Imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA is a pri­or­i­ty for most ASUG mem­bers. Accord­ing to our 2022 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research, 44% of respon­dents are cur­rent­ly live on SAP S/4HANA or have start­ed to move. Mean­while, 3% of respon­dents have plans to move in the next six months, 16% will migrate in the next sev­en to 24 months, and 23% have plans to move over two years from now. 

A key part of the migra­tion process is decid­ing which type of imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy your orga­ni­za­tion will take. This deci­sion impacts your imple­men­ta­tion project and depends on a vari­ety of fac­tors. ASUG breaks down the main SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy options avail­able to SAP cus­tomers so you can fig­ure out which strat­e­gy is right for your orga­ni­za­tion and IT environment. 

What Is a Green­field Deploy­ment for SAP S/4HANA?

Like wip­ing a slate clean, a green­field approach is essen­tial­ly a reset but­ton. A tran­si­tion using a green­field approach is a com­plete reengi­neer­ing of a busi­ness’ SAP process­es and work­flows. Addi­tion­al­ly, any cus­tomiza­tion done on SAP ECC 6 is com­plete­ly wiped away dur­ing a green­field imple­men­ta­tion. This cer­tain­ly has its pros and cons. For a lega­cy orga­ni­za­tion that has been using SAP for a long time and has accu­mu­lat­ed a lot of com­pli­cat­ed work­flows and heav­i­ly cus­tomized code, a green­field approach might be the fresh start need­ed to over­haul its use of SAP and reduce com­plex­i­ties. This is what the ​“back to stan­dard” move­ment among SAP cus­tomers is all about. Green­field is also per­fect for com­pa­nies new to SAP, if they are mov­ing their data over from a non-SAP system. 

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It’s worth not­ing that a green­field imple­men­ta­tion is what SAP rec­om­mends when mak­ing the jump to SAP S/4HANA. It can be done either on-premise or in the cloud, and allows users to pre­de­fine migra­tion objects. From a cost stand­point, green­field imple­men­ta­tions result in low­er total-cost-of-own­er­ship (TCO) and time-to-value. 

The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, you can have the core ele­ments of SAP S/4HANA up and work­ing in about three months. But, migrat­ing all your data onto a blank sys­tem can take some time. This is a sig­nif­i­cant under­tak­ing and will almost cer­tain­ly take longer than three months. What’s more, it’s def­i­nite­ly a riski­er maneu­ver than a dif­fer­ent imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy. You also need to rede­vel­op any nec­es­sary sys­tem cus­tomiza­tions crit­i­cal to your busi­ness that you were pre­vi­ous­ly run­ning on anoth­er ver­sion of SAP, which can be anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant time sink. 

What Is a Brown­field Deploy­ment for SAP S/4HANA?

Where­as green­field is a com­plete over­haul, a brown­field approach is more like an upgrade or ren­o­va­tion of your SAP ERP. You can get SAP S/4HANA up and run­ning, while also migrat­ing your exist­ing SAP work­flows and sys­tems over to the newest ver­sion of SAP. You also can keep your tried-and-true busi­ness process­es, along with the cus­tomiza­tions you’ve been using to man­age your data. Yet, you don’t have to bring every­thing over. Brown­field lets users reeval­u­ate and edit their exist­ing process­es, and port over the ones that are work­ing. On paper, a brown­field approach is both the cheap­est and fastest imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy. It’s also a lot less risky than greenfield.

Yet, brown­field isn’t with­out its down­falls. Since you are essen­tial­ly port­ing over every­thing from your pre­vi­ous SAP oper­at­ing sys­tem, it’s often seen as an inno­va­tion block. The suc­cess of the imple­men­ta­tion lives and dies by how well your cur­rent work­flows and sys­tems are repli­cat­ed. This doesn’t give a lot of room for exam­in­ing how to cut through the com­plex­i­ties and poor work­flows of your cur­rent process. Because of all the com­plex­i­ties that come with port­ing over cus­tomiza­tion and work­flows, a brown­field imple­men­ta­tion is best done on-premise. 

Brown­field is best for cus­tomers who are look­ing to con­tin­ue using their cur­rent solu­tions and rapid­ly con­vert from SAP ECC 6 (or anoth­er ver­sion of SAP) to SAP S/4HANA.

What Is a Hybrid Deploy­ment on SAP S/4HANA?

The hybrid imple­men­ta­tion is prob­a­bly the most wide­ly used mod­el. At the end of the day, large busi­ness­es need to redesign some of their work­flows and sys­tems, while also main­tain­ing some crit­i­cal cus­tomiza­tions and solu­tions. Sim­ply start­ing over from scratch or trans­fer­ring your data and work­flows over to a new ver­sion of SAP is going to cost both time and mon­ey. A hybrid approach — which cher­ry-picks the best parts of green­field and brown­field imple­men­ta­tions — is best for large com­pa­nies with a lot of data and com­plex sys­tems. There are a lot of hybrid approach­es to choose from that pull dif­fer­ent aspects of green­field and brown­field implementations. 

With a hybrid approach, you mit­i­gate a lot of the risks asso­ci­at­ed with mak­ing the jump to SAP S/4HANA. You can selec­tive­ly redesign cer­tain aspects of your sys­tem, while also keep­ing the ones that work at the same time that you’re cleans­ing and mov­ing your data into the new sys­tem. The only real down­side is that a lot of hybrid imple­men­ta­tions require a third-par­ty solu­tion or tool to get the job done and dis­till the aspects of green­field and brown­field that are part of the migra­tion plan. 

Choos­ing which SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy is right for your com­pa­ny can be a dif­fi­cult process. A lot hinges on your suc­cess­ful move over to the newest ver­sion of SAP. If you decide that a move would ben­e­fit your orga­ni­za­tion, the good news is that there are options for a suc­cess­ful jour­ney to SAP S/4HANA.

ASUG is host­ing an in-per­son con­fer­ence focused on SAP S/4HANA lat­er this month. Join us on April 20 in Chica­go for ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA — Chica­go. Learn more and reg­is­ter here.