.

Thanks to this preparatory work, the migration was successfully completed on 8 June.

Technology does not work on its own

Projects of this complexity involve a wide range of roles, all of which play a key part. Business teams, functional consultants, technical specialists and infrastructure managers must work in a coordinated manner to ensure that each phase is carried out at the right time.

During the Cafés Candelas migration, this coordination between the company, Vanture ESS and SAP Enterprise Cloud Services was one of the factors that enabled the project to stay on schedule and resolve each challenge as it arose.

A project that continues after the migration

Going live marks the end of one stage, but not the end of the project. From that point onwards, the process of stabilisation and continuous improvement begins, during which the organisation starts to harness the full potential of the new platform.

With SAP S/4HANA RISE now up and running, Cafés Candelas has a solid foundation from which to continue evolving and tackle future projects with greater flexibility.

Every migration has its own specific characteristics, but they all share the same requirement: to plan well in advance, validate each step and understand that success does not depend solely on technology. It also depends on the approach, experience and the ability to support the client throughout the entire process.