S/4HANA migration without baggage: How smart archiving cuts costs and boosts automation

Ahead of the migration from SAP ECC to S/4HANA, many companies working with the world’s leading ERP platform face major challenges, including high costs, large data volumes, and fragmented process workflows. But with the deadline of 2027 approaching fast, most finance organizations still have not made the move and are looking for quick answers on how to plan, execute, and complete the migration without major operational disruptions.

At the same time, many of those in the beginning or middle of the migration project are postponing other innovation or automation initiatives, anticipating the additional burden of managing two significant system changes simultaneously.

In this article, you’ll discover how to achieve both objectives: migrating to S/4HANA swiftly without major disruptions or delaying other optimization initiatives across your organization. A thoroughly prepared information, archiving, and migration strategy can efficiently reduce the complexity of your data system architecture and create the ideal foundation for extending your new ERP landscape with advanced automation capabilities.

With Serrala’s content management and automation solutions, you’ll be able to future-proof your business well beyond a successful start in S/4HANA.

Why archiving matters for your SAP environment’s efficiency

Your ERP system holds a wide range of different data from customer account data and bank details to ship-to‘s, purchase order numbers, and many more. As information in your system grows, it can lower the operating speed in your live system, leading to delays in daily business activities, such as report run-times or transactions.

In addition, growing data volume drives up the cost of your system environment, increases data control efforts by your IT team, and adds complexity to your information lifecycle management. However, once information has completed its lifecycle (for example, in case of an invoice, from reception to payment) the transaction becomes “business-complete”. At that point, the transaction data and supporting documents can be moved out of your live SAP (or other ERP) database into an archive repository.

Archiving offers various key benefits for your system’s efficiency:

• Archiving information in a repository ensures that data can no longer be modified and keeps system costs low compared to storing information in a live database, as archived data doesn’t require ongoing updates.
• At the same time, it remains accessible on demand for audits, reporting, and compliance regulations.
• Archiving also relieves IT teams from trying to control the data growth in live systems to counteract associated storage costs, system delays, or potential operational disruptions.

The move to S/4HANA provides a unique opportunity to clean up your database far beyond a technical update and to rethink your data and document management strategy for leaner, more stable, and faster live systems. It also facilitates the implementation of a more cost-efficient content repository that remains intelligently connected to your live database.

Move or purge? Prioritizing data before migration

Before migration begins, finance organizations should ask themselves how to avoid moving obsolete or unstructured information into the new system. Archiving information that is no longer actively needed in a legally compliant manner before migrating becomes an important step to reduce data volumes and associated costs. The larger the data volume at the time of migration, the more expensive the move to S/4HANA, as HANA is priced per gigabyte.

However, correctly prioritizing the data that should be archived and retained for the new S/4HANA system is no easy task for many companies, particularly given statutory retention requirements which can vary by country or information type. On average, financial records must be retained for seven years to enable audits and legal reviews, while in countries like Germany, retention periods can extend up to 10 years.

Reviewing which data can be archived and transferred to the new system and which can be purged should be a top priority for organizations to ensure a secure, compliant, and cost-efficient system migration and maintenance strategy.

When old meets new: Security, compliance, and operational risks of legacy and S/4HANA parallel usage

Unfortunately, some companies choose to bypass the archiving step entirely and leave their legacy systems running, assuming that the archiving process is too time-consuming because it requires extensive coordination with IT and legal departments.

In this case, companies run the S/4HANA system alongside their legacy system(s) and use it for new transactions only. However, the parallel usage of old and new system environments is far from ideal and brings its own set of problems and risks:

1. Legacy systems increase security and compliance risks as they often no longer meet current data protection and IT security requirements. Organizations are obliged to securely manage data in compliance with regulations, such as GDPR, SOX, and GoBD. Modern archiving solutions automatically prevent updates to archived data, whereas older storage environments tend to lack this crucial feature.
2. A fragmented data landscape is created across new and old systems. The repository containing archived information may not be effectively connected and cross-referenced with the productive data in the live system due to the limited capabilities of the legacy environment, especially as live data is subject to ongoing changes. Manually managing the interfaces creates a significant maintenance burden for IT teams as well as data gaps and inaccurate overviews for finance teams.
3. The parallel usage raises maintenance and operating costs post-migration. Legacy storage systems or archive environments are generally more costly and complex than modern on-premises or cloud repositories, often requiring additional hardware as well as ongoing upkeep efforts.
4. Access to historical transaction data for reporting, special queries, or audits is limited. Data extraction from legacy systems is often time-consuming and requires close coordination with IT. Key users may struggle to retrieve archived information for reporting or audit purposes if the data is stored across different systems.

