How To Address SAP S/4HANA Migration Challenges With Continuous Testing?

As the mainstream support for ECC or SAP ERP will end by 2027, customers using it are looking to migrate to SAP S/4HANA system. S/4HANA comes with latest technological advancement and offers several advantages to customers such as enhanced user experience, streamlined transactions, real-time data, table simplification, flexible APIs, new functionality and features. However, migration path to S/4HANA is not a walk in the park. To ensure that apps are running at the same or higher performance as before the migration, security controls and compliance configurations are properly placed post migration, enterprises require test focussed S/4HANA migration strategy. Otherwise, it may lead to business disruption and can cost revenue as well as reputation.

Identifying & Resolving S/4HANA Migration Challenges with Continuous Testing

Customizations – One of the key SAP migration challenges include customizations. In most of the cases, SAP ECC has been customized to meet your company’s unique business needs. Since, custom codes might be the backbone of your business processes, you need to adopt these in the new environment. However, you need to validate whether or not these customizations are working in the new cloud environment. This can only be achieved with the help of testing. By bringing in continuous test automation in your current SAP ECC environment, you can take advantage of speed and coverage benefits. When you’re ready for migration, the automated test cases will already be available to validate your customizations during migration.

Integrations – SAP ECC is a highly flexible enterprise resource planning software that allows enterprises to integrate with several third party applications. There are instances the existing ECC customers have integrated their systems with applications like Shopify, Salesforce, Amazon, eBay,  BigCommerce, Magento, Woocommerce, Miva, Mozu, Volusion, 3DCart, etc. Now, the point is whether or not the existing integrations will work in the new cloud environment and returning the same transactions as before migration. This can only be validated with the help of testing.

Data Issues – Migrating huge chunks of records from SAP ERP (ECC) to S/4HANA can be challenging if data formats differ between the old system and the new one. It may lead to poor system performance or cause business disruption. So, enterprises need to bring in data testing to ensure that data is complete, accurate, in proper format, and as per compliance requirements.

Update Adoption Readiness – Enterprises that are looking to migrate to SAP S/4HANA need to prepare for continuous adoption of frequent application updates. As its commitment towards innovation, SAP rolls out updates consisting of new features and functionalities to improve business processes. However, updates cannot be trusted without SAP testing. Regression testing is required to find out the impact of the updates on existing configurations. This can only be achieved with the help of testing. With the help of continuous testing, QA teams can find out the impacted areas due to updates.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, S/4HANA is a great enterprise software that provides opportunity to enterprises to strengthen their core business operations. However, transition to S/4HANA is much beyond than just a simple technology transition. Whether you’re using Greenfield, Brownfield or hybrid approach, you need to understand the importance of continuous testing. Having the right test assets and test automation tool will not only streamline your SAP S/4HANA migration journey but also supports you in embracing innovation that comes with frequent updates.