Contributed by: Jim Villwock, KPI Analyzer Leader, Human Investment Advisory, Inc.
Most SAP Customers have used Custom Code to fill business and operational gaps for their industry and company that were left by previous SAP standard code. Yet, few of these companies fully understand how much, how old, how often used, or if the code still meets IT and Business operational requirements.
Why does this matter? Estimates by West Trax with over 2,000 assessments suggest that an average of 45% of company SAP environments are custom. Yet 70% of that code is often unused, very old, and out-of-date. 100% is a potential audit and cyber risk. The result impacts system performance, cost, and risk. The good news is that optimizing your custom code is a major IT ROI Opportunity that pays for itself within months while improving ongoing performance, cost, and risk exposure. This is true whether optimizing your ECC while you wait to migrate to S/4HANA, until your migrations to S/4HANA are completed and even as ongoing changes take place after migrating to S/4HANA.
So, how can you quickly take advantage of this opportunity?
If you’re planning to migrate to S/4HANA
Use the West Trax KPI Analyzer to provide the as-is assessment for both your current custom code and self-modified system code as the initial step. If you don’t understand your code, it’s highly likely you also don’t know all the details you need to plan and budget for the migration
Also, use the KPI Analyzer results to look at S/4HANA code that might replace your current customized code after migration. If you attempt to migrate all your custom code to S/4HANA, you risk significant additional cost and performance degradation.
If you are using the KPI Analyzer, we recommend the following initial steps
Run the KPI Analyzer in one day to provide what may otherwise take months or even years. The KPI Analyzer IT Assessment ROI usually begins at 400% and increases when using the rescan option throughout the S/4HANA migration process.
In addition to the six levels of detailed facts about your current SAP ERP landscape, start with analyzing your custom code. While we recommend you use as much of SAP S/4HANA standard code as possible, there may be current code that your company may decide is still required to run the business or to create a unique competitive edge.
Start with analyzing your custom code into three categories. We recommend:
Very old and not currently used. Consider cleaning it up for immediate benefit. Waiting for the migration, which can take months or longer leaves you exposed. As an alternative, archive the code off your production system.
Custom Code that SAP Sndard Software can replace with higher functionality, efficiency, and code update currency. This requires analysis based on KPI Analyzer data which can also be fed into SAP Signavio for a more accurate should-be analysis, business case, and impact estimates to Business KPIs.
Remaining Custom Code that requires a deeper dive analysis to understand if it is still required for your business. For code that is determined to be needed, we recommend examining usage, cyber and audit risk, whether the code needs to be updated to fit S/4HANA requirements, or whether it is already current and usable in the S/4HANA environment. For code that is no longer needed, we recommend archiving for one year. If it’s not needed one year after the migration, consider discarding.
By taking these steps, customers have been amazed at the results. We think you will be too.
In addition to Custom Code Optimization, learn how the KPI Analyzer applies technical level 5&6 facts for more accurate business cases and business KPIs. We encourage you to review with enterprise architects and value engineers to see how these recommendations can help your success.
If you want to see all your actual As-Is KPI TCode usage data in one day, this costs you nothing using the West Trax Value Discovery method. Email or call me at: jim.villwock@hia-transformation.com or 1-678-485-1687
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