Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA? Improve your data quality at the same time

Are you preparing for or already working on a migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA? One of the most significant changes in a migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA is the mandatory conversion of all vendors, customers, and employees into Business Partners. This transition presents an excellent opportunity to improve overall data quality at the same time. Below, we outline which tools are suitable—and which are less suitable—for this purpose.

Customer Vendor Integration tool from SAP

SAP provides a standard tool for migrating vendor and customer data to Business Partners: SAP Customer Vendor Integration (CVI). A major limitation of CVI is that it does not actively improve data quality. Data must be manually reviewed, assessed, and, where necessary, archived. This helps prevent the creation of duplicate Business Partners, for example when a party exists both as a customer and a vendor. CVI does perform checks for such situations.

However, these validations do not result in cleansed data. In practice, duplicate Business Partners may still occur due to outdated or incorrect data. This highlights the importance of having a highly skilled team, as extensive knowledge of SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA, and CVI is required.

Advantages of Sherpace and Process Runner

Other tools are specifically designed to both migrate master and transactional data from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA and improve data quality. These tools are Sherpace and Process Runner. Both are fully integrated with Excel and offer the following benefits:

• Tasks can be delegated to the users within your organization who are responsible for the data;
• Data can be easily extracted from SAP ECC and displayed directly in Excel, where it can be cleansed or modified before being uploaded—with validation—into SAP S/4HANA;
• Creating a Business Partner is straightforward, regardless of whether it concerns a customer, vendor, or financial Business Partner;
• The Business Partner concept in SAP is fully automated by uploading Business Partners in bulk directly from Excel, eliminating the need to navigate multiple screens and tabs;
• Exceptional speed: a complete Business Partner can be created with a single click—no repeated intermediate saves required—reducing creation time from minutes to seconds;
• These tools also enable automation and optimization of processes for creating other data objects, such as material masters or journal entries.

Suport for Your Transition to SAP S/4HANA?

A migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA is a complex process that requires expertise and a well-considered approach. The consultants at Tentive have extensive experience in delivering successful migrations and leverage advanced tooling to ensure the process is both reliable and efficient.

Contact us for an informal, no-obligation discussion. Together, we will determine the approach that best fits your organization and specific situation. We are happy to support you.