By far the world’s fastest SAP S/4HANA migration “while keeping the distance”

6th August 2020

AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG is a modern agricultural trading company in the segments of agricultural products, animal nutrition, plant cultivation and agricultural technology. In addition, it operates also in the fields of energy and Raiffeisen markets, including building supplies stores, as well as in project construction.

With some 6,500 employees AGRAVIS generates a yearly turnover of 6.5 billion Euro and, with more than 400 locations, it is predominantly active in Germany and one of the sector’s leading companies.

On the last weekend in June 2020, AGRAVIS’ migration to SAP S/4HANA took place headed by consenso. After a project duration of only six months – and more than half of the time under the problematic conditions of the Corona pandemic!

From the very beginning of the Corona restrictions, AGRAVIS took a bold step deciding to continue the project as planned – without taking any break during the long lockdown phase that started in middle of March.

As of this date, all activities including the successful go-live were performed remotely without exception. The customer’s project members as well as consenso as AGRAVIS’ implementation partner conducted all project activities from home, meetings and workshops were held by videoconferencing. A particular challenge for the “social skills” of all parties involved that could be tackled with great success.

All activities to be carried out in advance, such as the conversion to business partners, had already been implemented and put into operation in the non-S/4HANA system landscape. At the same time, the project team had made all preparations necessary to conduct the Readiness Check so that its results could be directly evaluated afterwards, and relevant settings could be made in the system.

One of the greatest challenges during the conversion was the adjustment of the customer-specific development objects no longer functioning under S/4HANA. In order not to interfere with daily business, the development system was copied to a new project system where the S/4HANA upgrade took place. This was then followed by the analysis and evaluation of the development objects with ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC). All adjustments of the customer’s development objects were conducted in the new system and bundled in collective transports for the subsequent go-live. In parallel, all necessary changes from the productive system were transported into the project system. All objects locked within bundled transports due to the S/4HANA changeover were imported manually. In order to ensure the conversion of the customer-specific development objects to S/4HANA, S/4HANA Readiness Checks were conducted on a regular basis.

Besides the changeover to an S/4 HANA system, the project also comprised the relocation of all systems into SAP HEC. In total, there were four test runs until the productive system was converted (including also relocation and conversion of the development and test system) including department tests. So, it was possible to determine reference times while, at the same time, to ensure that all processes and customer developments will function faultlessly under S/4HANA in the future.

On the go-live weekend, the complete conversion including system relocation took place in only 48 hours – by far the world’s fastest SAP S/4HANA migration “while keeping the distance”. Also, in the days that followed, no major issues arose so that all processes have been running smoothly under S/4HANA ever since.

Photo: AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG, Münster