Dear friends of TM,
As we know from many discussions, the topic of migrating or transforming to SAP S/4HANA TM is very relevant for a lot of customers and consultants. Thereby, this topic has many aspects to consider and requires thorough decisions.
This blog post should indicate why this topic has so much relevance and should also give some 'food for thought' which aspects definitely need to be considered. So, this is not like an official guidance but a collection of topics to consider from my personal opinion when planning a transformation to SAP S/4HANA TM.
Besides it's important to mention that the transformation to TM in SAP S/4HANA Cloud private edition has basically the same aspects as it has the same software versions. The additional steps in RISE with SAP can be found here.
History
At first, we talk about the history of Transportation Management at SAP:
Even in our SAP ECC, we already had component LE-TRA as our solution for transportation management. The good news…this will still be the case in the near future from what we know now.
Some days back, we decided to build an own product for transportation management, called SAP TM. Starting with 6.0 / 7.0, we had an architectural re-design with 8.0 in 2010 which is still the basis for the latest release 9.6, which will be the last release of SAP TM.
Very important to mention here is the fact that the mainstream maintenance will end in 2027. There will still be support for the product afterwards, but in different maintenance models, as can be seen here.
In 2015, our SAP S/4HANA has been released, with component LE-TRA, and component TM was published with the release 2017. Here, we have the version 'basic' without any additional licensing and the version 'advanced' requiring another license. Thereby, TM in SAP S/4HANA can be used in the embedded version (aka 'running everything on one box') or in the sidecar version where a SAP S/4HANA TM is connected with an SAP ECC or another SAP S/4HANA.
Here, the important fact is that in 2030 the compatibility scope of LE-TRA ends. Means, that customers can't use LE-TRA anymore and need to move to the TM component to use transportation management functionality. Details can be found here.
Migration paths
So, considering the history of Transportation Management at SAP, we have the following migration paths to SAP S/4HANA TM:
The target system architecture could be TM embedded or sidecar, and:
- You could move from SAP TM.
- Or you could move from SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA, may be from component LE-TRA.
- Of course you could also be a new customer moving from any legacy system to SAP S/4HANA TM.
In the following we will talk about migrations starting from SAP TM and from SAP ECC / SAP S/4HANA, thereby especially considering the aspects of master data and transactional data.
I hope you understand that the explanations can't claim completeness and it's also hard to give any best practices as the decisions need to be made in every project after analyzing the specific situation thoroughly.
Migration from SAP TM
The possible migration paths from SAP TM to SAP S/4HANA TM are shown here:
So, you start from an SAP TM which is connected either to an SAP ECC or an SAP S/4HANA. You could in a first step move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, but that's not mandatory.
The following then depends on your target system architecture. If you want to run SAP S/4HANA TM in a sidecar scenario, you would surely transform your SAP TM to an SAP S/4HANA TM, again connecting to your SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA.
If your target architecture is the TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA, you could either move directly from SAP TM to the TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA or do that in two steps by first moving to SAP S/4HANA TM in a sidecar scenario.
Some key aspects when moving from SAP TM to SAP S/4HANA TM are the following:
- A migration tool is available for TM 9.5 / 9.6 to transfer customizing and master data (note 2769186)
- No tool support is offered in standard to transfer transactional data (freight units, freight documents, …) because:
- The document chain changed: Documents ‘OTR’ and ‘DTR’ are obsolete in TM embedded due to the tight integration with MM/SD/LE in SAP S/4HANA.
- There are special challenges in transferring archived or open documents.
- Basically, the following approaches are possible:
- ‘Phase-out’ SAP TM by completing all documents and ‘phase-in’ SAP S/4HANA TM by starting with new documents.
- Complete system transformation
Now taking a look at the transactional data, the exemplary document flow in the different system architectures is as follows:
When you run your SAP TM, you have your orders and deliveries in SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA and after integrating with SAP TM, the transport requirements are captured in OTR / DTR. From those, freight units are build and assigned to freight documents .
After the moving to SAP S/4HANA TM, this is still the same.
Only when you then move to TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA, we don't have OTR and DTR anymore. They are not needed anymore as the transport requirements from the orders and deliveries are directly captured in freight units.
The situation for the master data is a bit more complex:
Initially, the master data is transferred from the SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA via the core interface (CIF). On SAP ECC / SAP S/4HANA as well as in SAP TM, the customer vendor integration (CVI) converts customer and vendor data to business partner data and vice versa. Furthermore, plants and shipping points from SAP ECC / SAP S/4HANA become locations in SAP TM. Besides it's worth mentioning, that in SAP TM, we have the SCM product.
When transforming to SAP S/4HANA TM in sidecar scenario, the following changes:
- Data Replication Framework (DRF) replaces CIF, as DRF is always to be used when the target system of the data transfer is an SAP S/4HANA system.
- The SAP S/4HANA TM uses business partners, but for technical reasons CVI is still necessary.
- SAP S/4HANA TM now uses 'the' product which is different to the SCM product in SAP TM.
- Still, plants and shipping points from SAP ECC / SAP S/4HANA are transferred into locations in SAP S/4HANA TM.
When further moving to TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA, one of the beauties of the embedded version of TM is very clear…all the master data are on one box and no data transfer is necessary anymore.
Migration from SAP ECC / SAP S/4HANA
You start with an SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA system, and may be you have the LE-TRA component in use.
A possible first step could again be to move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA.
However, you again have to decide if your target system architecture is the embedded or sidecar scenario. This then determines the next step when either
- TM is used embedded in your already running SAP S/4HANA. See more detail also in this blog post.
- Or a new SAP S/4HANA TM is connected as sidecar to the existing SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA. Details to this can also be found in this blog post.
If you actually have LE-TRA in use, the next step is then to replace the LE-TRA:
- In TM embedded, LE-TRA and TM might have run in parallel, so processes of LE-TRA have to be migrated to TM
- In a sidecar scenario, you get rid of LE-TRA by either moving to TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA or by still using the sidecar scenario without the LE-TRA.
This step can of course also be done together with the previous step. Here, it's just separated to explain it in more detail and to show all possible options.
The key aspects to consider here are:
- Master data:
- Set up your business partner with TM specific data (mainly adding role ‘Carrier’).
- Create the transport network incl. transportation lanes / zones and locations, esp. because there is no migration of transport network data from LE-TRA.
- Transactional data:
- Activate existing orders / deliveries for TM integration with tool support.
- Customizing / settings:
- Define TM relevance of orders / deliveries incl. logistics integration profile.
- Define planning profiles and related transport planning relevant settings.
Of course there are many more possible settings to add, depending on your scenarios and processes. Just mentioning here some important ones.
When looking at the transactional data, the important thing worth mentioning is that the shipments are not migrated in the TM embedded or sidecar scenario.
Apart from that, the document flow is as already discussed before. The sidecar scenario has the OTR / DTR which the embedded scenario doesn't have.
Also the master data is similar to what we already saw:
In the sidecar scenario, DRF again is used while in the embedded scenario all master data are in the same system.
Conclusion
As already mentioned, it's nearly impossible to give any best practices as it's too dependent on the particular situation.
But the general advices are as follows:
- Be aware of the scope of the transformation regarding master / transactional data early enough.
- Choose your migration path thoroughly in each project based on the target system architecture.
- Search for tools and services that do exist, but don’t expect that any such can be provided for every step.
- ‘Think about the future’ -> Consider availability of innovations and possible further transformations.
Hoping this gives you some inputs for your migration plans and appreciating your feedback!
Best regards,
Michael
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