Introduction
The SAP Business Transformation Center – Digital Blueprint covers a tool-based support within the transition of SAP ECC customers to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition and SAP S/4HANA On Premise. Besides known approaches like New Implementation (aka Greenfield) or System Conversion (aka Brownfield), a partial transfer of data (aka Selective Data Transition) is frequently requested due to various business reasons. This has not been covered by a SAP standard product answer yet.
Based on existing SAP Readiness Check Capabilities and integrated in SAP Cloud ALM, SAP Business Transformation Center – Digital Blueprint provides
- Data Insights
- Visualizations
- Recommendations
supporting scoping activities of to-be transferred data as part of a Selective Data Transition to SAP S/4HANA.
Considering an overall transition process, this first increment of the SAP Business Transformation Center hits the Access&Insights part as a starting point.
Focus of the Digital Blueprint Increment
As result, customers receive a Digital Blueprint of their scoped data serving as a preparation step before deploying it to SAP S/4HANA.
Usage Guide
The prerequisites and the subsequent execution steps for the creation of a Digital Blueprint are described within the following sections.
Prerequisites
Cloud ALM Tenant
If you do not yet use Cloud ALM in your system landscape, you need to provision your tenant at first. It is included in SAP Cloud Service subscriptions and SAP Enterprise Support. Additionally, the sequence of the required steps including further details can be found in support.sap.com or directly following this link leading to a Quick Start Guide for SAP Business Transformation Center.
Run Data Collection in ECC Source System
The first step is to create and extract a data profile of the ECC source system. The SAP Readiness Check for Usage & Data Profiling is used for this purpose, which has also been supplemented with SAP Business Transformation Center specific content. SAP Note 3275056 is therefore mandatory for the use of SAP Business Transformation Center. As the note describes, ABAP program RC_UDP_START_DMR2 needs to be executed to create a zip file containing information about ECC source data in an XML format.
Execution Steps
Step 1: Provision Source File in SAP Business Transformation Center
To upload the extracted data profile of your ECC source system, the Fiori App “Manage Analysis Files” is used. Simply create a new entry by adding a title, optional short description and upload the zip file extracted from the ECC source system. During the upload, first data validations are already done to avoid invalid data input. Having the source file successfully introduced, you can optionally have a first overview about some technical details of the source system as well as extracted company codes and transformation objects data.
Step 2: Create a Digital Blueprint
As a next step, a working instance of the uploaded source file is created – the Digital Blueprint. Choose the Fiori App “Manage Digital Blueprints” and create a new entry by providing a name, optional description and assign it to an analysis file created in Step 1.
After the successful creation of your Digital Blueprint, you get a list overview of in scope company codes and transformation objects. As up to now no scoping activities took place, all extracted company codes and transformation objects are displayed.
The assigned analysis file of step 1 is updated with the created Digital Blueprint. This ensures a clear transparency within the overall process flow and allows the creation of several Digital Blueprints for a single analysis file e.g. for comparison purposes. Choose Fiori App “Manage Analysis Files”, select your entry and verify section “Digital Blueprint” which points to the linked name of the Digital Blueprint.
Analysis File & Digital Blueprint
Step 3: Get an Overview of the initial Data Situation
In step 1 and 2 first list overviews about extracted and scoped data are available. As one step further, the Fiori App “Digital Blueprint Overview” provides a total overview with adjustable cards visualizing the general data occurrence and scoping effects. Additionally, derived system hints are summarized on company code and transformation object level. A data count summary and technical details of the source system serve as a round up for this overview.
Initial Overview
Step 4: Scope Company Codes
After gaining first insights in the overall usage of your source system, a closer look into company code data is done. You can either enter the company code view by choosing the Fiori App “Select Company Codes” or by directly starting it from the Digital Blueprint Overview by clicking on card for company codes. The App introduces company code details covered by an adjustable chart and table view. The general purpose as well as the various attributes of the app are extensively documented in the integrated help. It can be accessed by clicking on the question mark icon on the upper right of the screen. This is valid for all Fiori Apps within the SAP Business Transformation Center.
