With organisations having to complete the upgrade from SAP R3 to S/4HANA by the end of

2025, IT leaders who run SAP ERP in their landscape should already be thinking about the
upgrade with many being in the process of upgrading already. Having to consider the
consolidation and migration of potentially thousands of lines of custom code, complex non-
SAP standard business processes and huge volumes of master data can be quite a daunting
prospect. Questions such as “How do we avoid past mistakes?” and “Where should we start?”
will be common and this blog is hopefully going to provide a starting point to answer these
by outlining how SAP’s own methodology, SAP Activate, can help with this headache by
guiding the project team through the process.

So, what is SAP Activate? Activate is a four to six step methodology that is designed to help
organisations make the move to S/4HANA and guide them through from planning to post go-
live. At its core, Activate focuses around 3 core pillars; Guided configuration, best practices
and methodology. Guided configuration is a set of tools that help with initially implementing
SAP best practices. Depending on whether it is S4 Cloud edition or S4 on-premise, there are
different sets of tools. For Cloud edition, self-service configuration UI’s and expert
configuration allow best practice processes to be tweaked while expert configuration allows
new processes to be added to the existing set. For an on-premise solution, SAP
implementation guide (IMG) and Solution Manager provide configuration activities to do in-
depth custom configuration. SAP Best Practices provides a set of guidelines and best practices
for the efficient integration and data migration to S4 along with the best way to configure
your own processes or enhance SAP-standard processes.

Whilst the best practices and guided configuration provide real value to organisations, the
key component in my opinion is the methodology. This is a modular, agile methodology that
can be used for any S4 implementation whether it be cloud, on-premise or hybrid and is the
successor to previous methodologies; ASAP and Launch. In this blog we are going to focus on
the four mandatory phases of the methodology but there are two extra phases that can be
included if deemed necessary; Discover and Run. Below is a short outline of the four
mandatory phases in relation to an on-premise implementation and it is worth noting that
what is great about Activate is its relative simplicity with each phase having no more than 10
key deliverables.

Prepare: The prepare phase is designed to get the project going. The project environment
should be established with team roles and responsibilities defined. Transition planning and
preparation should be delivered.
Explore: Fit/gap analysis workshops are performed by the project team and the business in
order to identify what must be added to the standard system to support the business
requirements. Strategies and designs are defined for the workstreams to take into the next
phase.
Realize: The solution is built up in sprints based on the backlog. Cutover preparation,
integration testing and user testing take place during the sprints and the go-live process can’t
start until all the testing has been signed off.
Deploy: The deploy phase is focused around getting the organisations ready for go-live along
with the cutover to production. End users should be trained and the organisation should be
ready for using the system productively.
It is all well and good being able to define a methodology across four phases but how does
SAP Activate ensure the customer gets the value they are expecting in an S4 implementation?
Aside from sprint retrospectives which exist in most agile methodologies, Activate requires
quality gates (Q-gates), which tend to take the form of checklist documentation uploaded into
the quality gate management module of SOLMAN, to be performed and passed at the end of
each phase to ensure all the deliverables have been completed. If they haven’t been
completed for a specific workstream, the other streams may move ahead whilst the delayed
one remains at its current phase and it can catch up before the project moves to the Deploy
phase.

As noted earlier, SAP Activate is not SAP’s first methodology and has replaced the ASAP
(Accelerated SAP) methodology. There are several key differences between the two, with the
first being that SAP Activate is a methodology that supports both Waterfall and Agile, to assist
with S/4HANA implementations whereas ASAP was a more generic methodology to help with
SAP projects that could be used in both a traditional waterfall manner or a (latterly) more
agile one. Another key difference comes in the Explore phase of Activate in the form of fit/gap
analysis workshops. These have replaced the traditional blueprint activities that were found
in the ASAP methodology. It is worth noting that Activate can support both Brownfield and
Greenfield migrations to S/4HANA. Whilst SAP recommend the Greenfield approach by re-
implementing S/4HANA and using a ‘fit to standard’ approach, many organisations find that
a Brownfield approach suits them better and allows them to keep their existing
customisations. Whichever approach is chosen, Activate can assist with this.

So, what should you have taken from this blog? Whilst we have only scratched the surface of
the Activate methodology and how it should be run, I hope it’s clear that it should be at the
front of your mind when thinking about implementing S/4HANA, whether it be a new
implementation or a system conversion. The tools SAP have provided in this methodology,
including vast amounts of documentation templates, accelerators and other materials will
help make your S/4HANA project far easier and can all be found through the links to the
Roadmap Viewer and Best Practices Explorer on the SAP Activate Methodology JAM groups.

How to use SAP Activate for your SAP S/4HANA Roadmap

CIOs, IT Directors, SAP project managers and consultants involved in SAP S/4HANA on-
premise or cloud implementations, upgrades, migrations or conversion projects can benefit
from using SAP Activate Implementation Methodology – an agile way for companies to
implement SAP software. SAP Activate is the successor of ASAP (Accelerated SAP)
methodology that was extensively used for SAP ECC implementations and upgrades projects.
SAP Activate implementation methodologies are not just available for SAP S/4HANA cloud or
on-premise but also for SAP BW/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP C/4HANA (formerly known
as SAP Hybris), and SAP Ariba.
SAP Activate leverages the SAP best practices to explore solutions for a company’s specific
business scenarios and propose the most relevant solutions. Instead of preparing business
blueprint document to cover every business scenarios, SAP Activate gets straight to
conducting fit-gap analysis (known as Fit-to-Standard in SAP Activate) and leverages SAP best
practices as well as rapid deployment solutions to see how best the SAP system addresses the
features and functionality gaps.
Figure 1: SAP Activate – The Big Picture (Image credit: SAP)
SAP Activate implementation methodology consists of the following six phases:
• Discover phase
• Prepare phase
• Explore phase
• Realize phase
• Deploy phase
• Run phase

