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Preparing for RISE with SAP: Data and document management
Posted by Joakim Löves on 03/03/2022 11:07
Shifting from on-premise to the cloud for scalability and technical management, upgrading to S/4HANA for operational efficiencies and a clean core, and infusing AI and machine learning into business processes, are some of the main objectives for businesses in their pursuit of digital transformation. SAP’s RISE with SAP solution sets out a guided path to achieve these objectives. It is SAP’s business-transformation-as-a-service offering. Seen as a way back to best practices for businesses burdened by the technical debt that comes from customising and upgrading an old ERP system and/or looking to take advantage of all the benefits available with moving to the cloud.
With best practices in mind, proper data and document management can have a major impact on the success of any IT transformation project. Here, we take a look at what businesses should consider before embarking on this journey.
The importance of proper SAP data and document management
Proper data and document management supports productivity, efficiency, and decision-making. The process means establishing a robust and secure way to collect, process, validate and store structured and unstructured data.
An effective data and document management strategy can have a significant impact on the success of an IT transformation project. When moving to the cloud or upgrading to S/4HANA, businesses can experience a faster time to value through increased productivity, cheaper storage costs and lower TCO. Especially, if they consider data volume management, streamlining their IT landscape and implementing a more structured approach to content.
Types of SAP data and document management
To get the most from an IT transformation, businesses need to review their IT landscape and data and document footprint. Here are some of the approaches available to achieve this:
- SAP and non-SAP legacy system decommissioning
Supporting legacy systems is often a burden for IT teams but a necessity in some case as they house historical data that needs to be retained for business purposes. Decommissioning is the process of safely retiring legacy SAP and/or Non-SAP systems. All the historical business data is then moved to a more modern data warehouse and accessed through pre-configured reports. This results in more achievable migrations and huge cost savings in the long term.
- SAP data archiving
It is essential to get your data in shape prior to a migration and SAP archiving is the way to do this, by only retaining what is absolutely required and storing the rest in a compressed, accessible archive. SAP data archiving addresses the costs and complexities associated with moving large amounts of data into a new system or hyperscaler environment.
- SAP content management
Unstructured business data is often forgotten when reviewing data management. Solutions like OpenText suite for SAP can restructure document storage and workflows and automate and standardize content processes in the new environment. This will jump-start the migration project by streamlining the IT landscape and speeding up go-live.
SAP data and document management tools
For our customers, here at Proceed, we use the following in-house and third-party tools to deliver an expert data management strategy from assessment through to realisation:
Assessment
Start any transformation project with a review of your existing IT landscape. We offer both data and document assessments to not only reveal opportunities to reduce volumes but also identify opportunities for greater efficiencies.
Proceed Rightsizer is an in-house tool that was built to help businesses better understand the distribution of their data. Taking the learnings uncovered from an initial assessment, businesses can run ‘what if’ scenarios to establish the minimum achievable database size, what archiving objects to use and more.
Project realisation
SAP data archiving and document access solutions by OpenText
Provides a single point of access to all archived SAP and no-SAP business data and documents. Store, manage, and retrieve everything through your new environment. Users obtain a 360-degree view of business processes inside SAP user interfaces.
Managing the full lifecycle of data and documents in a structured, automated and compliant way. It applies rule-based retention management policies and optimised data compression. SAP ILM can be used for both archiving and system decommissioning purposes. We are experts in the implementation and optimisation of SAP ILM.
Proceed Cella runs on the state-of-the-art SAP HANA platform, designed to help accelerate transformation projects by easily eliminating the burden of having to support legacy systems. The crucial data inside can be stored in Proceed Cella, freeing up IT costs and resources.
Post-project support
An archiving project will have an immediate impact on data volume, simplifying any migration project, but it’s important to continue day-today archiving to ensure databases sizes remain low. The Proceed archiving service supports ongoing archiving as well as pro-actively identifying archiving opportunities.
No matter which business transformation path is taken, getting the right data management strategy in place is crucial. There are several tools and services out there to drive success so make sure you appoint an expert to help you implement them correctly. Proceed has over 20 years’ experience in SAP data and document management, combined with our in-house products and network of partners we can help navigate the complexities to support your key business transformation objectives.
