Overview of SAP S/4 HANA

Next generation E-Business Suite

Shubham Pachori
Computer Science & Engineering Department,
Institute of Technology, Nirma University
Ahmedabad, India
12BCE055@nirmauni.ac.in

Abstract SAP S/4 HANA is one of the revolutionary

innovations from SAP in the Business suite services sector. It has
been fully architected for the most advanced in-memory
platform, SAP HANA and it is designed on the most modern
design principles with SAP Fiori user experience. SAP S/4 Hana
is being offered as cloud, on premise and hybrid deployment
options in order to provide the maximum flexibility in
configuration to users. SAP S/4 Hana is designed to drive
business innovation with simplicity by connecting people, devices
and business networks in real time. This to support the
development of new business models. It will also help to
accelerate the on-ramp to topics like the Internet of Things and
big data. And, of course, the simplified data models allow
customers to re-imagine their IT, helping to drive lower costs and
aiming to help deliver IT efficiency. This paper provides an
overview of the of SAP S/4 HANA keeping in mind the following
key areas - Strategic positioning and value proposition, evolution
of the product, salient features and modules, road map to
migration & deployment and customer reviews and feedbacks.
Keywords SAP S4/HANA , E-Business suite , SAP HANA ,
SAP Simple finance , SAP Simple Logistics

I.

INTRODUCTION

Today businesses operate in a world of increasing

complexity and constant change. This is not a new trend.
However the convergence of unlimited connectivity, mobile
devices, cloud-computing, big data, in-memory technology as
well as the Internet of Things is forcing industries in all sectors
to rethink the boundaries and definition of enterprise software
in a digital world.
The new paradigm of interconnected networks, of both,
companies and people where data is Omni-present. Just
consider the number of 500 million tweets per day, 4.7 billion
things are shared on Facebook daily, and 50 billion connected
machines expected by 2020, creating new opportunities,
creating new challenges, and creating new sources of
competitive advantage as companies master the digital
transformation. And Tech-giants like SAP who are the greatest
innovators in the field of digital business suite are determined
to seize this opportunity. With Launch of SAP S/4 HANA in
New York on February 3, 2015 they have created disruption in
the market of E-Business Suite.

SAP has defined their product strategy along three

fundamental pillars.
First, the platform that enables customers to build and
extend applications to differentiate their business, open
up the world of data, for example, with Internet of
Things, Big data and sentimental analysis of Social
networks.
Secondly, the applications that are modern, integrated,
and leverage the insight from the whole value chain in
every transaction and every decision.
And thirdly, the network that goes beyond the company
network and brings the outside world directly into the
applications.
SAP S/4HANA is a major step forward for digitalizing
industries. In simple terms it is the logical successor for three
flagship products of SAP combined together the Business
Suite, SAP HANA and SAP R/3 ERP. It's the next generation
enterprise software for the digital age.
S/4HANA is based on three things: A massively simplified
data model, a completely Fiori-enabled user interaction with
guided configuration.
Simplified data model: It runs on a substantially
simplified data model. As it maintains the core data
model, it is now easier to integrate in and to migrate
from existing suites in comparison to any other upgrade
in the past.
Fiori UI/UX: It is completely Fiori-enabled. SAP
S/4HANA has a great user experience on any device
across the 43 core roles. It's a huge step forward for all
end users and simplifies the system access and usage
massively.
Guided configuration: SAP S/4HANA has a guided
configuration and pre-engineered integration that makes
it completely easy to implement and to run.
This paper has been divided into 6 sections. In section (I)
Introduction we have introduced the fundamental pillars and
three drivers of SAP S/4 HANA, in section (II) we will provide
a detailed analysis on strategic positioning and value
proposition of S/4 HANA, in section (III) we will discuss the
evolution of the SAP S/4 HANA from its predecessors, in

section (IV) we will provide a detailed overview of the salient

modules of SAP S/4 HANA, in section (V) we will discuss the
road map to migration and deployment of SAP S/4 HANA and
in section (VI) we will arrive on the conclusion and discuss
about the feedbacks from the customers who have successfully
deployed SAP S/4 HANA.
II.

