Solving SAP S/4HANA Data Archiving Challenges with Platform 3 Solutions

Making the move to SAP S/4HANA is more than just a tech upgrade; it’s a strategic leap toward improved efficiency, smarter infrastructure, and real-time insights. But while the promise of transformation is exciting, the journey isn’t without its bumps. Migrating to S/4HANA presents a unique set of challenges that businesses must be fully aware of. Gaining a clear understanding of these hurdles is the first step toward ensuring a smooth and successful transition. 

Platform 3 Solutions is your trusted partner during this journey, as we offer specialized data archive solutions tailored to address the unique SAP s/4 Hana challenges faced by users with a focus on helping reduce overall costs.

Why Organizations Seek SAP Data Archiving Services

Organizations grappling with SAP S/4HANA systems’ ever-growing data volumes need data archiving more than a trend. This exponential growth creates a tangled web of SAP S/4 HANA challenges, including: 

1. Cost: As data balloons, so do storage costs, maintenance fees, and backup requirements. Archiving helps reduce this cost by offloading inactive data to more economical storage tiers without affecting everyday business performance.
2. Performance: Imagine your SAP S/4HANA system sluggishly wading through a data lake. Archiving dives in and removes non-essential data, allowing your system to breathe freely and run faster, improving response times and overall performance. 
3. Compliance: Navigating stringent data regulations can be daunting. Archiving helps you stay compliant by securely storing crucial data for the required periods, making audits and retrievals a breeze.
4. Accessibility: Maintaining long-term access to archived data is critical for various reasons. SAP archiving solutions offer efficient retrieval mechanisms and allow authorized users to access historical data for:
   • Analytics and Reporting: Analyze historical trends, identify patterns, and make informed business decisions based on archived data.
   • Legal and Regulatory Requirements: Respond to legal requests, audits, or investigations by readily accessing relevant archived data.
   • Disaster Recovery: In case of system failures or disasters, restore critical data from secure archives to get back online quickly.

Beyond these core benefits, data archiving is useful in the following scenarios:

1. Live Archiving: As your SAP S/4HANA system accumulates years of data, archiving acts as a dam, capturing and storing inactive data. This prevents performance bottlenecks and cost overruns, keeping your essential data readily accessible while ensuring your system runs smoothly.
2. Decommissioning Legacy Systems: When retiring old applications, safeguarding valuable data before they fade into oblivion becomes paramount. When you archive SAP S/4HANA data with the help of experts, you can preserve historical information while ensuring a smooth transition to new systems. This eliminates concerns about data loss during s/4 hana decommissioning.
3. Data Archival Before Migration: Migrating to a new system like SAP S/4HANA can be daunting when faced with vast volumes of data. Archiving helps by proactively reducing your data footprint, making the migration faster, smoother, and more cost-effective. You only migrate essential data, streamlining the process and minimizing disruption.

By addressing these critical needs, data archiving proves to be a strategic investment in cost optimization, performance improvement, and peace of mind when it comes to compliance.

Why SAP S/4HANA Archiving is Essential: Slashing Costs and More

Regardless of the size or industry, every organization using SAP S/4HANA should consider data archiving. As systems accumulate data over time, the need for efficient data management becomes increasingly crucial.

Here’s why data archiving is your essential tool to this end:

• Overcome Cost Barriers: SAP S/4HANA’s potential is undeniable, but its hunger for data can strain your budget. Data archiving steps in and dramatically reduces your data footprint while preserving critical information. This slashes storage costs and lets you leverage SAP S/4HANA’s full potential without breaking the bank.
• Free Up Resources: Imagine the potential if you could reclaim valuable IT resources currently managing inactive data. Data archiving unlocks this potential as it frees up storage, processing power, and personnel for critical tasks and innovations that drive your business forward.
• Enhance Data Security and Privacy: Sensitive data needs protection, and data archiving is delivered. By securely storing inactive data with strict access controls, you minimize security risks and ensure compliance, avoiding costly penalties. Plus, the reduced data footprint means less data to secure and further curbs security and compliance expenses.

Platform 3 Solutions’ specialization lies in helping organizations archive excess data while ensuring that mission-critical information remains accessible.

Also Read: SAP HCM to SuccessFactors Migration: What Happens to Historical HR Data?

The Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Your SAP S/4HANA Migration Journey

SAP archive data retrieval strategy, comes with challenges. Here are some common blunders to avoid for a smooth transition: 

• Overlooking the Complexity of Data Migration: The data migration process is thought of as a lift-and-shift. However, incomplete, duplicate, or inconsistent data can cause an operation to be stopped after going live.  

