How to prepare your SAP S/4HANA System for an Upgrade?

In today’s digital world, staying one step ahead is a necessity, not a choice. If you’re responsible for a SAP S/4HANA system, you must perform updates. Just like with doing regular maintenance on your high-performance vehicle, updates ensure that your vehicle always performs at its highest level of capability. Let’s be honest, preparing for the update can be intimidating.
This post will review the basic information about preparing your SAP S/4HANA system for an upgrade – including – why, what, and what steps to take to utilize Managed IT Services, SAP Advisory Services and other practices!

SAP S/4HANA Upgrade Lifecycle & Support Deadlines

Migrating a company’s IT systems to an S/4HANA system can be very difficult depending on the deployment strategy used and the existing IT system architecture. An adequate review of existing business processes, along with adequate planning of the project will decrease migration time and costs, downtime, and disruption to business.

As support and maintenance for legacy SAP products will be limited to 2027, businesses must migrate to S/4HANA promptly. After this, SAP S/4HANA implementation of some kind is required for all SAP ERP users. According to studies undertaken by SAP user organizations including ASUG (in the US), DSAG (in German), and UKISUG (in the UK and Ireland), most of their members want to upgrade to S/4HANA or S/4HANA Cloud in the near future in order to meet the deadline, but many have not yet begun.

To ensure they can find the necessary SAP consulting talent (due to the current surge in demand) to carry out implementations and go-live with these new systems before the 2027 deadline, businesses must initiate the process of evaluating their requirements and defining their SAP S/4HANA upgrade projects.

This is because it might take anywhere from six months to two years for the biggest multinational corporations to migrate their systems to SAP S/4HANA. Rise with SAP (for larger organizations) and Grow with SAP (for SMEs) are two packages that SAP has developed that can streamline, expedite, and facilitate the implementation process. Within a few months, smaller Grow with SAP S/4HANA deployments can be completed and put into Live Operation.

Why Upgrade Your SAP S/4HANA System?

In addition to being technically required, upgrading your SAP S/4HANA system is a crucial initial phase in preparing your company for future needs and realizing the full benefits of digital transformation.

Here’s why you should consider upgrading:

1. Maintenance Compliance

For every version, SAP’s S/4HANA maintenance plan guarantees five years of mainstream support. Organizations then must either pay more for ongoing maintenance, or risk using an unsupported technology beyond this point. For example, keeping current upgrades mitigates unexpected costs and keeps your system compliant.

2. Access to New Functionality

With every SAP system upgrade, SAP releases many enhancements, features and tools to improve efficiencies. These include more easy-to-use interfaces, intelligent analytics, and automation features that maximize processes and allow your workers to get more done in less time.

3. Future-Proofing Business Systems

When you upgrade, your system will continue to perform with SAP’s changing environment. This flexibility creates the most value over the long run, decreases disruption, and protects your investment, while also setting your organization up to integrate and work with next generation technology.

4. A Better User Experience

A user-friendly experience is produced by SAP Fiori apps and UI/UX improvements in updated versions. These improvements create more rapid workflows and customized intelligence, and a more user-friendly dashboard that enables data-driven decision-making at all levels.

5. Supporting Competitive Edge and Innovation

Upgrading your SAP S/4HANA solution also drives continuing innovation beyond just maintenance. By leveraging the latest tools and features, your organization is better positioned to stay ahead of the competition, drive operational efficiency, and respond quickly to market demands.

Things to consider for the S4/HANA upgrade

There are a number of things to consider when preparing for an SAP system upgrade, such as understanding the advantages of upgrading and how they relate to anticipated business, obtaining the necessary technical skills, and estimating the upgrade’s possible timeline.

• Choosing a functional upgrade strategy, which includes adding new functionality to your SAP system upgrade scope.
• For a technical upgrade strategy, make the bare minimum of adjustments now and add additional functional changes, like one or more continuous improvement projects in the RUN phase after the upgrade.

After deciding on an upgrade strategy, we must project the resources and effort needed to complete the upgrade. Numerous factors influence estimation, including:

• Scheduled functional scope
• Whether SAP Fiori is being used already
• Whether there is room for new clever technologies
• Available resources and capabilities

Performance testing and the assumption that permissions will need to be changed should be part of every upgrade process. The most recent version of SAP S/4HANA is typically recommended as the starting point for an SAP system upgrade process.

Advantages of SAP S/4HANA Upgrades

Enhanced Speed and Performance: By utilizing the most recent features and business needs, S/4HANA users will benefit from increased speed. As SAP S/4HANA is updated, additional solutions are added, like SAP Transportation Management.