networks. It has been built over SAP HANA technology and

STRATEGIC POSITIONING AND BUSINESS VALUE

PROPOSITION

A. Strategic positioning
All the firms in present digital age are facing a quite
interesting time. They are running their current business to the
maximum scale and efficiency as they have it implemented
with various SAP solutions or solutions from their competitors.
Additionally, they see new business models coming up which
have completely different parameters. They need to be
implemented fast, have a high change rate, still need to be
adopted and clear targeted into a future, which is much more
targeted to the end consumer and not only to B2B businesses.
Businesses model are focused more on outcomes which the
user can reap after the successful deployment of the product.
So when the customer go for the cloud enterprise suite, they are
looking for the outcome, they are looking for the complete
service and that they can successfully use to their business and
to their benefits.

Figure 1 SAP HANA Core Capabilities [1].

The customers of e-business suite need to focus on their

end consumers and on their needs. They need to understand
their end consumers and to analyses, what those end consumers
have done with their products or what they need. So the
demand for high analytics, the demand for simulations and
predictions will increase much, much more in the future than it
is today. This is the reason why SAP S/4 HANA has been built
on a technology which supports that, which has inbuilt
columnar OLAP/OLTP capability, which can run simulations
in light speed within the transaction and which can do
predictions with inter-transactions to support the customers in
the decision directly at the screen. All the capabilities depicted
in the figure 1 are fundamental to these new business needs to
be built in into a transactional solution like SAP S/4HANA is.
SAP S/4 HANA is a solution built which supports on one
side big data, new devices and is people centric. With that it
integrates the new business models which are driven by
Internet of Things, by business networks, and the social

Figure 2 SAP S/4 HANA Strategic positioning [1].

present the solution via SAP Fiori user experience. SAP S/4
HANA is shipped on both channels, on both deployments, on
premise as well as in the cloud. SAP has built a cloud product,
which they also ship on premise and have integrated it to their
SaaS services as mentioned in the figure 2. This modular suite
is used by our customers depending on their needs, and their
new business models.
B. Business value proposition
The digital economy is now a reality and its transforming
businesses, processes, business decisions, and business
outcomes. The research shows, over 3/4 of business leaders
believe that achieving digital transformation will become
critical to their organization within two years. And almost all
employees believe digital transformation is right for the
organization. They see the effects of the digital economy in
their personal lives. And it only makes sense to bring the same
ease of use, the same connectivity, and the same digital-driving
opportunities to the workplace. We need all to think along the
digital value chain, including the customer, suppliers, and your
people and resources. So let us drill down into some examples
where the digital economy is transforming business functions.
The transformation of business processes is not limited to ecommerce or mobility. In fact, it spans all line of businesses.
Common threads include the ability to drill down to the
smallest level of granularity or intelligently analyses large,
diverse amounts of data from varying sources.
Sales and Marketing is increasingly personal and
context aware. Digital transformation means shrinking
the target segment and impacting behavior at just the
right moment in the segment of one.
Manufacturing is realized increased flexibility to better
meet customer needs and automating complex
processes all while reducing batch sizes and scheduling
challenges, to a lot size of one.
Finance is incorporating predictive analysis to more
accurately forecast company health and processing high
volumes of transactions in real time. So employees
across the company have up-to-date decision support
information.
Maintenance is more than just following a calendar.
With digital transformation its now predictive and

intelligent. Utilizing sensor networks and contextaware, big data analysis, operations enjoy more uptime
and increased profitability.
And, of course, there are other areas. Digital transformation
is about more than just evolving business processes. The right
combinations are today already disrupting industries.
Industries today are looking for ways to transform their
business. They need to deliver services rather than products,
and everything needs to happen fast, so innovation with speed
is key. Industries are looking to improve their decisions,
processes, and products next. Ultimately, they need to cater
towards new business models before they get disrupted - this is
where SAP S/4HANA comes in. S/4HANA creates unique
opportunities to not only run day-to-day business in real-time
with industry best practice, but also reinvent business models
while industries transform and drive new revenues growth
areas. The core fundamental value proposition are

Reimagined business models: the simplicity to connect

to people, devices, and business networks in real time,
to deliver new experiences and values to customers.
The Internet of Things and big data become accessible
to any business, no more complex business
collaboration and interactions.

