You have now decided to migrate to S/4 HANA, worked with your business departments to identify data to be archived, and have started to move recent and most accessed data to the new SAP S/4HANA. So how about your legacy SAP systems?
Decommissioning legacy systems after the move to S/4HANA
There are a host of benefits to be derived from decommissioning your legacy SAP system, and not just financial. Decommissioning your SAP legacy system will help you minimize costs significantly and ensure that only relevant and authoritative users can access legacy data for compliance and regulatory purposes.
Whilst there can be significant costs involved in maintaining legacy systems, there are also business risks involved, particularly where there is potential loss of expertise and diminishing levels of familiarity with legacy systems.
The cost of keeping legacy systems operational after the move to S/4HANA
Keeping legacy systems running in the background or in parallel with your new SAP S/4 HANA system means your costs rise because of the following:
- Hardware maintenance
- Hosting fees (if server is elsewhere)
- Human resource to oversee legacy system/s
- Security costs due to more complex system landscape that increases risk to breakdown and other IT issues
Why you may want to retain your legacy SAP system
We understand that there are drivers for keeping your SAP legacy system. Commonly, these come down to the following;
- Information and inspection purposes
- To meet legal retention periods for different data modules.
For your legacy system it’s important to keep in mind the big picture goal of retaining only the data required for legal or other audit purposes until it has fulfilled its required retention time and may be purged.
When migrating over to SAP S/4HANA you will want to consider and evaluate whether this data should be maintained in your legacy system. If you’re not migrating certain data from your legacy system to your S/4HANA system, then archiving (or removing) that data can remove the need for the legacy system entirely.
At TJC, we can examine and analyse your SAP legacy data down to company, global, and local levels across your multi-country system landscape. This gives you precision targeting for your conversion roadmap to S/4HANA whilst ensuring you will have access to audit-ready data.
Find out more about our legacy SAP decommissioning solution or download the solution sheet to share with your colleagues.
FAQs
Q1. Why must you consider system decommissioning after the S/4HANA migration?
Answer:
There are numerous advantages that system decommissioning offers to organisations, and financial benefits are just the tip of the iceberg. By decommissioning, you can reduce the burden on your IT teams, successfully preserve the legacy data while maintaining its accessibility, and eliminate the need to hire specialised experts to keep the old system running.
Q2. What is the actual cost of keeping legacy systems?
Answer:
Keeping and maintaining legacy systems along with your new SAP S/4HANA systems simply means you are putting more stress on your financial budget. This means that you have to spend extra money to maintain the hardware, software & licensing fees, and security costs to maintain the complex SAP infrastructure. Moreover, it is difficult to apply data privacy regulations requirements to obsolete systems, which means that if you fail to comply with such regulations, you have to pay more in the form of penalties.
Q3. How can you benefit from retaining your legacy data?
Answer:
By retaining legacy data, organisations can get valuable insights and analyse trends from the past, which will allow them to improve their decision-making processes in the future. Furthermore, companies can also maintain the accuracy and integrity of their historical data by detaining it, allowing them to access the data for audit and compliance purposes.
Q4. How does legacy system decommissioning support the S/4HANA migration journey?
Answer:
Decommissioning legacy systems supports the S/4HANA migration journey by reducing data volume, eliminating the need for system maintenance, lowering data migration complexity, and facilitating a cleaner, more focused transition to the new environment. Furthermore, decommissioning also helps you reduce the costs of maintaining outdated systems by simply retiring them.
Q5. How can TJC Group help with legacy system decommissioning?
Answer:
TJC Group helps you professionally decommission outdated systems so that you can seamlessly progress towards digital transformation. We deliver a phased implementation of legacy system decommissioning, ensuring accurate extraction and preservation of legacy data. We have developed the Enterprise Legacy System Application (ELSA) that allows you to successfully decommission 100% of your legacy systems and maintain easy access to data for future needs.
