Greenfield or brownfield - depending on the initial situation, the decision seems simple and quickly made.
However, a closer look and a closer look at the details show that the SAP world is not black and white.
If one comes from a "tidy", current and functionally well-fitting ECC world, the brownfield approach, a purely IT conversion of the ECC system to S/4 on HANA, seems obvious.
On the other hand, one will have to ask oneself throughout the entire project whether one has not deprived oneself of the opportunity for renewal by adopting processes and programming that have "grown" over a long period of time.
Innovations inherent in the system, such as real-time analyses and aATP, open the door to new processes - and Fiori interfaces will not be rejected.
In practice, we have found with our clients that, once started, changes very quickly "go viral" and become more complex than planned.
It follows directly from this that the brownfield approach will also have a not inconsiderable business impact.
In the greenfield approach, processes, business logics, functionalities, etc., are redefined "from the scratch" before they are mapped in the system. This corresponds to a new introduction, with the advantage that technological experience values already exist and topics such as qualification, migration, etc. are manageable in their complexity.
The following applies to both approaches: process-related and functional effects must be identified and evaluated with regard to their degree of change.
Is the truth in the middle?
Read more in the expert interview with Martin Hummel
