Migration. How to get an SAP migraine!

Yes ladies and gentlemen. There is such a "pain in the ass" in the SAP world. And you will only feel the full blown of pain during data migration.

Why? Because most likely, your users will want to migrate all the historical data that they have in their previous legacy system. Hell, they might even want you to migrate all the manual documents since the company was formed!

But guess what, the general guidelines for an SAP legacy migration is "open item" and "balances" only. What does this mean? Well, let's say you have an invoice that has not been completed yet, so all data in the legacy system pertaining to this invoice is considered an open item. What about all the completed ones? That my friend, won't be migrated to SAP.

This statement alone will invoke the fury of the users. Why such limitation? Why do we have to irritate the users with this statement? The reason is due to the integrated nature of SAP. If you wanted to migrate the information about the invoice, most likely you need to feed some other information that won't be available in the legacy system in the first place. Therefore, migration of that completed invoice doesn't make sense.

So, in one hand you have the users who will pressure you to migrate all historical data available. And yes, they will make all sort of justification (including but not limited to "legal or statutory requirement"). And in the other, you have the "SAP guidelines" for a hassle-free implementation and no data-integrity issues.

My advise: Thread wisely.