Avoiding the clean-up and archiving step before the S/4HANA migration doesn’t pay off, as it introduces finance organizations to a new set of security and compliance risks as well as additional costs for ongoing legacy system maintenance. Last but not least, it further complicates any future automation initiatives as the data landscape can grow increasingly fragmented.

How a scalable cloud repository reduces IT costs and migration complexity

Defining a data and document strategy early on will significantly reduce the complexity and costs typically associated with the S/4HANA migration as well as subsequent maintenance.

As a key component of such a strategy, content management solutions like the Neev Content Suite provide an innovative and cost-efficient way to facilitate archiving and migration by

• identifying and prioritizing the transactions that should move to the S/4HANA system,
• identifying information that is “business complete” so it can be safely archived,
• identifying information that can be deleted once retention periods have expired,
• transferring any open transactions and master data to the new system quickly,
• decommissioning outdated archive systems, once archiving is complete.

By managing the archiving and deletion process, the Neev Content Suite helped the Dr Pepper Snapple Group reduce its SAP database by 40% before the migration, which was ultimately completed in only 25 hours. The food manufacturer Kraft Foods was able to reduce its ECC data from 32 TB to 10 GB, consequently lowering the cost of its hosted data storage service.

Finally, the IT costs of operating a flexible cloud storage solution are demonstrably far lower than those of traditional storage media. The cloud repository is also limitlessly scalable, making it a future-proof and cost-efficient solution that aligns effortlessly with any business growth ambitions. Find out more about our successful data and document solution implementation projects.

Secure, compliant access to archived information in modern storage solutions

The Neev Content Suite ensures that archived data is immutable and retains all dependencies and cross-references that existed in the legacy system. More importantly, archived information remains available for access and search in the cloud repository.

Users can access the archived information directly from the new S/4HANA system or through a web interface, controlled by role-based access controls that enable flexible information searches by customer or supplier name or other criteria for audits or other purposes.

In order to facilitate access and navigation through the repository, the content management solution features powerful AI capabilities, including:

• AI searches to search, summarize, and manage archived information, including historical data and documents, efficiently across both SAP and cloud archives by asking questions in plain language
• Document summaries for quicker overview and prioritization
• Customized, quickly generated reporting views and user interfaces
• Migration and archiving planner to accelerate project timelines
• Interpretation of legal or compliance documents, converting them into system rules

How efficient archiving facilitates your automation strategy

Clean, well-structured data is the foundation for successfully implementing AI-driven automation across finance functions. AI can only deliver meaningful results when it’s trained on a reliable data layer. In contrast, fragmented, outdated, or poorly classified information limits the effectiveness of automation initiatives and prevents organizations from realizing the full value of their AI investments.

By reducing data complexity and optimizing the system landscape before moving to S/4HANA, a comprehensive archiving and deletion strategy creates the ideal conditions for implementing AI-driven automation solutions across accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payment processes:

• In accounts receivable (AR), credit managers benefit from the automatic capture, assignment, and storage of historical correspondence and document histories. They can retrieve credit investigations, assessments, and payment plans from the cloud archive at any time. Integrated credit and risk management, collections management, and cash application solutions further improve transparency by providing a complete view of customer interactions, payment behavior, and outstanding receivables. AI-powered cash application automatically matches incoming payments to invoices, while intelligent collections workflows help bring the DSO down by prioritizing collection activities, predicting expected payment dates, and enabling faster dispute resolution.
• In accounts payable (AP), invoice capture and storage can be easily automated using AI-powered document processing capabilities that extract, validate, and classify invoice data from various formats and channels. Intelligent workflows automatically route invoices for approval, exception handling, and posting, significantly reducing manual effort and processing times. In addition, a supplier portal provides real-time invoice status visibility and enables a more efficient supplier communication, while automated scheduling of payments and reminders helps ensure compliance with payment terms and supports the capture of available early-payment discounts.
• In payment management, AI-driven payment automation centralizes and streamlines outbound payment processes while providing full control across global payment operations in compliance with ISO 20022 and Verification of Payee (VoP) regulations. Automated payment execution, bank connectivity, and fraud detection capabilities help reduce manual effort and operational risk.

The Serrala Finance Platform supports your journey to a fully autonomous finance landscape by incorporating intelligent solutions across all AR, AP, payments, and treasury processes. Serrala helps finance teams streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and gain full working capital intelligence through our cloud-native, AI-powered automation solution.

By continuously refining the accuracy and efficiency of automated processes, AI and machine learning help organizations achieve lower processing costs, fewer manual tasks and errors, and faster, streamlined workflows across their entire finance function.

Automated compliance and lifecycle management in S/4HANA

Advanced, AI-powered platform solutions that support intelligent archiving and process automation can take country-specific requirements into account regarding:

• retention periods,
• data protection, and
• industry-specific compliance regulations.

