If you’ve been running SAP ECC for decades, your business has likely evolved through Mergers and Acquisitions, custom development, and shifting global demands. But now, the clock is ticking – with ECC’s end-of-support looming, and S/4HANA offering modern capabilities your legacy ERP simply can’t support. With digital demands accelerating and transformation budgets under pressure, now is the time to rethink your move to SAP S/4HANA – without the disruption, risk, or cost of starting over.
If you’ve been running SAP ECC for decades, your business has likely evolved through Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), custom development, and shifting global demands. But now, the clock is ticking – with ECC’s end-of-support looming, and S/4HANA offering modern capabilities your legacy ERP simply can’t support.
Still relying on ECC to run core operations? With digital demands accelerating and transformation budgets under pressure, now is the time to rethink your move to SAP S/4HANA – without the disruption, risk, or cost of starting over.
The hidden cost of inaction
Delaying your S/4HANA move might feel like a safer short-term bet – but it adds up fast. From duplicated development efforts and legacy maintenance to missed innovation and growing risk, standing still is far from cost-free.
Here’s what inaction really looks like:
Most organizations can’t afford the time or complexity of a full Greenfield rebuild. And a traditional Brownfield conversion can carry forward years of technical debt and irrelevant data. That’s why many are turning to a smarter middle ground: Selective Data Transition (SDT).
By embracing an SDT approach, you can combine the best of both worlds – moving only the data and processes you want, while leaving the rest behind.
In this blog, we’ll explore how EPI-USE Labs’ PRISM methodology – together with SAP’s Business Transformation Center (BTC) and Archive Central – delivers the flexibility, speed, and precision you need to move to S/4HANA on your own terms.
Our PRISM solution is unique in its capabilities to handle S/4HANA, Payroll, BW Bridge (for Datasphere/BDC) and SuccessFactors; with additional capabilities in the Industry Solutions space for data models such as IS-Utilities (IS-U).
What is Selective Data Transition – and why does it matter?
Selective Data Transition (SDT) is a modern migration strategy that sits between Greenfield and Brownfield. With SDT, you can:
- Move only the data that matters: filter out legacy noise, redundant records, and outdated customizations
- Modernize in phases: roll out by region, entity, or business function
- Run ECC and S/4HANA in parallel: minimize operational risk during the transition
- Reduce project fatigue and cost: focus on value, not volume
It’s not about re-engineering everything. It’s about deliberately moving the pieces that support your future – and leaving the rest behind.
Your approach can be more a brownfield shell approach or a greenfield core approach, but both can benefit from automation of selective data transition and transformation processes.
Why Selective Data Transition is different
At EPI-USE Labs, our software-driven Selective Data Transition (SDT) approach gives you the flexibility to modernize your SAP landscape – without the cost, complexity, or compromise of traditional Greenfield or Brownfield migrations.
Unlike a full rebuild (Greenfield) or a lift-and-shift (Brownfield), SDT lets you selectively move only the data, processes, and configurations that still serve your business – and leave the rest behind. It’s a deliberate, focused migration strategy that reduces risk, avoids unnecessary technical debt, and accelerates time-to-value.
With this approach, you can:
- Move only the data you want: Filter out outdated or irrelevant data and bring forward only what adds value.
- Migrate in phases, not all at once: Transition function-by-function, region-by-region, or by business unit – while keeping ECC and S/4HANA running in parallel.
- Reduce your data footprint: During the selective move to S/4HANA, Archive Central lets you sunset legacy data that still needs to be accessible – without burdening your new system. This secure, HTML5-based platform reduces HANA storage costs, simplifies compliance, and removes the need to keep legacy ECC systems online just to view old records.
- Adapt to your transformation goals: Consolidate systems, split company codes, or modernize finance – while maintaining business continuity.
- Accelerate time-to-value: Focus on the areas that matter most, minimize disruption, and avoid the cost of rebuilding everything twice.
This is a migration strategy designed around your business; not the other way around.
Why Greenfield and Brownfield often fall short
Traditional migration paths each have serious tradeoffs:
SDT strikes the right balance: it lets you keep the good, cut the unnecessary, and transform with intention.
SAP Business Transformation Center (BTC) + PRISM: Covering the Full Scope of Selective Data Transition
As organizations begin shaping their path to S/4HANA, the right tools can make all the difference. SAP Business Transformation Center (BTC) and EPI-USE Labs’ PRISM both support Selective Data Transition (SDT), but are designed to meet different needs within the broader transformation journey.
