Greenfield, Brownfield or Bluefield ?
There are many ways to migrate to SAP S/4 HANA. Which migration method suits your company best? In this article, we present the Greenfield, Brownfield and Bluefield approaches and discuss the advantages and disadvantages.
Greenfield approach:
The greenfield approach means a complete new start with SAP S/4 HANA without taking existing system structures or processes with you. "Greenfield" means starting anew on a "green field". The only thing that is taken along is the data. During the re-implementation, both the core and the surrounding systems are re-evaluated. This gives the opportunity to get rid of legacy systems that have accumulated over the past years or decades. In a complete "system reboot", both the SAP standard and the "best practices" can be easily integrated. Likewise, no compromises have to be made when integrating SAP S/4 HANA, but the potential can be fully exploited.
Since it is a completely new start, the greenfield methodology is often linked to long project runtimes. Employees must also be extensively trained in the completely new system landscape.
Brownfield approach:
With the brownfield approach, the existing SAP system is transferred to S/4 HANA. Since you only upgrade the previous system, you have a smaller scope of change and less risk than with the greenfield method. Nevertheless, with this method, the often high complexity of the system landscape remains and the full potential that SAP S/4 HANA has to offer is not used. If the systems in the company are still quite new and the introduction of SAP was based on best practices, the brownfield method is very suitable for quickly getting to SAP S/4 HANA.
Bluefield approach:
The Bluefield method combines the advantages of Greenfield and Brownfield, as it is a hybrid approach. If SAP systems are to be merged and the complete data history is relevant, the Bluefield method is suitable. With this approach, suitable and proven processes can be supplemented with new processes in order to then integrate everything together on SAP S/4 HANA.
What is
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud?
What is
S/4 HANA?