The reimagined decision simplicity: is to get any

insight to any data from anywhere in real time. So,
planning, execution, prediction, simulation are now all
done on the fly to drive faster business impact - no
more complex data consolidation through Excel sheets,
or pre-thought aggregation, or the wrong data in
memory.

Reimagined business processes: the simplicity to

focus on the essential tasks in real time and gain the
flexibility to HR to change the business process as
needed for new efficiencies. No more long running
batches. Companies can analyze, steer, and change
their business as they go, whenever they need it.
III.

EVOLUTION OF SAP S/4 HANA

A. Evolution from in memory database technologies

When SAP released the HANA database in 2011, they had
in mind to leverage this ground-breaking new database with
almost zero response time for building completely new
applications. So as a first step, they put the Business
Warehouse on SAP HANA, which gave customers real-time
analysis, real-time reporting. The next logical step was to put
the entire Business Suite on HANA, which brought a lot of
business value to their customers: Real-time business, OLAP,
OLPT together, and also in this cloud with the HANA
Enterprise Cloud Model. The next logical step was to design
applications that really leverage the capabilities of the HANA
database to the maximum extend, to really tailor applications to
the advantages of a HANA database. So as a frontrunner, SAP
brought Simple Finance to the market, which gave customers
instant financial insight with no aggregates, no indices, and no
delays - a single source of truth. SAP then decided to do that
with the entire Business Suite. And they wanted to leave two

Figure 3 SAP S/4 HANA evolution from SAP HANA [2].

important barriers behind them. One barrier was always that
they had to design applications that would fit any database,
even the slowest one. With S/4HANA, they have designed
applications that are tailored to the advantages and to the
capabilities of the HANA database. Also with the new product,
they can really dramatically simplify applications, take out
redundancies and also reduce the data footprint to a maximum
extent. And the result is S/4HANA, which we launched
beginning of the year with a simplified data model, a
completely new Fiori-based user experience.
B. Evolution from pre existing ERP solutions
SAP R/3 when launched was based on three core
fundamentals:

Live data Data from all the granularity at enterprise

level integrated into simple data model. The data
model is responsive to even slightest change and is
accurate in real time

Process Enriched - SAP R/3 provide scalability for

firms to expand without doing any changes in their
existing processes. It provides real-time capabilities for
predictions and simulation and thus helps in strategic
decision making

User empowered SAP R/3 provides personalized

user experience at various roles in the enterprise. It
provides contextual information which gives the user
instant insights about their business enabling them to
take intelligent informed decisions.

Figure 4 SAP S/4 HANA evolution from R/3 [2].

The next logical step to this was to bring in the new
reimagined business model which can transform
traditionally operating industry to digital age industry. So

obvious add-ons to the existing SAP R/3 product wereInternet of Things to monitor the devices in the real time,
Big data analytics to store and analyze trillions of bytes of
data to provide valuable insights, transformed business
networks which include all the nodes of your business,
social network and sentiment analysis to create and monitor
brand values and consumer satisfaction and lastly a people
centric solution. Thus SAP S/4 HANA was conceived on
the core fundamentals of SAP R/3 which has made it the
perfect next generation e-business suite.

IV. SALIENT FEATURES OF SAP S/4 HANA

A. SAP HANA
SAP HANA provides the key enablers for the roadmap to
S/4HANA.The four native SAP HANA capabilities:

Customer Engagement Intelligence solution based on

the Text Mining capabilities of SAP HANA get
thousands and millions of e-mails of unstructured
information. Unstructured data will be a much more
important source in the future where data analysis is
done to get the sentiments out of it. So, deriving the
sentiment out of this text and getting the sentiment
directly into the structured information is a key asset
which HANA can provide.

In Supply Chain, Analytics & Prediction is extremely

important. Analytics gives the insight in the past, but
that's only the less important part. The much more
important part is: What can it give us into the future,
the insight into the future? To predict how the capacity
situation will behave over the next weeks and months
gives the complete insight into the logistics, into the
supply chain, which the customers have to plan.