SAP BTC is SAP’s new solution to simplify and accelerate lean SDT scenarios. Fully integrated with SAP Cloud ALM, BTC helps you:
- Automatically inventory your ECC landscape
- Identify transformation objects and scope
- Slice data by company code or time period
- Execute lean data migrations for focused scenarios
It’s ideal for streamlined transitions where you’re slicing cleanly by company code or retiring legacy systems with minimal structural changes.
But real-world SAP landscapes are rarely that simple. For more complex transformations—like mergers, divestitures, enterprise structure changes, or phased migrations across regions or functions—PRISM extends the SDT model with advanced capabilities.
EPI-USE Labs’ PRISM adds value in areas where BTC alone doesn’t go far enough:
- Support for complex enterprise changes (e.g., merging CO areas, changing charts of accounts or currencies)
- Master data transformation and open item handling
- Support for industry-specific data models like IS-Utilities
- Phased migrations across multiple systems or landscapes
- Embedded logic and automation to manage object-level transformations
- Broader system coverage, including Payroll, SuccessFactors, and BW Bridge (Datasphere/BDC)
Together, BTC and PRISM deliver a layered approach to Selective Data Transition—whether your scope is straightforward or highly complex. And because we partner closely with SAP, we help clients leverage the best of both platforms to shape the migration strategy that fits their goals.
How it works: The PRISM methodology
The PRISM methodology follows a structured, proven framework that supports selective, phased migration with minimal risk. Each phase builds on the next to ensure a successful, predictable move to S/4HANA – from initial scoping through hypercare.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
You can start with a Free Pre-Flight Transformation Assessment, where we help you scope, assess, and identify key opportunities for SDT.
Real-world example: International Technology Company uses SDT for S/4HANA
An international technology company took a Selective Data Transition (SDT) approach to their S/4HANA transformation – executing a well-planned, selective migration.
Their goals were clear:
- Migrate to SAP S/4HANA 2020
- Keep only the relevant legacy data
- Align with new enterprise structures and processes
Using a Greenfield S/4HANA environment as the target, our client transformed core data elements as part of the move:
- Merged Controlling Areas and changed company-level currencies
- Aligned to a single chart of accounts
- Added group and global currencies not available in ECC
- Modified document splitting and resolved data quality issues from past New GL migrations
- Migrated data from 50 company codes into a harmonized S/4HANA structure
Rather than lifting and shifting everything, they chose a function-by-function migration, starting with Central Finance. This allowed them to connect key processes to a global SAP backbone – while keeping ECC systems running during the transition.
To support the transformation, they worked with EPI-USE Labs’ PRISM and DSM tools to execute a selective, transformative data migration tailored to the new system’s needs.
By bringing in only the businesses and data that mattered – and reshaping that data to fit the new S/4HANA structure – they accelerated time-to-value and avoided unnecessary risk and rework.
The outcome? A right-sized, right-the-first-time S/4HANA landscape that delivered business innovation from day one. Their success was driven by clear business ambition, a strong SDT strategy, and close collaboration with EPI-USE Labs.
The cost of inaction: Regretful spend
Still relying on ECC? Every new development or integration becomes a regretful spend – dollars thrown at a legacy platform that’s no longer evolving. ECC systems often run on outdated databases and infrastructure, and continuing to invest in them puts your operations and security at risk.
Why pour more money into an old ERP that you know you’ll replace? Each customization or integration made on ECC is a rework cost once you switch. That’s ‘regretful spend.’
With a hybrid SDT mindset:
- You retire obsolete systems and offload historical data cheaply.
- You keep non-production environments lean and secure.
- You leverage Data Sync Manager (DSM) to slice, anonymize, and test data efficiently.
This minimizes OPEX, keeps your landscape clean, and reduces overall risk.
Why this matters now
- ECC support timelines are firm: delay means risk.
- Regretful spend is real: stop wasting money on outdated ERP investments.
- Testing and compliance matter: lean non-production systems let you test properly without keeping full copies.
- Data matters more than ever: analytics, AI, and intelligent automation require the right foundation.
SDT using the PRISM methodology is your way forward: future-ready transformation built on strong platforms.
Ready for the next step?
