Greenfield vs Brownfield migration
Sep 28 2021
SAP S/4HANA migration: which approach is best for your business? Greenfield, Brownfield or Hybrid?
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Greenfield vs Brownfield migration

SAP S/4HANA migration: which approach is best for your business? Greenfield, Brownfield or Hybrid?

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Alain Rivet

SAP project leader

Whether it’s a migration or an implementation, you’ll need to move to SAP S/4HANA.

In both cases, success depends on :

  • Your strategy
  • Your team
  • Your approach

Three approaches are generally proposed: Greenfield, Brownfield or Hybrid.    

What is SAP S/4HANA?

What is a Greenfield or a new implementation?

In a Greenfield deployment, you start from scratch: all used functionality is reanalyzed and reconfigured based on the best practice. Data is extracted from the old system, processed and reloaded into the new one. 

This approach is generally recommended: 

  • If you want to benefit quickly from new technologies;
  • If you have accumulated to many specific developments;
  • If your current processes are no longer efficient;
  • If your core business or corporate strategy is changing rapidly;
  • If you are just starting out in SAP.

Note that a Greenfield approach is a time-consuming process because it requires a complete analysis of the processes to make the most of the new functionalities offered by SAP S/4HANA. This approach implies a significant contribution from business specialists to ensure the conversion of data. 

What is a Brownfield or a system conversion?

A Brownfield is an upgrade of an existing system. It is essentially a technical operation at the system level. This means that the data and the specific programming are maintained as they are. The new digitization-specific functionalities are activated afterwards.

 

SAP recommends this approach in the following cases:

  • If your organizational structure has not changed and your system contains little specific development;
  • If the objective is the gradual implementation of new functionalities;
  • If your current processes are efficient;
  • If your existing system is well adapted to your core business or your corporate strategy;

A Brownfield approach can be quick and does not require much of your business specialists. But as there is no data cleansing, it is recommended to accompany it with an archiving project.

Since 2021, it is officially possible to combine Brownfield and Cloud migration. We did it in 2020 in our collaboration with Touring.

Learn more about Brownfield migration

What is a hybrid deployment?

An hybrid deployment is the combination of a Brownfield and a Greenfield.  

It aims to leverage the benefits of both approaches: on the one hand it reuses the customizations and developments of the existing ERP, and on the other hand enriches or replaces them with the new functionalities of SAP S/4HANA.  

Brownfield, Hybrid and Greenfield migration

BROWNFIELD

HYBRID

GREENFIELD

From an ERP SAP.

From an ERP SAP.

From a non-SAP ERP or an ERP SAP.

Overall satisfied with existing ECC6.

Some parts of ECC are to be kept, others are obsolete.

The current system is obsolete.

Step by step update.

Mixed solution

Migration in one step.

The innovations can be integrated into S/4HANA later on.

Mixed solution

S/4HANA functionalities are integrated from the beginning.

Upgrade of the current system.

Combination of Greenfield and Brownfield. 

Development from scratch, new implementation.

Upgrade of existing codes.

Analysis and recovery of existing useful codes and upgrade.

Development of new code based on best practices.

Functionalities of the old system are kept.

In cases where the standard functionality changes, SAP provides migration tools.

Mixed solution

Features based on best practices.

All new features are activated immediately.

The data is already in the system and some is subject to a specific conversion, such as customers and suppliers.

Data selected and reloaded into the new system.

Data are loaded into the system.

Short and mainly technical migration project. 

Mixed solution

Long and mainly business migration project. 

Migration strategy

In your SAP S/4HANA migration or implementation strategy, you will need to define whether you stay On-Premise or move to the Cloud.

Cloud or On-Premise, how to choose?

Your migration team

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA requires the right team within your company. You’ll need to select employees who know your business process inside and out. 

In most cases, it is difficult for a company to manage a migration to SAP S/4HANA alone. You will definitely need external support. 

As a team of experienced SAP consultants, S4IC has been involved in many SAP S/4HANA migrations. We have developed specific tools to facilitate the migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA On-Premise and in the Cloud.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you need more details or advice for your journey to SAP S/4HANA.

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SAP Leonardo - Transformation digitale avec S4IC (Partenaire SAP en Belgique)
Sep 21 2021
SAP Leonardo: an innovative model for digital transformation 
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SAP Leonardo - Transformation digitale avec S4IC (Partenaire SAP en Belgique)

SAP Leonardo: A Digital Transformation Model

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Constance Barbier

Digital Communication Specialist

What is SAP Leonardo? 

SAP Leonardo is a solution portfolio that brings together several technologies available on the SAP Cloud Platform (including APIs, microservices and integration modules) while using SAP’s HANA database or data administration system (Data Hub and Vora).

SAP Leonardo is neither a product nor a solution marketed by SAP but a concept that uses emerging technologies to support companies in their internal digitalization process.