• Skipping End-User Training: Even a truly excellent system will fail if the users do not know how to use it. On the contrary, a lack of proper training renders relatively poor adoption, working procedures, and productivity levels.  

• No Clear Migration Strategy: Without an end-to-end roadmap, one runs into trouble. Costs start creeping, deadlines get missed, and downtime hits unexpectedly.  

• No End-to-End Testing: One must not bank on the system going totally without bugs from day one. Not testing it end-to-end means stumbling over the hidden ones and performance issues at a time when least expected.  

• Disregarding Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: Often ignored, this is not just a mistake but one that can jeopardize an organization with legal action, heavy fines, or breach of data security. 

Unlocking Savings and Efficiency with Platform 3 Solutions

Platform 3 Solutions empowers organizations to take control of their data through powerful automation and metadata tools. Our solutions enable:

• Granular-level data retention management: Retain data based on specific criteria, like brand or country, for varying durations.
• Comprehensive dashboards: Visualize the entire archival journey from data footprint and timeline to cost savings and real-time location.

Measuring Success: Proven Results and Cost Savings

Platform 3 Solutions delivers optimal results and significant savings. Organizations with terabytes of data have achieved substantial storage cost reductions and gained a competitive edge and resource flexibility.

One of our clients, a giant in the aerospace industry, faced a challenge. They needed to migrate to SAP S/4HANA but were burdened by massive volumes of data. Moving this colossal amount of data was not only costly but also inefficient.

Platform 3 Solutions stepped in with its archiving expertise and allowed our client to archive historical data securely. The result? A streamlined SAP S/4HANA migration with substantial cost savings. Data that was archived remained easily accessible, ensuring business continuity and compliance.

Another client of ours, a global leader in branded lifestyle apparel, had a similar challenge. The data explosion was affecting the performance of their SAP system, and the prospect of SAP S/4HANA migration was daunting due to the sheer volume of data. Platform 3 Solutions’ archiving solutions came to the rescue.

Platform 3 Solutions enabled the client to archive data efficiently through a reduced data footprint and appropriate preparations for the HANA migration. This strategic approach not only optimized their HANA migration but also provided substantial cost savings.

A Clear Roadmap for SAP S/4HANA Migration

Platform 3 Solutions provides a roadmap for your transformative journey to SAP S/4HANA. Our platform, Archon Data Store, helps to reduce storage costs substantially while ensuring compliance and maintaining access to archived data.

The Platform 3 Solutions’ Advantage

With expertise spanning data archiving, storage cost reduction, and HANA migration, Platform 3 Solutions is tailored to address the most pressing challenges faced by organizations. Decision-makers (including C-suite members, technology architects, and solution architects who are well-versed in SAP S/4HANA data migration) recognize Platform 3 Solutions as a pioneer, paving the way to a streamlined archiving process, optimized data storage, and a clear roadmap for SAP to SAP S/4HANA migration.

The result? Organizations can transition smoothly, achieve significant cost savings, and maintain optimal data accessibility.

Platform 3 Solutions’ advantage is not just about answers; it is about empowerment and transformation. Platform 3 Solutions ensures that businesses can seamlessly navigate the complex world of SAP S/4HANA data archiving, with success and cost-efficiency seen at every step of the journey.

Conclusion

SAP S/4HANA is an essential step for companies that want to improve operational efficiency and update their ERP systems. However, careful consideration must be given to the migration issues with SAP S/4HANA, including data transfer difficulty, compatibility with custom code, process redesign, and high expenses.  

Businesses may lower risks, decrease downtime, and guarantee a seamless transition to SAP S/4HANA by being aware of these obstacles and taking a methodical approach. Organizations can transition smoothly, achieve significant cost savings, and maintain optimal data accessibility. 

Ready to transform your SAP S/4HANA archival processes? Discover the power of Platform 3 Solutions and unlock a new era of efficiency and compliance. Contact us today to learn how our innovative solutions can streamline your SAP S/4HANA archival processes and help your business thrive. Get in touch now and experience the future of SAP S/4HANA archival with Platform 3 Solutions.

Abubacker Malik SH

Abubacker Malik SH is the AVP of Product at Platform 3 Solutions, where he leads the design and delivery of enterprise-grade products and automation initiatives. With nearly a decade at P3, he has been instrumental in developing Archon, the company’s flagship platform for data archival and application decommissioning.