What to Know Before Starting Your S/4HANA Migration

‍Strategic considerations for enterprise-scale readiness

As SAP ECC nears its official end-of-life, the urgency around S/4HANA migration has intensified — but so has the complexity. For large enterprises with layered systems, customized processes, and globally distributed operations, migrating to S/4HANA isn’t just a technical uplift — it’s a full-spectrum business transformation that touches architecture, operations, compliance, and culture.

Despite the pressure, success hinges not on the tools alone, but on how well you plan for what happens before the tools even come into play.

Here’s a strategic lens on what experienced teams should address before initiating their S/4HANA journey.

1. It’s Not a Migration — It’s a Platform Repositioning

The S/4HANA shift is not a like-for-like replacement of ECC. It redefines how data is stored (in-memory columnar structure), how business logic is applied (simplified core), and how innovation layers (like BTP, AI, and ESG reporting) are integrated.

If your enterprise still treats S/4HANA as a “technical upgrade,” you risk:

• Over-investing in legacy workarounds
• Missing the opportunity to redesign for agility
• Reinforcing broken processes in a more expensive environment

Your first step shouldn’t be “What’s the timeline?” — it should be:
“What do we want our enterprise to be able to do differently in 3 years — and how should the ERP enable that?”

2. Data is the Project — Not a Phase

Most failed S/4HANA initiatives don’t break at the technical layer. They break at the data layer — particularly during selective migration or carve-out scenarios.

Advanced teams need to move beyond cleansing and into governance modeling:

• What is the future ownership structure of each master data object?
• Which ESG, LCA, or carbon-traceable fields must be embedded now to meet regional compliance (Japan, Australia, EU CSRD)?
• Can data velocity and lifecycle be monitored with automation, not Excel?

Treating master data as static is a legacy mindset. In S/4HANA, data is dynamic — and part of the control layer itself.

3. Hybrid Delivery Models Aren’t Just an Option — They’re Essential

Pure brownfield and pure greenfield are now rare. Most large enterprises adopt hybrid approaches — e.g., greenfield for finance, brownfield for logistics, selective transformation for global template rollouts.

This requires PMOs to orchestrate:

• Parallel landscapes during transition (e.g., ECC + S/4 co-existence)
• Integration bridges for historical reporting
• Controlled scope phasing to align with business unit bandwidth

Migrations no longer happen in isolation. They coexist with system harmonization, cloud modernization, and ESG platform integrations. Your migration strategy must reflect that complexity — and modularize accordingly.

4. The PMO is Not Just a Tracker — It’s a Value Translator

Experienced project leaders know this: S/4HANA projects tend to collapse under their own weight if governance is too passive. The PMO cannot just “track progress” — it must drive alignment between business outcomes and delivery decisions.

A capable PMO should:

• Translate architectural trade-offs into impact language for CFOs and COOs
• Track readiness not by milestone %, but by adoption risk and stakeholder fatigue
• Challenge over-customization requests based on TCO modeling
• Own hypercare KPI definitions before go-live

Think of the PMO not as administration — but as internal risk capital protecting the transformation’s credibility.

5. Don’t Just Migrate What You Know — Explore What You’re Missing

One of the biggest underutilized aspects of an S/4HANA migration is process discovery.

Before any blueprinting starts, use tools like SAP Signavio or Celonis to:

• Map current process variants across geographies
• Identify deviations from global design
• Benchmark performance and automation levels

This allows you to ask:
“Are we migrating old inefficiencies, or building new excellence?”
Process mining shouldn’t be an afterthought — it should be embedded at the diagnostic level of your migration strategy.

Final Thoughts: Plan with the End State in Mind

S/4HANA is a business platform — not just an ERP core. Migration is the first step in a multi-year modernization journey that includes analytics modernization, ESG compliance, and AI-readiness.

If your team is preparing for S/4HANA and looking for more than just functional consultants — if you need bilingual change leaders, clean data at scale, and PMO support that speaks both business and technical language — Jalur Consulting is ready to support.

We help organizations in Japan, Southeast Asia, and Australia navigate complex S/4HANA programs — without losing sight of business impact, operational continuity, or regional compliance.

Talk to us before the migration begins — because by the time you “go-live,” most of your success has already been decided.