Simplified Data Management: Streamlining and simplifying data management throughout the company is one of the main benefits of switching to SAP S/4HANA. By using the SAP HANA database’s in-memory capabilities, the system reduces data footprint and eliminates redundancies by combining transactional and analytical data into a single source of truth.

Better User Experience: While many organizations are still behind, people today expect the software they are using as part of their role, for work, to behave like the apps and various programs they use in their personal life. Due to cross-platform apps that operate on mobile devices, S/4HANA means users can quickly leverage business processes and data.
Additionally, the apps seem a lot smoother and simpler than the mobile apps we use, thanks to Fiori. Mobile applications enable users to easily input data and monitor a work’s status, no matter where they are (office or remote). Staff can work together in real time and reduce delays caused by information lag.

Advanced Analytics and Insights: With S/4HANA, faster insights and actions are possible because of the new memory-based processing of HANA. Through advanced analytics, S/4HANA collects and analyzes real-time data, enabling real-time application of insights into business processes.
There are more than five hundred pre-made Fiori analytics apps available on mobile devices. As needed, businesses can develop their use cases and include them in their system. Fiori allows real-time planning, execution, reporting, and analytics based on real-time data.Additionally, the centralized data allows faster and more effective cross-functional coordination between business departments.

Cost Savings: S/4HANA is a cost-effective ERP solution since it eliminates unnecessary hardware and software license expenses. Advanced data compression in HANA databases minimizes the requirement for servers and hardware costs. Since the S/4HANA platform can perform all analytical, transactional, and operational tasks, middleware software is not required, which reduces software costs. Without including the business advantages of S/4HANA, companies can save 37% on the TCO in just three years.

Increased Agility and Innovation: S/4HANA increases the productivity of business operations. As a result of S/4HANA’s capabilities to improve efficiency/productivity, companies can rethink their business models and processes, align better to the needs of their customers, and drive innovation to maintain or grow their competitive advantage(s). While the company continues to innovate, S/4HANA’s ability to process real-time data, embedded analytics capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities ensures future-ready business processes. The benefits surrounding S/4HANA uplift are significant enough to make the upgrade list of essential priorities for companies beginning to embark on their digital transformation journeys.

Improved Security and Compliance: An upgrade to S/4HANA is a step toward ensuring you are receiving the latest compliance and security improvements. For example, improved role-based access restrictions, data encryption, and auto-generating audit trails can assist companies in managing risk to better protect sensitive data. Upgrades also provided a range of solutions to help manage industry-specific regulations/standards – typically to align with industry regulations (i.e., GDPR, SOX, etc.) and regulatory standards, unearthing capabilities to maintain ERP security, compliance, and future-proofing.

Necessary Must-have Tools for SAP Upgrades

With every SAP package expiring in terms of support over five years, it’s evident that you’d want to have a set of tools ready for upgrades. Thankfully, SAP has you covered with such necessary requisites.

The platform provides a collection of necessary tools to prepare and assist you with upgrading activities. But you need to utilize these tools months before the upgrade project begins. They are:

• SAP Readiness Check for Upgrades
• Software Update Manager – Prerequisite Check Extended
• Simplification Item Checks
• SAP Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder for SAP S/4HANA
• SAP Maintenance Planner
• ABAP Test Cockpit

Let’s find out more about these tools in the following sections of the blog.

Readiness Check for Upgrades

The original purpose of SAP Readiness Check was to examine the general state of an SAP ECC System in preparation for system conversion. The SAP Readiness Check for Upgrades allows users to examine an SAP S/4HANA System towards a successful update comprehensively.

The SAP Readiness Check will aid in your examination of the suggested SAP S/4HANA product version’s pertinent simplification items, basic Custom Code analysis, add-on compatibility, and an Integration Analysis, among other things. In addition, according to system use, Readiness Check will also recommend a few SAP Fiori applications that should be launched.

Software Update Manager – Prerequisite Check Extended

The SAP Maintenance Planner Upgrade calculation requires the users to download multiple software archives installed via the Software Update Manager. However, since SUM 2.0 SP08, users opting for the upgrade can now compile a list of significant issues without having to fix each one before moving on to the next.

The Prerequisite Check Extended of SUM is this functionality:

Running SUM and selecting the Prerequisite Extended Check Tool in the Scenario Strategy screen at the beginning of the run will invoke the Prerequisite Check Extended. You must submit the SAP Maintenance Planner Stack.xml.

This step will help you verify whether:

• The ongoing SAP HANA database version and SAP S/4HANA Application server OS are outdated for the target release
• Missing SAP notes
• Inactive objects in the system
• Simplification item checks report

Besides, once the run ends, you can collect the logs and reset SUM.

Simplification Item Checks

Users need to run a new Simplification Item Check to determine how the simplifications in the new version will impact their present functionality.

