SAP S/4HANA Deployments and Migrations

Greenfield, Brownfield, Bluefield --- are these concoctions of colors? There's a lot of jargon floating around when it comes to SAP S/4HANA deployments and migrations. Different terminologies that mean the same thing, words that are similar but unrelated, and meanings that overlap. So, I wanted to provide some additional clarity, from my prior experience. Please note that this article does not contain a lot of nuances, but if you are interested please post your questions/comments.

 First, let us clear the confusion. The Greenfield method is a fresh start. This means extensive reengineering as well as the prospects of substantial process simplification. When you take this approach, all processes and systems are entirely reinstalled and configured. This is the easiest approach to take to get rid of some of the legacy bespoke code, impromptu solutions and other nuanced SPRO settings. This approach obviously comes with a high cost and huge change management challenges. There will also be historical data loss , but there are other strategies we can deploy to counter this.

 The brownfield strategy involves converting an existing SAP ERP system to S/4HANA. As a result, this is an upgrade. Processes, data, and individual advances are all moved to the new SAP S/4HANA system. The brownfield strategy is best suited for businesses whose existing systems are still relatively young (3-5 years), and are near to the SAP standard. Is this even possible :). This approach is cheap compared to Greenfield. 

 For huge organizations with complex processes and org structures, a bluefield approach may be a good option. The migration will need the use of specialist tools to extract the present configuration– config only copy – and migrate it to S/4HANA, followed by the selection of data to proceed with. 

 The advantage could come in the form of being able to quickly implement new business techniques or exploit new technologies, such as machine learning or the Internet of Things; or they could come from archiving older data to reduce the amount of storage space used and thus save money on hardware or hosting.

 So go ahead and engage us to help with which approach is suitable for your organization.