In addition, SAP Leonardo is inspired by the iterative methodology of “Design Thinking”, which enables collaborative, creative problem solving with a human-centered approach.

Design thinking - SAP Leonardo (Transformation digitale)

In this innovation process, and following the example of the Agile method, user feedback is integrated at each stage of the project. Design Thinking saves a lot of time and leads to a high level of satisfaction. Research has shown that a product or service increases its potential for success if the customer is an integral part of the development process. This methodology is not new in itself, but the simple fact of combining it with cutting-edge technologies allows to optimize the company’s processes and data processing. 

What are the benefits of SAP Leonardo for your company? 

Today, the ability to automate has been refined by emerging technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI). SAP Leonardo uses these intelligent tools to mine data, detect patterns, predict outcomes, and suggest actions, all of which support better decision making. They revolutionize your processes and business model to enable you to deliver products and services faster to your customers.

SAP Leonardo is based on real-time data analysis of your business.  Running only on the new SAP S/4HANA release, SAP Leonardo helps you to:
  • Create new opportunities;
  • Automate certain tasks;
  • Increase the performance of your operational services and as a result ;
  • Be at the forefront in terms of customer service.
  • Improve performance, reduce costs and waste through prevention and automation

In short, a smart business using SAP Leonardo effectively leverages Big Data to turn it into business value. This data is processed in real time by the SAP HANA system, allowing you to achieve desired results faster and with less risk.

Emerging technologies used by SAP Leonardo

These different technologies can be used individually but for optimal results, it is strongly recommended to use them all together.

This set of interrelated technologies transforms stored data into structured and usable data. But for these technologies to work effectively within SAP and improve your business performance, three critical elements must interact:  

  • Business data;
  • The users; 
  • Business processes. 
Learn more about emerging technologies

The preparatory phase is fundamental in this process. As you can see, SAP Leonardo has been designed to meet three objectives:

  • To help companies innovate quickly and efficiently.
  • Integrate innovation into the company’s business.
  • Evolve innovations to increase their value.

But it’s also much more than that; SAP Leonardo adapts to your core business, your business needs, the challenges you face… You have to test it to understand the extent of what it can do for your company!

Contact S4IC, SAP partner, for more informations
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SAP for Insurance moduls - SAP Assurance
Sep 16 2021
SAP for Insurance : how do the modules work together?
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SAP for Insurance moduls - SAP Assurance

SAP for Insurance: how do the modules work together?

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Milan Plavsic

Senior SAP FS-PM Consultant / ABAP Developer

Digital transformation is becoming a necessity for companies in various industries. But more specifically, what does SAP for Insurance offer insurers? How do the modules communicate with each other and how does it all fit into SAP’s S/4HANA landscape? 

SAP for Insurance Architecture

At first, let’s take a closer look at the key modules that are incorporated within SAP for Insurance. Below is the diagram of SAP for Insurance architecture with core modules highlighted in green.

SAP insurance architecture diagram - SAP Assurance

Key modules of SAP for Insurance offer below functionalities:

Product Management Component

This component is used to create customized insurance products and it’s corresponding formulas and rules. Sometimes it is referred to as the calculation engine, since it is called during runtime to calculate various data on the insurance policy.

Here we have two distinctive solutions offered as standard tools from SAP:

  • msg.PM – Msg.Product Manager: introduced at first as the only calculation engine, msg.PM has two components: PM.Designer (this component is used to develop, manage and test insurance product data) and PM.Runtime (this is a runtime component that delivers product data and once called it executes insurance calculations).
  • FS-PRO – SAP Product Lifecycle Management for Insurance : it was introduced mainly as a go-to solution for P&C and Auto lines of business (though msg.PM can also handle those LOBs besides Life and Pension insurance). The main component of FS-PRO is Insurance Product Configurator. Insurance Product Configurator consist of three main parts: Administrative Console (component that handles management of system, application and user profiles), the Product Configurator (main component which is used for development and management of a portfolio of insurance products) and the Product Web Services (connectivity component that enables use of product data to other components in the SAP for Insurance landscape).

Deciding whether to use msg.PM or FS-PRO depends on particular business requirements and should be determined per insurer

FS-QUO – SAP Quotation and Underwriting for Insurance

This module is used for making insurance quotes and handling underwriting processes (together with FS-PRO). Some of the key features of FS-QUO include:

  • Create an insurance quote – Either full quote or quick quote with only partial information.
  • Simulate underwriting – Check underwriting rules and decision by running a simulation.
  • Submit a quote for underwriting – Execute underwriting tasks on a quote to get an underwriting decision.
  • Manage quote options – Compare quotes, assign and reassign quotes, delete a quote, create tasks for the quote, etc.
  • Request Cash Before Cover payment
  • Issue a policy from a particular quote
SAP Quotation and Underwriting for Insurance - SAP Assurance

FS-PM

With FS-PM insurers can handle their entire policy life-cycle. As it represents the heart of SAP for Insurance software suite we are going to explain it in more detail. Some of the main functionalities include:

  • New Business for creation of insurance policies;
  • Inquiry for displaying various policy data;
  • Change business process for executing any kind of changes on the policy. Standard delivery of business transactions include various Life, Non-Life and Auto business transactions;
  • Universal Change process to correct any field on the policy (used mostly when Change business process business transactions are not available);
  • Reversal business process to end the policy manually;
  • Reset business process to revert any kind of changes that already happened on the policy;
  • Renewal business process to renew the policies in bulk;
  • Update business process to execute update of policies in bulk.