Simulation is something which the customers need to

get the insight into the situation where they will run
into when something happens. So you see here, if an
order would come in, in the response prototype, we see
that we have a simulation of how a big deal would
influence our capacity situation. But not only taking a
big deal. If you would simulate that for multiple,
hundreds of, thousands of deals, you could easily see
the bottleneck where you run into in your Supply
Chain Network.
When the system could provide with the insight of the
needed decision, then in the situation the intelligence
provided by the system which has been asked to be in
front of the system now into the system. And with that
we can drive the quality of best possible decisions by
simulating and getting the decision support enabled by
the system to the end user.

Figure 5 SAP HANA core capabilities [3].

B. SAP Simple Finance

The SAP HANA platform with its high performance
capabilities of data access and an integrated transactional
analytical capabilities is the foundation of SAP Simple Finance
and in turn it is foundation for SAP S/4 HANA. Simple
Finance leverages the power of SAP HANA, and Simple
Finance offers a simplified and redundancy free data model. So
SAP S/4HANA integrates SAP Simple Finance and drives
innovation through simplification. Simple Finance can be
categorized
along
5
core
values.

Figure 6 SAP Simple Finance core capabilities [4].

The first one is non-disruptiveness. So with these nondisruptive innovations we are ensuring a seamless
adoption and implementation of SAP Simple Finance.

Second, we have a single source of truth and the single

source of truth offers the functionality that all data is
available without the need of re-conciliation.

Third, we have flexibility as one of the core values.

Flexibility is based on the single source of truth, and
enables us to analyses and aggregate according to the
changing business requirements, and changing
perspectives at any time.

Based on these two we have an instant insight as one

of the core values. The instant insight enables us to
explore the financial data at any point in time and at all
levels of granularity.

All of these functionalities are being consumed in an

intuitive role-based user experience that adds the fifth
core value of Simple Finance.

C. SAP Simple Logistics

In this section we will try to connect the dots of Simple
Logistics to ERP. But we can't connect the dots looking
forward; we can only connect them looking backwards. The
original idea of an ERP was a system of record focused on
making transactional systems more efficient. In figure 7 below,
we see the scope of Logistics in ERP modules like Sales and
Distribution, Materials Management, Logistics Execution,
Production Planning and Control, and others. In these times, a
variety of transactions were offered to a user to carry out his
daily work. Lets look at how a production planner in a
company interacted with such a system of record. He used the
system to identify a problem in his daily task like a supplydemand shortage. But he himself had to add the intelligence to
do the actual work, to analyze the reports in various systems, so
he could prioritize production orders, or he could procure from
another vendor, or he could ship from another plant to meet a
shortage.
Simple Logistics in S/4HANA can now add much more
value, work much more intelligently and proactively to propose
different solutions with the data which reside in the systems. So
with Simple Logistics, the production planner is empowered to
make business decisions and focus on daily tasks instead of
analysing various transactions to find a solution to a problem.
This is the real transformation coming from a system of record
and moving into a real decision support system. On the right
side in the figure 7 is listed the scope of Simple Logistics
which includes Core ERP functions without Finance, HR, and
Marketing, and complemented with capabilities from Supply
Chain, Management, Customer Relationship Management,
Product Lifecycle Management, and Supplier Relationship
Management. The core also supports new trends such as
Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things. Simple Logistics is much
more intelligent than the system of record applications. By
unleashing the power to the user, it is an enabler of
transformation and reimagining of the existing businesses.

Figure 7 SAP Simple Logistics Vs Traditional ERPs [5].

The different lines of business touched by Simple Logistics
are Procurement & Sourcing, Solution Management,
Manufacturing, Research & Development and Engineering,
Sales, Asset Management, Service, and Sustainability and the

key innovations brought in by SAP Simple logistics in these

lines of business are as follow:

Material Requirements Planning Fast MRP run, and

new working model for MRP controllers based on
decision support.

Inventory Management Simplified data model

resulting in increased throughput, flexible analytics at
the most granular level.