Company Code Overview & InApp Help
A click on a single entry in the table view reveals further data of a company code. Besides general attributes it contains assigned organization units, related transformation objects and open items from a financial perspective. For a large amount of transformation objects, a yearly data distribution chart is available.
Yearly Distribution of a Transformation Object
On top of these company code data extracted from the source system, there are also SAP Business Transformation Center internally derived data – namely the system hints. These text notes are displayed in the table view and in the detailed view. They indicate certain data situations which can be considered as an advice for scoping decisions. The consideration is optional and does not necessarily need to be followed.
Having these company code data at hand, a data driven scoping discussion can start. For example, with the usage of the “Last Activity” and “Data Count” figures, information about current or last business activities are provided, indicating the relevancy of a company code.
In this way, sometimes cumbersome discussions with various business departments can be reduced, especially if parts of a company have been sold in the past.
Once decided if a company code shall be transferred to the target system, the scoping status is set. This can be done either on single company code level or in mass edit for several entries. Declaring a company code out of scope results in an exclusion of all related transformation objects with their respective data counts as well.
Scoped Company Codes
Step 5: Scope Transformation Objects
A second perspective for scoping activities are Transformation Objects. To access them, you can start the Fiori App “Select Transformation Objects” or use the Digital Blueprint Overview by clicking on the Transformation Object Card.
Similar like for company codes, a chart and a table provide a first overview grouped by SAP application components. The integrated documentation supports in answering potential questions e.g. about specific fields and their purpose.
Transformation Object Overview & InApp Help
Choosing the detail view of a single transformation object leads to general data as well as a distribution along its assigned company codes including last activity dates and related data counts.
Transformation Object Details
The scoping decision can be set in the edit mode of the detail view or for mass selected objects in the table overview.
Transformation Objects to be discussed at all can be identified by the columns “Last Activity” as well as “Total Data Count” and “Relevant Data Count”.
Relevant count in this context means, how many data sets of a specific transformation object would be affected by a scoping decision considering an already done scoping on company code level. In other words, the relevant data count indicates dependencies between the company code and the transformation object perspective. In this way, the impact of scoping decisions is immediately reflected in these figures.
Example Relevant Data Count
Declaring a transformation object out of scope, results in an exclusion of all related data counts in all assigned company codes. Reasons e.g., for the exclusion of individual objects, can be documented with name and time stamp in a dedicated comment field.
The already known system hints are used for transformation objects as well. For example, if data for an out-of-scope object exists, a hint is raised to carefully check the dependencies based on your individual project circumstances.
Scoped Transformation Objects
Step 6: Get an Overview of the scoped Data Situation
As a last step, the result of the scoping activities is summarized in the Digital Blueprint Overview. Optionally, a second Digital Blueprint could be created right away, e.g. for an alternative scope by using the button “Create New Digital Blueprint” on the upper right corner of the screen.
Overview after Scoping
Further Information & Outlook
SAP Business Transformation Center – Digital Blueprint was publicly announced in May 2023. Further sources of information can be found under:
A test tenant for playground purposes is available here as part of Cloud ALM demo tenants. Please follow the instructions for access data and check for already uploaded demo source files to create your own Digital Blueprint.
Being a Cloud-native application, new features are delivered incrementally on a frequent basis. Here you can get an overview about the latest increments within the What´s New Section in the SAP help portal.
The roadmap of SAP Business Transformation Center contains various topics – among others it’s the deployment of the scoped data into an empty SAP S/4HANA target system as well as further capabilities around system hints and custom enhancements. Details can be found within the SAP Roadmap Explorer under the solution capability “Business and Data Transformation”.
Conclusion
Following this blog post supports you in your first hands-on activites with the newly released SAP Business Transformation Center and its first increment - the Digital Blueprint.
If you like to get more information - or even better, get a direct solution look & feel - make yourself familar with the above mentioned additonal sources
Looking forward to hear your feedback, proposals for improvement as well as general thoughts, simply hit the comment section below!
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