Move SAP Customers with High Customization to Clean Core Architecture

Over time businesses accumulates a significant amount of custom code to address their evolving needs. These customizations are usually driven by unique business requirements, competitive advantages, industry-specific needs, and legacy system integrations. These customizations become deeply embedded in their operations. Moving SAP customers with highly customized Digital Core systems to a clean core is a complex process that requires careful planning, stakeholder engagement, and technical expertise. The term "clean core" refers to an SAP system that leverages standard functionalities as much as possible, minimizing customizations and modifications to ensure easier maintenance, upgrades, and integration with future SAP innovations. Here we discuss a structured approach for addressing it.

1. Assessment and Planning

a. Comprehensive Assessment:

i) Inventory of Customizations: Document all existing customizations, modifications, and third-party integrations. The purpose is for one to do a technical debt assessment of the inventory to address the 3 R’s of Retain, Retire, or Retrofit

ii) Impact Analysis: Evaluate the impact of these customizations on business processes, performance, and future upgrades.

iii) Usage Analysis: Find out what is used, versus what is there in the inventory but not currently of any business use. These happens for various reasons, but they are the easiest of the lot to do away with.

b. Stakeholder Engagement:

i) Involve Business and IT: Engage both business and IT stakeholders to understand the criticality of customizations and gather requirements for the future state.

ii) Set Clear Objectives: Define clear goals for the transition, such as reducing technical debt, improving system performance, or enabling future SAP capabilities.

c. Develop a Roadmap:

i) Phased Approach: Create a detailed roadmap that outlines phases of the transition, including timelines, milestones, and resource allocation.

ii) Risk Management: Identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies.

iii) Execution: Decide how this roadmap will be executed.

2. Clean Core Principles

a. Adopt SAP Best Practices:

i) Standard Processes: Leverage SAP’s standard processes and functionalities wherever possible to replace custom code.

ii) Configuration Over Customization: Opt for configuration settings instead of custom development.

b. Use SAP S/4HANA Cloud:

i) Cloud Solutions: Consider moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, which inherently encourages a clean core by restricting extensive customizations.

ii) Standard APIs: Use standard APIs for integrations to ensure compatibility and ease of maintenance.

3. Custom Code Management

a. Custom Code Review:

i) Code Analysis Tools: Use tools like SAP’s Custom Code Migration app and ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) to analyze custom code.

ii) Code Optimization: Refactor or retire obsolete custom code and enhance necessary customizations to be inline with clean core principles.

b. Extensions with SAP BTP:

i) SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP): Shift custom developments to SAP BTP, using it for side-by-side extensions and innovations without impacting the core system.

ii) Fiori Apps and APIs: Develop custom applications using SAP Fiori and integrate using standard APIs provided by SAP BTP.

4. Data Management 

a. Data Cleansing:

i) Data Quality: Don't leave unattended data, with regular review to close open documents, cleaning unwanted data, handle information lifecycle management processes. When you move data between system it is important it is clean and move only relevant and high-quality data to the new system.

ii) Archiving: Archive historical data that is not needed in the active system but must be retained for compliance or reporting.

5. Change Management

a. Training and Communication:

i) User Training: Provide comprehensive training for end-users on new processes and functionalities.

ii) Continuous Communication: Maintain transparent and continuous communication throughout the transition to manage expectations and reduce resistance.

b. Governance Framework:

i) Governance Policies: Establish governance policies to control and manage future customizations and extensions.

ii) Change & Release Management Process: Evaluate the approval cycle how changes are requested and approved, before they make it into the system. When a change is requested, is it being questioned, and probed into before being approved if it is adapting a clean core design.

iii) Continuous Monitoring: Implement continuous monitoring and auditing processes to ensure compliance with clean core principles.

6. Testing and Validation

a. Extensive Testing:

i) Functional Testing: Perform thorough functional testing to ensure that the new system meets business requirements.

ii) Performance Testing: Conduct performance testing to validate system stability and performance.

iii) System Integration Testing: Execute an end-to-end system integration testing, cover all scenarios including those that may not be run frequently like an exception process or executed anually.

iv) User Acceptance Testing (UAT):

i) UAT Involvement: Involve end-users in UAT to validate their requirements are met and to identify and rectify any issues before go-live.

7. Deployment and Post-Go-Live Support 

a. Deployment Strategy:

i) Phased Rollout: Consider a phased rollout to minimize disruption to business operations.

ii) Fallback Plan: Develop a fallback plan in case of critical issues during the deployment.

b. Post-Go-Live Support:

i) Hypercare: Provide hypercare support post-go-live to address any immediate issues and ensure a smooth transition.

ii) Continuous Improvement: Establish a process for continuous improvement and optimization of the system. This will need you to be on a clean stack by being on current software levels, clean operations using the most current ops abilities from provider and reviewing changes, clean extensibility by focusing less on in-stack extensibility, clean integrations, clean process by leveraging standards, clean data by following data hygiene & management practices.  

iii) Continuous Retirement: Establish a process for continuous removal of functionality from your system that you are not going to use. This is a good way to reduce your technical footprint even outside your digital core. This may happen because of new solution, changing business processes, changing regulatory requirement etc.

iii) Configuration Item Database: Build your CI database and record all changes, the decision and dependencies. And this need be reviewed peridically and updated. this will be a living document throughout the lifecycle of your IT Estate.

Transitioning to a clean core requires a strategic approach, balancing the need to maintain essential customizations while leveraging SAP’s standard functionalities. By following these steps and best practices, organizations can achieve a cleaner core, leading to easier maintenance, lower costs, and the ability to quickly adapt to future SAP innovations.

You would need a trusted partner, a system integrator, who can service you in each of the  areas. Click on the link to know more about SAP Clean Core Strategy.