An important part of the S/4HANA conversion is the switch to the SAP business partner, also known as BP. In order to simplify an S/4 brownfield project (technical update to S/4HANA) at this point and to reduce complexity, this changeover must be carried out in advance in the ECC system. In order to complete this ‘pre-project’ for the upcoming system conversion at an early stage, DEPRAG SCHULZ GMBH u. CO. 2022 decided to introduce the BP. The experts from CONSILIO provided support throughout the entire process, from the initial concept and technical implementation to the productive launch.
Why already in the ‘old’ ECC system? Although the SAP Business Partner is only a mandatory requirement under S/4HANA, the changeover must already be made in ECC. Otherwise, a technical upgrade to S/4HANA is not possible. Suppliers, customers and contact persons continue to be created via the familiar transactions in ECC. The changeover has no effect on an end user, since the business partner is only created and updated in the background. If, for example, the master record of a customer is changed, the business partner is also changed accordingly. Technically, this happens in the background and does not mean any change to the system from the outside. The use of the transaction to create the business partner ‘BP’ is not mandatory under ECC and is not recommended.
Because the S/4HANA conversion was planned for the following year, the decision was made at the beginning of 2022 to implement the Business Partner in cooperation with CONSILIO. After defining the business partner concept (number assignment, role definition, etc.), this was implemented in a sandbox using the necessary customising settings.
The most important goal was to ensure that both the current customer and supplier numbers are reflected in the new business partner number. In order to keep the project duration as short as possible, the necessary master data cleanups relevant for a BP conversion were carried out on the productive system. At the same time, two development clients were converted in parallel.
The productive conversion then took place within a few hours. During this time, no vendor or customer master records could be created or changed.
There were no further effects on ongoing operations during such a conversion. With a total duration of three months – from the creation of the concept to the productive implementation – it was once again proven that a business partner introduction can also be implemented within a very short time.
After completing Customer-Vendor-Integration (CVI), DEPRAG benefits from improved readiness for the following S/4 project. The term Customer-Vendor-Integration is used synonymously with Business Partner Conversion and describes the permanent update between business partners and classic ERP creditors and debtors.
As soon as S/4HANA is introduced, the business partners as well as the corresponding creditors and debtors are created in the background via the CVI with the new transaction ‘BP’ – thus vice versa as under ECC.
In principle, supplier and customer master records are stored in the old tables in addition to the new business partner data, but are maintained for administration and standardisation via the central transaction BP. CONSILIO supported DEPRAG throughout all project steps. Starting with a thorough introduction to the topic of business partners, through concept development to the conversion of all systems. Thanks to the close cooperation between the two parties, the conversion went smoothly and without any problems.