The Simplification Item Check may be manually conducted. Items with a red status on the check results must rectify the observed discrepancies immediately. Yellow items must be evaluated but won’t block the upgrade process.

However, to run the Simplification Item Checks, you first need to install SAP Notes 2502552 and 2399707.

SAP Optimization and Innovation Pathfinder for SAP S/4HANA

A Pathfinder report is an excellent tool to completely use SAP S/4HANA advancements as the latest SAP S/4HANA versions bring innovation and simplification opportunities. The SAP Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder’s objectives are to provide innovation suggestions, offer improvement opportunities, and assist you in optimizing IT, all of which will undoubtedly hasten the adoption of new technologies.

To get started with a Pathfinder report, you need to do the following to get started for your SAP S/4HANA system:

• First, visit the landing page for Pathfinder.
• Check the instructions.
• Add SAP notes 2758146 and 2745851 to your functional system.

ABAP Test Cockpit

This cockpit is essentially a way to put custom codes every time new simplifications are delivered via SAP S/4HANA. Using this tool, you can estimate the required work for the code remediation by analyzing the fault in Custom Code objects via ABAP Test Cockpit.

Remember, it is crucial to stress that the code analysis may be completed at any time, even before the first Upgrade cycle.

You can use this tool in advance in many possible ways; they are:

• Netweaver 7.52 (or above) can be configured as the Central Check system for remote ATC with SAP GUI.
• A brand-new SAP S/4HANA 1809 (or above) can be configured as the CMS (Central Check System) in the SAP Fiori Custom Code Migration App.
• If you are a BTP client, a CCS (Central Check System) may be based on an SAP BTP ABAP environment.

SAP Maintenance Planner

The SAP Maintenance Planner is the primary tool for planning upgrades, migrations, Java-based systems updates, SAP ABAP, installations, and conversions for SAP S/4HANA. When using the maintenance planner, your exception isn’t only limited to SAP S/4HANA.

Try using SAP Maintenance Planner as a planning and preparation tool for upgrading your SAP S/4HANA. Once done, it will assist you with the following crucial tasks:

• Check whether Business functions and Add-Ons are compatible with the upcoming SAP S/4HANA version.
• For the Software Update Manager to use them throughout the upgrading process, it will later give the Stack.xml files and software archives.
• It is now possible to organize the uninstallation of SAP Add-Ons (see Note 2911053)

Note: The upgrade planning cannot continue if SAP Maintenance Planner finds incompatible Add-Ons. In this situation, it’s crucial to confirm SAP Note 2974663 and identify the Add-ons that work with your intended SAP S/4HANA version.

Now that you have an idea of the necessary tools for SAP S/4HANA migration and necessary upgrades try using them before the commencement of your project. This way, it helps understand the solution and saves time.

SAP S/4HANA upgrade steps

When transitioning to SAP S/4HANA, businesses are actually transforming how they will do business with real-time data, optimized processes, and new technology, which means the upgrade process also will need to be staged to minimize disruption to the business.. The SAP S/4HANA upgrade steps are depicted as follow:

1. Pre-Upgrade Activities

Assess the Current SAP ECC System

Evaluate your present operating system platform, database, system architecture, and ECC version. To assess the impact of an upgrade, comprehend active modules, custom developments, and usage trends.

Install and Configure SAP Data Collector

The SAP Data Collector, also called the Maintenance Planner Extractor, collects current landscape metadata. Planning compatibility and determining pertinent patches or changes are made easier with the use of this data.

Custom Code Analysis

To assess current custom developments, use SAP’s Custom Code Analyzer. Determine which code has to be modified for the updated HANA database and S/4HANA data model because it is unused, outdated, or incompatible.

Add-on Compatibility

Check the compatibility of all installed third-party add-ons and SAP. Only compatible or upgraded add-ons can be transferred to the S/4HANA system.

SAP Readiness Check

To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the readiness of your system, use SAP Readiness Check 2.0. It addresses business process analytics, simplification items, custom code, data volume, and add-on compatibility.

Simplification Item Checks

Financial data formats, business partner concepts, and master data are just a few of the areas where S/4HANA brings simplifications. Mandatory changes that need to be made before or during the upgrade are identified by the Simplification Item Check.

Maintenance Planner

The Maintenance Planner program creates the stack XML file needed for the upgrade procedure, guarantees component compatibility, and assists in designing the technical upgrade path.

Data Volume Management

To maximize database size and enhance migration performance, examine and eliminate superfluous data (such as outdated logs, unneeded clients, or obsolete master data).

Change Management

Make sure your company is ready for this transformation. This includes documentation for the modifications to the UI (SAP Fiori), procedures, or features, training plans, stakeholder alignment, and end-user communication.

