How to automate data validation in SAP and speed up your transformation projects

Imagine you’re deep into an SAP transformation project, meticulously migrating data and ensuring everything aligns with your new system. But the sheer volume of data, the intricate relationships between data sets, and the constant risk of errors during transformation leave you feeling overwhelmed. Sound familiar?

Data validation is the backbone of a successful SAP transformation. It guarantees that your critical business information is accurate, consistent, and ready to function seamlessly in your new environment. Unfortunately, the traditional manual approach to validation poses serious challenges that can slow down your project, drain resources, and even jeopardize the entire outcome. Let’s talk about that.

Challenges of manual data validation in SAP transformations

What exactly makes manual data validation so problematic in transformation projects?

Data volume and complexity
SAP systems house massive amounts of data, often encompassing multiple legacy systems. Manually comparing and verifying this data across systems is a daunting task with limited resources and time.

The intricate dependencies between data points – like customer numbers linked to orders, invoices, and shipping details – add layers of complexity that manual processes struggle to address comprehensively.

Data transformation and mapping risks
During the transformation, data must adhere to new structures and business rules. Misinterpreting these rules, even slightly, can cascade into significant data inconsistencies.

Consider a scenario where a change to a product code structure isn't reflected perfectly. This could lead to incorrect inventory reporting, pricing miscalculations, and ultimately, dissatisfied customers or lost revenue. The last thing you want are issues that will have ripple effects across your whole transformation.

Effort and resources required
Manual validation requires a dedicated team of skilled employees working meticulously through spreadsheets or custom scripts. This process is time-consuming and prone to human error due to fatigue and the sheer data volume. Additionally, pulling these experts away from the core transformation strategy can create bottlenecks in other vital project areas.

But what if you could mitigate all these challenges by automating the data validation process, ensuring precision while dramatically accelerating your transformation timeline?

Things to consider when choosing a solution for automated data validation

Automated data validation addresses these challenges head-on. This approach leverages software solutions to streamline the validation process, ensuring accurate data migration while saving you valuable time and resources.

First, you’ll want to find flexible tools to align with your specific data structures and validation requirements. That way, you’ll be able to customize them to the needs of your organization.

Secondly, be sure to choose a solution that handles even the largest SAP data sets for enterprise-grade transformations. The ability to scale when you need to will allow you to take all future growth into consideration.

Finally, tools that don’t work with your current tool stack will completely disrupt the transformation. Look for options that integrate with other data management tools within your project landscape.

Overall, customization is particularly important in complex SAP environments. Tools that allow you to tailor validation rules to match your specific business processes and data structures offer the greatest benefits. This adaptability ensures accuracy during the initial migration and creates a reusable solution for ongoing monitoring and change management within your SAP environment.

Here’s how a dedicated automated data validation tool like SNP Validate can transform your SAP project:

Key features

• Experience-backed software: Tools built on decades of expertise in complex SAP transformations instill an extra layer of confidence in your validation process.
• Systematic, error-free migration validation: A meticulous, automated approach ensures data quality and prevents costly surprises from cropping up after your migration is complete.
• Automated comparison with highlighted issues: The software quickly compares data the between your source and target systems, pinpointing discrepancies and highlighting inconsistencies for rapid troubleshooting.
• Efficient resource utilization: By automating tedious tasks, your team can focus on high-level analysis, problem-solving, and strategizing for a smooth transition.
• Summary documentation generation: Pre-built reporting saves time and streamlines post-migration analysis and audit requirements.

Automation is the key to successful SAP transformations

Automated data validation empowers you to achieve faster, more confident SAP transformations. It safeguards data quality, reduces time and cost, and frees your skilled team members to focus on higher-value tasks.

Recently, we used SNP Validate in a project for a real estate business that faced considerable data validation hurdles during its SAP transformation. The traditional manual approach was proving time-consuming and was prone to oversights.

By implementing an automated data validation solution, they dramatically reduced the validation time from 25 days down to a mere five days per test cycle. This significantly accelerated their project timeline and boosted their confidence in the migrated data.

Another business that benefitted from automatic validation is the Austrian food and shopping center leader, SPAR Austria Group. In just one step, SPAR successfully made the move to SAP S/4HANA Finance and the cloud, leaving behind misaligned and outdated systems. Our software ensured data integrity throughout the migration, allowing for a modern, future-ready system.

Using a dedicated tool like SNP Validate will ensure a smoother, more successful transition to your new SAP environment. Ready to explore a more real-world impact? Learn more with our customer success stories.