Material Valuation Principle of One, scalable material

valuation capabilities, utilizing Material Ledger, that
way customers can use multicurrency, valuation
methods per different accounting laws like GAAP.

Available to Promise & Backorder processing

Enhance ERP by advanced ATP capabilities in APO,
new coding to make it better, innovation benefit as
functionality will be refreshed. Capacity Planning New
deployment option for bringing PP/DS on ERP,
reducing integration efforts, allowing seamless master
data & UI harmonization.

Order Management & Billing Enable monitoring of

end-to-end order-to-cash process & take actions for
any exceptions, information on the exceptions to
resolve the issues, lower TCO due to data model
simplification, support for the most recent versions of
business features such as FSCM Credit Management,
GTS Foreign Trade, SFIN Revenue Accounting, new
analytical capabilities.

Procurement Increased efficiency in the Procure-toPay processes, new Analytical Apps & Spend KPIs,
Ariba Network Integration for PO Order

D. SAP Hybris Marketing

Marketing departments today have a magnitude of
marketing solutions, mostly at least one for each channel,
which ultimately leads to the fact that customers and
consumers are being really bombarded with inconsistent and
irrelevant messaging. We check our email account and there is
a lot of emails in there which we even don't bother opening, we
delete them right away. Even worse than these are ads which
are not relevant at all, they sometimes even distract customers
in their buying process and overall customer journey. This is
why these are weapons of mass distraction not mass promotion.
SAP S/4 HANAs goal really is to help companies stop this
bombardment through SAP Hybris Marketing. So what SAP
essentially do with Hybris Marketing is attack the core of this
problem. SAP Hybris is bringing all data sources in the
marketing landscape together to really create one consistent
central profile of a person or a business in both, the B2C as
well as the B2B space. This profile fuels all the execution and
customer engagement across all of the channels.

pre-defined integration available already with strategic partners

that we have in areas such as social media or email providers,
email service providers. Then again, on the upper part of the
figure 9 we can see the SAP Hybris Marketing components.

Figure 8 SAP Hybris Marketing engagement cycle [6].

In figure 8 as depicted, SAP Hybris Marketing is constantly
listening to a magnitude of channels, being sometimes
structured, sometimes unstructured sources viz. email, search,
SMS, web sites, in-store behaviours, social channels and so on
and so forth. So, through this constant listening SAP S/4
HANA also normalize this information in all these interactions
coming in into one consistent central profile. The profile has
two sides:

Explicit behaviour on the right side of the figure 8 is

pretty much classic transactional data that we know,
for example, from classic CRM system. So, what has a
customer purchased, what has he complained about,
has he registered to your newsletter and so on and so
forth.
Implicit behaviour on the left side of the figure 8 is
meaning a customer goes, for example, or a prospect
goes to a web site. He browses the web, he looks at a
certain product, he maybe hovering through or over a
certain area on the screen. He might be walking by a
store which ultimately is a signal for us that is very
relevant in the marketing context.

So SAP S/4 HANA put all these things together in the

profile not only for the sake of just collecting the data, but
ultimately to really drive a relevant engagement, a triggerbased contextual marketing. And ultimately this goes to the
very same channels we can see at the bottom of the figure 8.
So, this execution can go through an email, can be a banner ad
at the end of the day, it can be an SMS, it can be, you know, a
push notification in a mobile app. So this is really the
continuous cycle of listening and engaging customers through
SAP Hybris Marketing.
Looking at the platform as such, the overall solution suite,
on the bottom of the architecture the most fundamental layer
which is called the Marketing Data Management. This is where
the central profile sits, this is where all the scoring mechanism
happen and ultimately fuelling all the components you see at
the upper part of the architecture with the relevant information
to drive marketing. If we look at the left-hand side of SAP
Hybris, the SAP world - of course it is needless to say that
there is a very tight tie to the SAP and Hybris world: So sales,
service, the commerce, so what are customers buying, for
example, and also the ERP world. The right-hand side pretty
much shows the third-party applications. This is where all the
partners that we work with coming to play. There is a lot or

Figure 9 SAP Hybris Marketing architecture [6].