FS-CD

This is the central booking system for handling incoming and outgoing payments coming from FS-PM, FS-ICM and FS-CM. Some of its main functionalities include:

  • Open item accounting
  • Payment processing
  • Dunning
  • Interest calculation
  • Broker collections
  • Correspondence

FS-ICM

Very flexible Incentive and Commissions Management module which can be used to facilitate any broker and commission contract structures, rules and calculations. Together with FS-ICM, PFO module is used for Portfolio assignment.

Some of the main functionalites of FS-ICM are listed below:

  • Serves as an incentivizing Salesforce tool to improve sales and gain more clients
  • Maintenance of the legal commission contracts with brokers and agents
  • Calculations of remunerations for any action in the system that requires that
  • Settlement of commissions to the target settlement system
  • The main functionality of PFO is to manage, assign and reassign relationships between insurance policies and commissions contracts
Module de gestion des incitations et des commissions - SAP Assurance

FS-CM

Is used to handle claims from notification to fulfillment and recovery. Main Processes within Claims Management are listed below:

  • Claim Notification
  • Claim Handling
  • Claim Fulfillment
  • Claim Recovery

FS-RI

It represents a complete Reinsurance solution from SAP. This module is integrated with primary insurance modules and some of its main functionalities include:

  • Contract Administration
  • Management of Assumed, Ceded and Retroceded treaties
  • Reinsurance Accounting
  • Reinsurance Claims Processing
  • Financial Reporting

Integration between SAP for Insurance modules

This solution is delivered with a predefined set of standard products which can be used to create sample policies and show sample flows in the system, so-called Sample Content. It’s possible to enable integration within SAP for Insurance with little configuration and immediately see the results by trying out some of the Sample Content data.

When looking at the separate modules, the heart of SAP for Insurance suite is FS-PM. This policy administration component is responsible for triggering most of the connection points between separate modules.

Integration between SAP modules for insurance - SAP Assurance

At first, during design time, Product Management components (whether msg.PM or FS-PRO) import part of the product structure to FS-PM. Sales product from product management components can be seen as a template based on which insurance policies are created. Therefore, insurance policy in FS-PM represents one instance of a Sales product designed in either of product management components.

During runtime, this insurance policy in FS-PM calls product management component to calculate premium, sum insured and other calculation-relevant data. This is realized by FS-PM aggregating and sending relevant data to the product management component which in turn uses this data, calculate the results and sends it back to FS-PM.

This type of integration is possible on every change on policy in FS-PM throughout the policy life-cycle. Once the insurance policy is properly calculated and the process is about to be completed, FS-PM calls other interfaces and sends them relevant data.

FS-PM aggregates commission relevant data and sends it to FS-ICM. FS-ICM will trigger FS-CD to create a payment for the commission. The same applies with FS-PM to FS-CD interface, where FS-PM creates all cashflows and sends them to FS-CD. In case a claim happens, FS-CM will call FS-PM to request policy data, so-called policy snapshot. In that case, FS-CM will call in-built functionality in FS-PM to collect relevant insurance policy data which is needed further for claim creation and processing. Once the claim is processed, FS-CM will call FS-CD to create an outgoing payment to reimburse the beneficiary for the loss that occurred.

When it comes to integration with other SAP S/4HANA modules, SAP for Insurance uses BP (Business Partner) data for all it’s participants. All FS modules have built-in functionalities to use data from BP module whether in the background or jump via the user interface to display relevant participant and its data. Non-cashflow documents are sent to FI-GL (General Ledger Accounting), while cashflows are sent to FS-CD.

CRM uses BP data and can trigger quotations via FS-QUO. Reporting requirements are realized by extracting data from FS modules via data extractors and by transferring it to BW to be used as a basis for reporting.

Le CRM utilise les données BP et peut déclencher des cotations via FS-QUO. Les exigences en matière de reporting sont réalisées en extrayant les données des modules FS via des extracteurs de données et en les transférant à BW pour servir de base au reporting.

All in all, this was just a brief introduction to SAP for Insurance and its main functionalities. SAP’s software suite for the insurance industry definitely offers a wide range of functionalities for insurers of all sizes and all lines of business and as such it is one of the most complete insurance solutions on the market. If you want to learn more about SAP for Insurance, please contact us, our experts will give you more precisions.

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