Become more agile with an end-to-end tested SAP migration

Originally written and published in Dutch, this blog was developed in collaboration with our partner, Sogeti.

QX Day is the largest event in quality engineering and testing in the Netherlands. This annual event is hosted by our partner Sogeti. At the 2023 event in September, more than 25 speakers explored the theme of SustAInable Quality Engineering with keynotes, workshops, and demos. In the Enterprise Quality Engineering track, experts from SAP and Tricentis discussed how to stay in control of quality in SAP transformations with minimal risks and maximum flexibility.

“Change is the only constant… and SAP systems must evolve seamlessly,” said Ronald Tetteroo, SAP and GSI Accelerator at Tricentis. “How can you minimize the business risks of continuous SAP adjustments as much as possible?”

SAP systems are part of a complex application landscape. The faster SAP can change with the business, the more efficient and flexible an organization becomes. How do you streamline SAP transformation processes? In this blog, Tetteroo and Ronald Hoenink, Head of SAP Business Technology Platform of SAP Netherlands, provide tips to make SAP transformations less risky and achieve optimal business results. Naturally, testing plays an important role in this. They discuss the most common challenges and best practices of SAP customizations and show how to minimize risk through robust testing.

Prepare for changes with the SAP Business Technology Platform

The Business Technology Platform (BTP) plays an important role in SAP adjustments such as a migration to SAP S/4HANA. “This platform helps you accelerate the transformation to an intelligent organization,” said Hoenink. “In most cases, SAP is part of an extensive hybrid application environment. You can prepare for the migration with the BTP platform by, for example, cleaning up data, testing data, ensuring continuous process automation, and building low-code extensions. BTP therefore adds value by, among other things, simplifying cloud migration, keeping the data core clean, integrating business processes, and planning and analyzing SAP changes.”

Shift left with Tricentis technology

Testing is crucial for smooth SAP transformations. And the sooner you test, the better. Hoenink: “At SAP we recommend using Tricentis products for this. Their technology is the standard in this field. We have therefore integrated Tricentis solutions into our portfolio as a Solution Extension, or SolEx, for example in SAP Activate.” SAP supports the entire testing cycle with products that include Tricentis technology such as SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing (is everything functioning properly?), SAP Enterprise Performance Testing (is the environment performing properly?), SAP Data Integrity Testing (is the data correct?) and SAP Change Impact Analysis (what should we test?).

Don’t test for the sake of testing

SAP systems must be able to move seamlessly with new trends, technologies and customer needs. “This applies to every sector in which we have customers, from utilities to consumer products and retail,” says Tetteroo. “How can we limit the financial risks of this continuous flow of SAP adjustments as much as possible? That question is on the minds of many of our customers.” This requires qualitative testing. In other words, do not view testing as an end goal, but as a means to accelerate innovation. How do you do that? “Don’t just test the changes, but all components on which a change could have an impact. An SAP environment is like an airplane; you don’t want to find out in the air that new wiring affects the flight system but you haven’t tested it beforehand. So do end-to-end functional testing. In addition, it is advisable to consider whether the test data is correct and the test processes are scalable.”

Learn from practice

A good example of an organization that has helped Tricentis to become more flexible through a SAP migration is Duke Energy. This energy supplier improved the customer experience by migrating to SAP S/4HANA with SAP Tricentis-SolEx solutions. With the new, end-to-end tested SAP environment, Duke Energy has become much more Agile. Tetteroo said, “This way the energy supplier can adjust applications on a weekly basis and go live without production errors. This increased efficiency and flexibility gave Duke Energy a profit margin of 3% on the $21 billion annual cash flow through the SAP billing system.”

The theory is sound, but the practice of a SAP migration is sometimes a bit more difficult. Would you like more practical tips? Are you curious about how SAP and Tricentis have managed the SAP migration at other organizations according to the above best practices? Check out the QX Day presentation De-risk your mission critical SAP transformations, where Hoenink and Tetteroo also discuss the practical side of SAP changes using cases and practical examples.