The road to SAP S/4HANA is paved with data, and for many organizations still navigating this digital transformation, the journey is about a fundamental rethinking of their most critical asset. The challenge isn’t just moving to the cloud, but what to bring to the new system and what to leave behind.
Speaking ahead of Data Migration International’s (DMI’s) Digital Lounge @Lakeside 2025 event in Switzerland, Thomas Iseler, Vice President of Strategic Partners at DMI, discussed the real-world data challenges on the path to a modern ERP.
“For the longest time data has been an afterthought,” Iseler explained. “Then the shortcut was always to take all data.” However, he added that this approach can create a ripple effect of problems, from sluggish system performance to bloated project timelines and costs. Moreover, in today’s AI-driven landscape, that old mindset is a recipe for failure.
According to Iseler, a successful SAP S/4HANA data strategy rests on three key pillars:
- Embrace a Clean Data Core. The first rule of a modern migration is to be selective. “You should only migrate data that is relevant and that is needed,” Iseler emphasized. Bringing decades of historical clutter into a new, agile environment undermines the purpose of the transformation. Iseler added that focusing only on necessary data is key for system and process performance as well as the speed and complexity of the migration itself.
- Prioritize Data Quality. While good data has always been necessary for reporting and transactions, AI raises the stakes exponentially. “With the growing importance of AI, the relevance and importance of data quality has grown significantly,” Iseler noted. Without clean, reliable, and harmonized data, any investment in AI-driven business outcomes is built on a shaky foundation.
- Solve the Legacy Data Puzzle. Historical information is often essential for compliance, audits, and analytics, and traditional archiving is not a smart and efficient option. Leaving it scattered across aging, expensive-to-maintain legacy systems is a huge risk. The goal, Iseler said, is to figure out “how to make that data readily accessible, and how to make storing it transparent and cost-effective.”
Ultimately, the move to SAP S/4HANA is an opportunity to break from the past. It’s a chance for organizations to transform data from a liability into their most powerful asset. As Iseler concluded, with the rise of AI, data has moved from the periphery to the core. “It’s a complete reversal from being an afterthought. Now it has to be the center of the strategy.” For organizations embarking on their transformation, making data the central character in their story is the key to a successful outcome.
Watch the full interview here.
What This Means for ERP Today Insiders
Seek a unified partner rather than a point solution. Modern digital transformation is a complex web of interconnected data challenges, encompassing migration and quality, as well as archiving and compliance. Engaging multiple vendors for different pieces of the puzzle adds complexity, risk, and cost. For example, DMI is a strategic partner with a single, unified platform, JiVS, that manages the entire data lifecycle. It handles migration, data quality, harmonization, masking, and legacy data retirement from a single point of contact. This approach simplifies governance, reduces project timelines, and ensures consistency, proving critical for organizations looking to build a flexible and future-proof data architecture.
Your AI and cybersecurity posture depends on data strategy. An organization’s future capabilities in AI and its current security resilience are directly tied to how it manages data today, especially historical data. AI is useless without high-quality, relevant, and accessible data. By focusing on what Iseler describes as a “clean data core” and ensuring data quality is paramount during the transformation, DMI’s approach helps build the essential foundation for reliable AI and analytics. Additionally, legacy systems are a huge cybersecurity risk. They are often unpatched, difficult to monitor, and managed by a shrinking pool of experts. Decommissioning these systems and moving historical data to a modern, secure, and audited platform dramatically reduces the attack surface and helps ensure regulatory compliance for decades of data.
The time to move to the cloud is now, and it’s more feasible than you think. The primary roadblocks to migration, such as cost, complexity, and downtime, are directly addressed by a smart data strategy. By migrating only a small fraction of relevant data and intelligently managing the rest, the migration project becomes faster, cheaper, and less risky. Furthermore, a lean, clean system in the cloud is more agile, scalable, and ready to connect to modern innovations like SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and Business AI.