Yancoal Improves Operational Efficiency with SAP S/4HANA on RISE System Conversion
“Yancoal has built a platform to enable its vision of an Intelligent Mining organization. With SAP S/4HANA we can further optimize our business processes and implement new capabilities to support our strategic aims.”
Maria Rodriguez, Manager Business Solutions, Yancoal
As part of its goal to improve operational efficiency, Yancoal initiated the conversion of its SAP ECC6 EHP8 system to SAP S/4HANA on RISE. Tasked with executing this conversion was a consortium of Lemongrass and a Global System Integrator (GSI). Lemongrass’s technical expertise in SAP system conversion coupled with the GSI’s functional system conversion expertise influenced Yancoal’s decision to award the project to the consortium. Our services would contribute to the overall SAP S/4HANA on RISE migration program, which was undertaken as a partnership between the GSI, Yancoal, SAP, and Lemongrass.
The Challenge
Before engaging Lemongrass on the SAP S/4HANA system conversion, Yancoal was operating its SAP ECC6 application on a partner-managed Cloud, which was hosted on AWS. The engagement with the Partner managed Cloud (PMC) was going to expire, hence the impetus to migrate to SAP S/4HANA on RISE. Instead of moving SAP to another PMC, they made the decision to move to RISE. While support of the implemented solution would fall under the SAP with RISE support construct, the solution would remain hosted on AWS.
The conversion of their SAP ECC6 system to SAP S/4HANA on RISE presented a few challenges. New solution architecture was required, many moving parts in their environment meant an increase in testing effort, and the numerous changes that were going be made to Yancoal’s existing business functionality and processes meant its end users needed training. All of these needed to be delivered in a compressed timeframe of 5 months. In addition to this, there were strong dependencies on effort from Yancoal’s previous provider and SAP RISE R&R which added to the complexity of the project.
The Solution
Lemongrass and the GSI engaged to perform the SAP S/4HANA system conversion from the source SAP ECC6 EHP8 system on Yancoal’s previous host provider to S/4HANA on RISE in a one-step process using DMO (Database Migration Option) with System Move. The focus of the solution was a “Lift & Shift” with a phased approach to reduce project risks. As is customary, Lemongrass aligned with standard SAP methodology, strategy, approach, and tools to perform the S/4HANA system conversion. This approach allowed Yancoal to validate the data quality through four iterations, such as Trial Migration, Development, Build, Test and Production phases.
The execution of the S/4HANA system conversion was broken into these 4 phases as part of the phased approach: Prepare, Build, Test, Go-live. In the Prepare phase, Lemongrass and the GSI addressed the functional and non-functional requirements related to the S/4HANA system conversion and created a migration Runbook. In the following Build phase, Lemongrass proceeded with the planning and converting Yancoal’s existing business-as-usual (BAU) landscape using the Runbook. During this phase, a development system was also converted to S/4HANA. With the conversion of the development system complete, the GSI ran system integration tests to validate the system and business functions in the test phase.
In the final, Go-live phase, Lemongrass performed a trial Production System Conversion to validate the Runbook and cutover plan. Utilizing the detailed Runbook and cutover plan which contained all the experiences and lessons learned at each phase of the project, Lemongrass successfully executed the S/4HANA system conversion of their SAP ECC production system. After the conversion, Lemongrass supported Yancoal in cutting over the workloads to SAP S/4HANA RISE and provided two weeks of Hypercare Support to ensure the production workload is appropriately supported during the initial post-Cutover period.
Results
As a result of the successful S/4HANA on RISE conversion, Yancoal now has access to a comprehensive SAP and AWS toolkit for all-inclusive business transformation. The move to RISE simplified the support model and the biggest takeaway is that Yancoal is now running on modern SAP architecture and can leverage SAP’s latest offerings to improve operational efficiency, streamline its IT landscape, and enable digital transformation.
Recommendations:
View all Case Studies | Lemongrass Services | Download Case Study
