Background
Data migration is an integral and crucial component of the overall ERP projects and can determine the success or failure of a project. As such, it is important for business organizations and the implementation partner(s) to pay special attention to the routine activities geared towards data capturing, cleaning and upload into the live/production systems.
Additionally, depending on the scope and ERP functionalities being implemented, varied approached need to be adopted in order to cater for the diversified data sets that will be involved. This article therefore seeks to enlighten readers, SAP users and customers on the characteristics achieving a successful data migration.
Qualities of a Successful Data Migration
Clear Categorization of Data
In order to achieve a successful data migration, the project team needs to come up with a clear categorization of the data to be migrated in order to avoid confusion and mixing of different data sets. A case in point, for instance, SAP FICO is made up of different functionalities and modules such as SAP Accounts Payables, SAP New General Ledger, SAP Accounts Receivables, SAP Cash Management, among others. As such, different approaches need to be adopted for each of these components as well as different skill sets are required to fulfill the required deliverables.
At a high-level, data to be migrates can be grouped into:
1. Master Data
Master data relates to data or information that is core and essential for a business process. In SAP, this varies with the different functionalities and modules that exist. For instance, in SAP Financials, key master data components include general ledger accounts, vendors, customers, bank keys, house banks, assets, among others. While in SAP Controlling and Funds Management, master data include but not limited to cost centers, funds, fund centers, internal orders, and cost centers.
Therefore, during data migration, master data components of the various SAP modules need to be treated with utmost care and consideration as they are core to the mapping of business processes ad flow of data from the individual elements to the General Ledger which then becomes key for financial reporting.
2. Transactional Data
Transactional data in SAP relates to information emanating from business processes while interacting with the various master data components in the system. For instance, invoices and payments to a vendor constitute or rather result into transactional data.
From a data migration point of view, transactional data must be accurate and mapped to the correct business process, attached to a transaction code. The initial load of transactional data constitutes data from the legacy systems which is to be loaded to a new SAP system. As such, the initial data set for migration should be audited and signed off by the executives in order to provide a clean slate for the new system and avoid reversals and corrections before the system goes live.
Clean Data Sets
Clean data constitutes information and data free of errors, omissions and commissions that will improve the integrity of both the transactional and master data sets to be upload to a system. The success of every data migration process is determined by how clean the data is which reduces the amount of time wasted correcting the data. Therefore, it is important that consultants reiterate to their clients/customers the importance of having clean data and conducting due diligence to ensure that the data sets meet the highest integrity standards and also conforms to both local and international data governance principles, procedures and best practices.
Data Migration Champions
Being a very intricate and critical process: data migration, the project management team should ensure should assign a dedicated team with data migration skills to handle the end-to-end data migration process. This will ensure that the data sets are well vetted to ensure that the data and information is correct, free of errors and meets the set thresholds and best practices before the initial data load is initiated.
Clear Business Processes
The business entity with the help of the system integrator should map out clear business processes. This eases the mapping of data sets to the correct business processes and transactions. This lessens the number of errors and omissions that might occur during the preparation of the data to be migrated.
Post Data Migration Strategy/Plan
The project management team(s) should have in place a post data migration strategy that details out the follow up actions and deliverables that are geared towards monitoring the uploaded data sets to reveal any gaps, corrections, errors and omissions that might need to be corrected, blocked or reversed. This will guarantee the smooth running of business processes as well as meet local and internationally accepted best practices and laws.
Tools for Data Migration
Additionally, the success of a data migration process is dependent upon the tools and resources at the disposal of the data migration teams. These tools include templates and programs, both custom and standard ones, which ease the process and help reduce data errors and formats. For SAP, LSMW, custom ABAP programs LTMC (SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit) are some of the tools available data migration.