Figure 2: SAP Activate Implementation Methodology (Image credit: SAP)

Let’s discuss each of the six phases of SAP Activate in some detail. For the purpose of simplicity
and understanding, we’ll only be discussing SAP S/4HANA on-premises implementation but
the same approach can also be adopted with other SAP software:

The Discover Phase

In this phase, the project teams discover the SAP solution’s capabilities, so as to better
understand the business value and benefits of implementing S/4HANA. It also enables the
team to define the target technology architecture as well as determine the implementation
strategy to follow. This phase also enables the business users to prepare the business case for
implementing SAP S/4HANA as well as preparing the deployment roadmap of the digital
transformation journey.

The Prepare Phase

In this phase, the initial project planning and preparation at the project management level
takes place, which entails preparing the project plan for the S/4HANA implementation as well
as team assignments. Other critical activities of this phase are defining the S/4HANA project’s
goals, identifying and quantifying business value objectives for implementing S/4HANA.
Executive sponsorship is secured and project standards, governance and organization are
established. Reporting and tracking the project’s progress is finalized. The roles and
responsibilities of the project team are also finalized in this phase.

The Explore Phase

In this phase, the business users explore the SAP best practices and standard business
processes (known as Fit-to-Standard) such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay or hire-to-retire
that are mapped for S/4HANA. Sample data of a fictitious company is also available to enable
business users to run the end-to-end processes to evaluate how closely a standard solution
meets the company’s business needs. Here, the business users and the SAP consulting firm
agree on the configurable objects required for the company. Configurable objects can be a
company code responsible for all legal and financial reporting, a plant that can also be a
manufacturing unit or a head office, a warehouse or sales organizations such as one is
responsible for local sales while the other handles export sales. A complete fit-gap exercise
ensures greater visibility of the gaps that the standard S/4HANA is unable to offer. In such
cases, a fit-gap strategy decides if a system’s enhancement, a customized application, or
activating a business add-in will address the identified gaps.

Additional but critical activities of this phase include master data load preparation, wherein
data templates in MS-Excel are shared with the business users so they start working on and
preparing clean, correct and comprehensive master data for loading in the S/4HANA system.
Further, an initial groundwork on SAP testing and training’s needs also take place in this
phase. A special emphasis is placed on planning the integration testing that entails bringing
people, processes and teams working together in an ‘integrated’ or in a closed-loop
environment.

The Realize Phase

In this phase, a series of activities incrementally build, test and validate the business scenarios
and processes identified in the previous phase (the Discover phase). Master data is loaded to
check and validate the correctness and completeness that ensure smoother, error-free
transactions and business processes’ working. All custom-developed objects are also tested
in the realize phase. Key business users are trained as ‘trainers’ with the objective that these
SAP trainers will eventually train the end users (the train-the-trainer approach). End-users’
training is also planned so that relevant end users can be engaged at the right time and be
trained only in their specific areas of working. The business users and SAP consultants delve
deep into end-to-end integration testing involving different SAP components to ensure the
data and information flows from and into various SAP components are complete and correct.

The Deploy Phase

In this phase, the master trainers conduct the end-users training. The cutover activities, in
which the company transitions from legacy systems to S/4HANA, take place. Some of the
critical cutover activities include preparing the SAP production system with final master data
uploads, uploading the cutover or the closing financial and inventory balances from the legacy
systems into S/4HANA, testing and validating all roles and authorizations for business users
and end users. The change management activities culminate with all stakeholders aligned for
ensuring a transition to S/4HANA is not only accepted but is also smooth. The S/4HANA
system goes live and business and end users can begin entering the data by starting with first
entering the backlog data that accumulated during the transition from the legacy systems to
S/4HANA (this period is known as the ‘blackout’ period in which no data is entered into the
legacy systems).

The Run Phase

In this phase, the S/4HANA system is further stabilized by ensuring all of the possible issues,
errors or incorrect entries that may have occured during the first few days of S/4HANA going
live are quickly corrected. Establishing a dedicated IT or SAP helpdesk to resolve such issues
goes a long way towards the smoother working of S/4HANA. Here, the business users again
play a critical role in ensuring trouble-free S/4HANA, by closing working with a company’s
internal SAP helpdesk as well as with SAP consultants to quickly and comprehensively resolve
the issues faced. A successful and timely financial closing of the first month within the
S/4HANA is a litmus test to validate the correct and reliable business processes’ working.
Figure 3 shows the end-to-end SAP Activate implementation methodology roadmap involving
the six phases, the tasks and activities involved in each phase, and the quality gates (QGs –
the blue diamonds) that are necessary to ensure timely and effective SAP software
implementation.

Figure 3: Quality Gates in SAP Activate Implementation Methodology (Image credit: SAP)
It will not be long before SAP Activate implementation methodology will be the de facto
approach for companies to follow for their SAP software implementation and upgrades.
Therefore, it makes sense for CIOs, project managers and SAP consultants to quickly enable
themselves on SAP Activate, and arm themselves against the unexpected challenges of an SAP
S/4HANA implementation. Fortunately, a plethora of resources are available to make this
enablement possible and easier