Downtime Planning

Identify and schedule for the amount of downtime you will need based on the size of the system and the upgrade plan (i.e. near-zero downtime, or weekend cutover). Also consider emergency and business continuity plans.

2. Upgrade Execution

Database Backup

To avoid any unforeseen issues, and before proceeding with the upgrade sequence, always back up the existing SAP database completely. In case of losing data or system problems during the upgrade, this guarantees you have a backup point.

Software Update Manager (SUM)

Technical upgrades are carried out primarily using the SAP Software Update Manager (SUM) application. System transformation, component changes, and database migration are all managed by it.

SPDD/SPAU Adjustments

Standard objects will be overwritten by SAP during the upgrade. Custom alterations and adjustments made to SAP standard programs, data dictionary objects, and notes are reconciled with the aid of SPDD and SPAU transactions.

• SPAU (Repository Adjustments): Reinstall or reset changes to SAP standard programs, displays, and function modules following the upgrade.
• SPDD (Data Dictionary Adjustments): Modify dictionary objects such as tables and structures before the upgrade process.

3. Post-Upgrade Activities

Go-Live

The improved SAP S/4HANA environment officially replaces the outdated SAP system with the Go-Live.

• A seamless transfer from an outdated system to the updated one is ensured by cutover planning.
• Batch jobs, transports, and final data validations are carried out.
• Stakeholders agree on roles, deadlines, and backup plans.
• In order to promptly handle any irregularities, system monitoring is increased during the first few hours.
• With IT’s assistance, business users start functioning in the new setting.

Support

Support for stabilization is essential during the initial weeks following go-live. It guarantees uninterrupted business operations and prompt issue resolution.

• Create a hypercare support staff to deal with issues and requests for modifications.
• Pay close attention to batch jobs, error logs, and system performance.
• Handle post-go-live challenges like inconsistent user interfaces, permission gaps, and interface faults.
• Offer end users and business process owners on-call assistance and a help desk.
• Conduct regular assessment sessions to monitor user satisfaction and issue resolution.

Innovation Adoption

Organizations can take advantage of the technical upgrade to deploy additional capabilities and innovations to maximize S/4HANA.

• Activate and deploy SAP Fiori apps to provide role-based, usable dashboards for the user.
• Utilize embedded analytics for real-time, operational information.
• Activate new capabilities in asset management, logistics and finance (Universal Journal).
• Assess where you stand with AI/ML, RPA (robotic process automation) and SAP BTP – business technology platform.
• Drive ongoing uptake through workshops and training for users.

Key Considerations

HANA Database Version

SAP HANA is the platform underneath S/4HANA. You must confirm the HANA database version is version compatible with the S/4HANA version to be implemented.

To get your HANA database up to the certified revision,

• Examine the required HANA revision levels listed in the SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM) and apply the required patches and updates.
• Plan downtime for revision updates, particularly if upgrading with SUM and DMO, as older revisions may result in unsupported features, performance problems, or upgrade failures.

SLT Triggers

During the upgrade, trigger-based replication setups require extra care if you’re utilizing SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) for real-time data replication.

• SLT replication triggers may be disabled or lost during an upgrade.
• Prior to the upgrade, create a backup and re-validate any configuration which is based on triggers.
• If the upgrade procedure was successful and replication will now continue, re-assign or reset the SLT configurations as necessary.
• Always check the data consistency between the source and destination systems after an upgrade.

Security Parameters

In order to guarantee compliance, access control, and data protection, security is an essential factor both during and after the upgrade.

• Examine role mappings and user permissions, particularly for Fiori-based apps and new transactions.
• Verify and modify firewall rules, certificates, and RFC connections.
• Evaluate and apply the SAP Security Notes that pertain to the updated system.
• Track encryption parameters, gateway security, and system logs, find anomalies after an upgrade

Leverage SAP S/4HANA Upgrades Without the Risks

Apart from better functioning, one of the primary motivations for the IT department to upgrade the SAP S/4HANA system should be the need to keep up with corrections and security patches.

Besides, if you’re not yet ready to implement and adopt the functional changes, the pure technical upgrade strategy might get the job done. Moreover, this approach also opens up major opportunities for further attempts, adding functional enhancements for more business value beyond CIP (Continuous Improvement Projects).

Leverage SAP S/4HANA Upgrades Without the Risks

Apart from better functioning, one of the primary motivations for the IT department to upgrade the SAP S/4HANA system should be the need to keep up with corrections and security patches.

Besides, if you’re not yet ready to implement and adopt the functional changes, The pure technical upgrade strategy might get the job done. In addition, this approach also paves the way for future attempts, adding to the functional improvements for increased business value via CIP (Continuous Improvement Projects).