And that really ranges from things such as

Planning - create and distribute budgets from a global

level to a regional level

Insights - would be something that is of course

interesting for every marketing manager to really
check where am I with my campaigns? How is the
overall sentiment, for example, for a certain campaign
and so on and so forth.

Orchestration is really important for multichannel

marketing approach. So how to orchestrate this process
across multiple channels both, on the inbound as well
as on the outbound or execution side.

When it comes to the ultimate engagement, we have a

component called Acquisition. This is a multichannel
campaign management, multi-wave campaign
management behind that component.

There is a component called Conversion which helps to

remarket and retarget customers or prospects coming
to the site, putting something in their shopping cart and
then leaving to do something else. So this component
ultimately drives or helps to drive customers back to
the web site to finish the purchase, the purchasing
process.

Loyalty is a component that represents the nextgeneration loyalty management, where we really want
to incentivize customers, and ultimately ambassadors
of the brand, for their behavior, for their drive
regarding the company or the products of the company.

Then there is a Segmentation option, leveraging the

full profile, leveraging the scores that we have
calculated on an individual profile level.

And then, last not least, Recommendation, kind of

suggesting or recommending, products based on
previous behaviour and the purchasing history.

V. ROAD MAP FOR MIGRATION TO SAP S/4 HANA

A. SAP S/4 HANA Comparison and Overview of editions.
SAP S/4 HANA is being distributed on to customers in two
editions On-premise as well as Cloud edition. We can compare
the two editions based on the following parameters.
Licensing Model
For the SAP S/4HANA on premise edition the traditional
SAP pricing model is in place. SAP Business Suite customers
need to purchase the SAP S/4HANA foundation-promotion
license to run the new SAP S/4HANA code line. For the SAP
S/4HANA cloud edition the pricing model is subscriptionbased.
Infrastructure & Maintenance model
In the SAP S/4HANA, on premise edition the customer is
in full control of deployment and maintenance with dedicated
own IT staff. In the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition SAP
provides the system and is responsible for the system
maintenance. This includes the execution of patches and
release upgrades.

marketing, SAP JAM and Ariba network. The SAP S/4HANA,

cloud edition the covers specific business scenarios for the
marketing line of business and for the professional services
industry. As well as the most essential scenarios to run an
entire enterprise in the cloud with a digital core that includes:
finance, accounting, controlling, procurement, sales,
manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system, and product
lifecycle management. This comprehensive offering also
provides native integration between SAP S/4HANA and other
cloud solutions from SAP, including those from
SuccessFactors in human resources, Ariba in procurement as
well as integration with SAP Hybris marketing.
Custom Code
The customer would select the SAP S/4HANA, on premise
edition if maximal flexibility in business critical processes are
required, and go far beyond standardization. However, adding
business logic is not enough, because modification of SAP
objects is required. In the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition the
customer limits their flexibility by using the cloud extensibility
functionalities which transform always patched and upgraded
operating systems and makes it easy for customers to introduce
new innovations.

Speed of Innovation
In the SAP S/4HANA, on premise edition the customer
responsible for the deployment and maintenance does have full
control over speed of innovation, planned downtimes, changes
within the system and changes of the system. In the SAP
S/4HANA, cloud edition the customers participate
automatically on quarterly innovation upgrades based on the
service level agreements.
Implementation Approach
The customer (usually collaborates with consulting
partners) can implement highly individual requirements
regarding business processes and customization. This requires
detailed technical know-how. Customers coming from SAP
Business Suite can move to SAP S/4HANA, on premise
edition basically in a one-step-technical procedure using SAP
Update Manager with Data Migration Option (DMO).
In the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition the customer is
following best-practices with standardized fine-tuning
requirements to participate faster on future innovative business
processes. The customer of the cloud edition can implement the
solution with key user business know-how. During this
process, limited technical know-how is required. Customers
coming from SAP Business Suite can move to SAP S/4HANA,
cloud edition by implementing the SAP S/4HANA cloud
system using the guided configuration functionalities plus (if
required) data migration functionality (technically based on
SAP Landscape Transformation [SAP SLT]).
Scope
In the SAP S/4HANA, on premise edition the customer can
use the full ERP Scope from SAP Business Suite. (This
includes the application innovation from SAP Simple Finance
and SAP Simple Logistics). The SAP S/4HANA, on premise
edition can integrate with other SAP cloud solutions like
Success Factors Employee Central, Field glass, SAP Hybris

