Transitioning all of your business data from a regular SAP environment to an SAP S/4HANA ecosystem is, indeed, a critical initiative. However, many organisations tend to be quite wary about the proceedings, and understandably so.
After all, if you can’t get it right, you might lose all of your accumulated data. And, from a business point of view, it might lead to a massive loss of money and reputation. But what if we told you that you could complete the whole procedure without any possible risk?
Wait, let us explain a little.
Transitioning To SAP And The Role Of SAP SLO
As mentioned before, transitioning to an SAP S/4HANA ecosystem is extremely important for a business. For example, it can help your corporation to –
- Process everything exponentially faster and simplify transactions accordingly.
- Improve the front end of your business and lead to a higher adoption rate.
- Plan your every move correctly and generate analytics on “live data.”
- Lower the requirement of a full-fledged data warehouse and offer real-time reporting.
- Optimise the platform with regard to the cloud ecosystem as a digital core.
Apart from these, it can also eradicate limitations related to the current architecture. This way, it’ll be easier for you to improve the stability of your business to some extent.
But why do people still try to avoid the procedure? Well, there are a couple of reasons behind the scare, including the following –
- The whole system is quite technically advanced and complicated.
- It’s yet to be 100% bulletproof. So, more than one issue can occur during the process.
- The existing brownfield solutions aren’t agile enough to comply with the system.
The SAP SLO Process
Fortunately, you can take care of the issues above with the SAP SLO procedure. It usually enables you to restructure your business and align the existing SAP system landscape accordingly. Apart from this, you can also –
- Update the existing proceedings in your system.
- Integrating a recently acquired or brand new company, and
- Remove a specific part of your business data as needed.
The SLO approach can also offer a sense of complete data consistency and integrity within a transformation project, such as data conversion or migration.
What Does The Process Entail?
An SAP SLO process can be done through five steps. Each of them will be equally important. So, keep reading till the end and let us know what you think about it.
Step – 1: Do A cbs ET Enterprise Transformer® Analysis.
In the beginning, you’ll need to perform a complete scan of your existing ERP system. And on the basis of the result, you can evaluate and understand if your system is ready to migrate to S/4HANA or not. In addition, doing a cbs ET Enterprise Transformer® Analysis can also help you calculate the size of the hardware you might need for the project.
Step – 2: Create An Empty S/4HANA Shell.
Next, you’ll need to create a S/4HANA shell so that you can migrate all your data into it. It can be done using the same cbs software solution. While you’re at it, you can bring all the needed setup and custom development. You can proceed with this whole procedure during the uptime. So, your daily business won’t be influenced much at all.
Step – 3: Migrating The Pre-Selection Of Data.
For the next step, you’ll need to start selecting the data you may want to migrate. And once you’ve done it, you can begin preparing for the migration segment. However, before you do so, we’ll ask you to eliminate each and every obsolete data available in your system. This, in turn, can reduce the TCO and enhance your overall data quality.
Step – 4: Proceeding With Migration.
During the downtime period, which generally occurs during the weekend, you’ll have to start taking the pre-selected data from the source system. And then, you must move it all into the brand new S/4HANA shell in a well-adjusted format. The migration process will be done at a database level. Hence, making an additional data transformation will also be possible for you.
Step – 5: Assessment.
Once you’ve completed moving the data, you’ll need to run an evaluation supported by a tool or program like Kate. It’ll reduce the overall effort quite dramatically.
Advantages Of The SAP SLO Process
Using the SAP SLO procedure sounds excellent and all, right? But, why should you really go for this procedure only? What makes it better than the others? Well, if you can complete the process accordingly, it will help you in –
- Enabling optimal change management support to your organisational infrastructure.
- Increasing the flexibility of your system when responding to a corporate change.
- Delivering a more efficient yet linear system landscape to the data managing system.
- Reducing operative process expenses massively.
- Lowering the conversion required for your users to some extent.
Apart from that, it can also decrease your company’s IT costs by a mile. It’s also much faster than any other method and can optimise your system administration.
It can also maintain your system history. So, you don’t have to worry about abrupt file deletion. Another benefit of the SAP SLO process is that it can improve and simplify a function to the future state. Hence, it becomes easier for you to adapt to it.
So, What Should You Do?
In hindsight, performing a System Landscape Optimisation procedure can be pretty tricky. However, if you are working with an expert, you might be able to pull it off quite efficiently. In any case, even if you’re considering this method, we’ll ask you to talk to your team beforehand. This way, no one can argue against your decision later.
Anyway, that’ll be all for this blog. Hopefully, we can deliver the information you want to get accordingly.
Discover how our end-to-end solutions can help your business thrive. Read more about SLO and explore our success stories to see how we have delivered customised solutions that drive results.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the main difference between a standard migration and the SAP SLO process?
A standard migration (often referred to as Greenfield or Brownfield) usually involves either starting from scratch or moving the entire system as-is. The System Landscape Optimisation (SLO) approach allows for a “selective” migration. It enables you to restructure your data, clean out obsolete files, and merge or carve out business units during the transition, offering greater flexibility to restructure data and organisational elements during the transition.
- Will my business experience significant downtime during the transition?
One of the primary advantages of the SLO process is the reduction of downtime. Steps like creating the S/4HANA shell and pre-selecting data are performed during uptime, meaning your daily operations continue as usual. Many preparatory steps can be performed while the system remains operational. The final migration step usually requires planned downtime, the duration of which depends on system size, scope, and project approach.
- What is a “S/4HANA Shell” and why is it necessary?
The shell is essentially an empty version of the target S/4HANA environment that contains your existing configurations and custom developments but no transactional data. By creating this shell first (Step 2), an S/4HANA system copy that contains configuration and development objects but no transactional data is used as a technical basis for selective data transition activities.
- Can I choose which data to keep and which to delete?
Yes. Step 3 of the process involves pre-selecting data. This is a critical phase where you can eliminate obsolete or redundant data. By migrating only what is necessary, you improve the overall quality of your data and migrating only selected data can help streamline the target system and reduce unnecessary data volume.
- How does the SLO process protect my historical data?
Selective data transition approaches can retain required historical data in the target system, depending on project scope and regulatory needs.
- What tools are used to ensure the migration is successful?
Specialised transformation tools can support system analysis, object mapping, and automated checks to help validate the migration. The exact tools used depend on the chosen methodology and vendor.
- Why is the SLO method considered “risk-free”?
No migration method is without risk, but SLO approaches typically involve extensive pre‑analysis and structured validation steps designed to reduce complexity during the transition.
Benjamin Ng
Head of Marketing, cbs Asia Pacific
As Head of Marketing, Asia Pacific at cbs Corporate Business Solutions. Benjamin focuses on enterprise modernisation strategy across SAP landscape transformation, data-driven innovation, and AI-enabled business models. He works closely with regional leaders and ecosystem partners to shape outcome-led transformation programmes across APAC.