Automated storage and retention rules ensure that all data and records are managed in compliance with GDPR, SOX, and GoBD as well as in accordance with internal and legal requirements. This includes not only documents but also customer orders, remittance advice, and transfer data.

An automated lifecycle management process regularly reviews data and ensures that it is deleted in a traceable and legally compliant manner once the prescribed retention period has expired.

The automatic enforcement of retention policies relieves employees of administrative burdens and ensures that audit, deletion, and documentation obligations are met at all times. As a result, data and document management remains continuously up to date, audit-proof, and efficiently controlled.

How can Serrala help you get ready for S/4HANA?

Serrala supports your S/4HANA migration by moving information to an infinitely scalable cloud repository, reducing your ERP footprint by up to 97%, lowering IT costs by up to 50%, and ensuring minimal disruption during migration.

Experience automated archiving of large data volumes—fully compliant and auditable within minutes—with the Neev Content Suite, available both as an SAP-embedded and cloud-based solution, depending on where archived information needs to be managed and accessed:

• The Neev Content Suite in SAP is SAP-embedded and designed for archive storage and access directly from SAP On-Premise or RISE environments.
• The Neev Content Suite in Cloud is browser-based and designed for cloud applications, non-SAP environments, and broader cloud-native access.

Key capabilities of the Neev Content Suite facilitating your S/4HANA migration include:

• AI-assisted archiving and migration planning: Helps you identify what to keep, archive, export, or purge.
• Recurring archiving of mature transactional data: Keeps your SAP system growth under control over time.
• Archived content migration and retirement of legacy systems: Helps you move historical data and documents into a modern repository and decommissions older systems.
• Access from familiar SAP screens: Lets your users retrieve archived information without changing the way they work.

Adapted to different operating contexts, the Neev Content Suite supports your IT and finance teams to retain, search, govern, and use archived data and documents effectively.

Read more about Serrala’s data and document solutions here and request a demo with our experts today.

Key Takeaways

• Treat S/4HANA migration as a data transformation project, not just a system upgrade. By identifying what should be migrated, archived, or purged, organizations can improve compliance, reduce storage costs, and avoid transferring unnecessary data into the new environment.
• Keeping legacy systems running after migration creates long-term challenges. Parallel environments increase operational costs, maintenance effort, security and compliance risks, and data fragmentation.
• Modern cloud-based content management provides lasting value beyond migration. A scalable archive repository enables secure access to historical information, supports audit requirements, and reduces the costs associated with legacy storage environments.
• Data readiness is the foundation of finance automation. A well-governed information landscape creates the conditions for AI-driven automation across accounts receivable, accounts payable, payments, and treasury processes, helping finance teams improve efficiency, visibility, and working capital performance.
• The Neev Content Suite helps reduce SAP system size by archiving business-complete data and documents. Archived information stays accessible through SAP, web-based access, and AI-supported search. Both productive and archived information can be managed in a structured and secure manner, simplifying finance operations post-migration and fully realizing the value of your new S/4HANA environment.

FAQ – Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between archiving, deleting, and storing data in SAP S/4HANA, and when should each approach be used?

Storing data in SAP S/4HANA means keeping information in the live system for active business processes and day-to-day operations. Archiving moves business-complete data and documents out of the live database into a secure repository while preserving accessibility for audits, reporting, and compliance purposes. Deletion should only be applied to information that is no longer needed and whose statutory retention period has expired.

How can organizations estimate the business case and ROI of archiving before an S/4HANA migration project begins?

Organizations should assess the volume of data currently stored in SAP, identify business-complete transactions, and calculate the potential reduction in HANA storage requirements. The business case should also consider lower infrastructure and maintenance costs, faster system performance, reduced migration effort, and the elimination of legacy systems. Together, these factors often create measurable savings both during and after the migration.

What role does AI play in managing archived data after migration, and how can finance teams use it to improve decision-making?

AI helps users search, summarize, classify, and retrieve archived information more efficiently without requiring extensive technical knowledge. Finance teams can use natural-language queries to access historical documents, customer interactions, payment records, and compliance-related information, helping them make faster and better-informed decisions while reducing manual research efforts.

How can companies ensure global compliance when retention requirements vary across countries, business units, and document types?

Organizations should establish automated retention policies that are based on country-specific regulations, document types, and internal governance requirements. Modern content management solutions can apply these rules automatically, ensuring that information is retained for the required period, protected from unauthorized changes, and deleted in a traceable manner once retention obligations have been fulfilled.

What should finance and IT teams include in an S/4HANA migration readiness assessment before moving data to a new system landscape?

A migration readiness assessment should include a review of data quality, data volumes, retention requirements, archive systems, integration dependencies, and compliance obligations. Finance and IT teams should also identify which data should be migrated, archived, or deleted, evaluate legacy system retirement opportunities, and define how archived information will remain accessible after the move to S/4HANA.