B. SAP S/4 Hana On premise edition Road map for new

customers
New SAP S/4HANA, on premise edition customers will be
supported in their implementation project with preconfiguration based on SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions and
SAP Rapid Data Migration with SAP Data Services.
Additionally, there will be content packages for the
implementation and integration with SAP S/4HANA and other
SAP cloud solutions, such as SAP SuccessFactors Employee
Central. The following figure describes the data migration
based on SAP Data Services technology at a glance

Figure 10 SAP S/4 Data migration cycle for new customers

[7].

Legacy data environment (1) the legacy data

environment refers to the source systems for the
migration. It can be any third-party source system that
is supported by SAP Data Services connectivity
(almost everything as SAP Data Services supports
ODBC protocol). SAP systems on a lower release that

cannot be upgraded can be a legacy system as well.

The Rapid Data Migration package comes with prebuilt content for SAP S/4HANA.

Extract and profile (2) Data is extracted from the

source and placed in a staging area in SAP Data
Services. At this point, you can conduct technical
profiling with SAP Data Services. Additionally, you
can start profiling very early on the source systems
using SAP Information Steward. The Data Services
environment is used as a staging area that extracts and
profiles the data. The profiling can include looking at
patterns in postal codes. For example, what percentage
of postal codes has 5 digits? It could also be how many
material numbers follow a specific pattern. For
example, you might be interested in how many unique
IDs there are in a certain table. The extraction and
profiling of data is an important first step in a data
migration project. The quality of the source data is
assessed and the overall risk of data migration is
mitigated to ensure overall success of the data
migration project.
Cleanse, transform, and validate (3) this includes
updating the data so that it meets specific patterns,
mapping and transforming the data according to rules,
and validating data against the SAP S/4HANA
business context. This can involve combining two
fields into one, splitting fields, updating the data in a
field to match certain rules (for example, telephone
number formats), and validating data against required
fields and lookup values from the SAP S/4HANA
context and configuration. Also, duplicate data records
can be eliminated with this step.
SAP configuration extraction (4) once the data is
extracted, it is important to know how the data needs to
be prepared for SAP. The solution reads business
context and configuration settings in SAP S/4HANA to
help map the data. As part of an SAP S/4HANA
implementation, the system is configured with many
values such as cost centers, company codes and
country values. This step enables knowledge of the
SAP business context, in order to transform and then
validate the data in Data Services against the SAP
configuration and customization settings. Mapping of
the source data normally requires mapping fields that
comply with the SAP configuration.
Load (5) once the data is transformed and validated, it
is then loaded into the SAP S/4HANA system. This is
normally done via IDocs and Web Services, but can
also be done with files & BAPIs.

Reconciliation (6) Reconciliation looks at what was

actually loaded versus what was expected to be loaded.
This ensures all data was loaded and is ready for use.

Dashboards and business reporting (7) throughout the

process, dashboards are available for the people
involved to stay informed about the status of the
migration. Additionally, the migration project often
sets data quality expectations and governance around

data management. The entire process of assessing the

data, validating data according to business rules and
SAP context lays the ground work for ongoing data
governance. For example, if customer records were
checked to ensure every customer had at least two
contact persons associated with it, then this process can
continue to ensure all new customer records have two
contact persons.
C. SAP S/4 Hana On premise edition Road map for new
customers
SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition already covers specific
business scenarios for the marketing line of business and for
the professional services industry as well as the most essential
scenarios to run an entire enterprise in the cloud with a digital
core including: finance, accounting, controlling, procurement,
sales, manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system, and
Product lifecycle management, plus integration with
SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP Hybris
Marketing, Field Glass and SAP JAM. Three offerings are
currently available as part of the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition:

