Business Partner Conversion

An important part of the conversion to S/4HANA is the changeover to the SAP business partner. In order to simplify an S/4 project at this point and to reduce the complexity, this conversion can also be carried out in advance in the ERP system. Due to the upcoming S/4HANA migration, our customer decided to use this approach and was supported by CONSILIO in the design and technical implementation up to the productive implementation.

Why is this already possible in ERP? Although SAP business partners are only a mandatory requirement under S/4HANA, the changeover can already be made in ERP. In S/4, the new transaction BP is available to manage the master records. If a business partner is created there, it is still mirrored back to the classic vendor/customer in the background.

If it is already created in the ERP, then the old transactions are still used, which means that the business partner is created in the background – and is also continuously updated. So, for example, if the master record of a customer or client is changed, the business partner is also rewritten. Technically, this happens in the background and does not mean any change to the system from the outside.

Because the S/4HANA conversion was planned for early 2021, the conversion to Business Partner had to be completed by the end of 2020. A BP conversion requires a great deal of technical expertise. For example, numerous SAP notes have to be incorporated and supplemented by manual rework, for which highly qualified ABAP developers are essential.

But mapping is also important: how and under which numbers are the ‘old’ creditors and debtors converted into the business partner? Achieving number equality between the creditor/debtor and the business partner is extremely complicated in a brownfield conversion, depending on the set-up, but it was successfully carried out for each existing master record for our customer. The fact that it was possible to establish identical numbers was a special requirement and should be seen as a special feature of the project. This is partly because it is so demanding, and partly because it is widely believed that this approach is generally too complicated for a brownfield migration.

Another requirement was error-free conversion. If there are errors, smooth system operation after the conversion is not possible. Because assigned numbers cannot simply be changed retrospectively, the conversion is first carried out in the sandbox and then in a quality assurance system. Master data must be of the highest possible quality to avoid errors. This was the case with our customer, so the master data only had to be corrected in a few isolated cases.

After completing customer-vendor integration (CVI), our customer benefits from improved readiness for the subsequent S/4 project. The term customer-vendor integration is used synonymously with business partner conversion and refers to the fact that synchronisation between business partners and classic ERP creditors and debtors is permanent.

As soon as you have switched to S/4, the new transaction is used to create business partners and corresponding creditors and debtors in the background via the CVI. In principle, master records are written to the old tables and the transactions still work with the old objects – but for administration and standardisation purposes, SAP has created the central master record Business Partner and the central transaction BP. The business partner can be defined both as a customer and as a supplier, thus avoiding data redundancy.

CONSILIO provided support throughout all project steps. Starting with the creation of the concept, going through the test systems and the productive conversion, during which the master records are finally converted to business partners. Thanks to regular communication and short coordination channels, the conversion was completed faster than expected, in just one day over five hours, which also reduced downtime to almost zero.