SAP S/4HANA, cloud marketing edition for the

marketing line of business

SAP S/4HANA, cloud project services edition for the

professional services industry

SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition for a full

ERP scope

SAP S/4HANA, cloud system - implementation the initial

step to move SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is the
implementation of customers cloud system. Based on the builtin functionalities of the guided configuration the customer
(optionally supported by consulting and implementation
partners) implements his business scenarios and business
processes. The required master and transactional data can be
migrated from SAP Business Suite (or any legacy system).
SAP S/4HANA, cloud system data migration technically
the migration to SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is based on SAP
Landscape Transformation (SLT) and Data Migration Server
(DMIS) as data migration tools. Data is migrated from a
customers source (SAP Business Suite System or any legacy
system) to a new SAP S/4 HANA Cloud target system. From
an implementation point of view, the data migration is
integrated into the SAP S/4HANA Implementation cockpit
(End to End Implementation experience).
VI. CUSTOMER FEEDBACK ON S/4 HANA & CONCLUSION

Figure 11 SAP HANA & S/4 HANA customers [8].

SAP have more than 210 customers who already put their
entire business into the HANA Enterprise Cloud. So and it's

already driven under the HANA perspective, a lot of

innovation is built in already. And these customers can already
focus on innovation because with their highly skilled resources
they are not forced to operate their solution anymore, they can
think about new ideas and new innovation for their company to
help them. A very good example is Nissha. Nissha is a
Japanese customer who is focused on producing touchpads and
printing. This customer needs to work in entire new businesses
and they needs to focus on the innovation topic massively. So
what they did, he put his entire landscape into the SAP Cloud
under the SAP S/4 HANA platform. And that was extremely
successful. So within three months, this entire project was
done, and SAP has massively improved performance for all of
their reporting aspects and for their overnight batch processing
which is a very, very vital part of their operating business.
Improving that means that these customers can think about new
things. And we have some other examples here, like McLaren,
like the German football, Schaidt Innovations and some others.
So these customers already realized that they need their
resources for innovation topics, and that's what they were going
to do with SAP S/4 HANA.
SAP S/4 HANA is one of the revolutionary innovations
from SAP in the Business suite services sector. It has been
fully architected for the most advanced in-memory platform,
SAP HANA and it is designed on the most modern design
principles with SAP Fiori user experience. SAP S/4 Hana is
being offered as cloud, on premise and hybrid deployment
options in order to provide the maximum flexibility in
configuration to users. SAP S/4 Hana is designed to drive
business innovation with simplicity by connecting people,

devices and business networks in real time. This to support the

development of new business models. It will also help to
accelerate the on-ramp to topics like the Internet of Things and
big data. And, of course, the simplified data models allow
customers to re-imagine their IT, helping to drive lower costs
and aiming to help deliver IT efficiency.

REFERENCES
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[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]
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[8]

Dr. Wieland Schreiner,Executive Vice President SAP S/4 HANA, SAP

S/4 HANA Strategy and positioning, SAP S/4 HANA Deep Dive
opensap.com
Markus Schwarz, SVP & General Manager SAP S/4HANA Global
Customer Operations, SAP S/4 HANA Market background, SAP S/4
HANA in Nutshell opensap.com
Dr. Wieland Schreiner,Executive Vice President SAP S/4 HANA, SAP
S/4 HANA Innovation and Simplification, SAP S/4 HANA in Nutshell
opensap.com
Jens Krger SVP, Head of LoB Finance and SAP Innovation Center
Products & Innovation , SAP Simple Finance , SAP S/4 HANA in
Nutshell opensap.com
Hans Kroes, Solution Manager SAP Industry Business Unit for
Professional Services, SAP Simple Logistics, SAP S/4 HANA in Deep
Dive opensap.com.
Thomas Ruhl VP lGlobal Solution Strategy team SAP hybris Marketing,
SAP Hybris Marketing, SAP S/4 HANA deep dive opensap.com.
Frank Wagner, Kin Mathaess SAP SE, Road Map To SAP S/4 HANA,
white paper,SAP SCN
Steffen von Berg,Vice President & Head of the Customer Engagement
in the Cloud, SAP S/4 HANA project feedback, SAP S/4 HANA in
Nutshell opensap.com