From ECC to S/4HANA: ISO Professional Services supported LVR InfoKom

The central administration of the LVR in Cologne Deutz

Our established customer LVR InfoKom converted the ISO solutions from SAP ERP ECC 6.0 to S/4HANA. LVR's central data quality tool is master data creation and maintenance using the data governance process of the ISO Professional Services GmbH.

 

Data Governance Process: Initial Situation

LVR InfoKom is the IT service provider for the Rhineland Regional Council. The LVR works as a municipal association with around 21,000 employees for the 9.7 million people in the Rhineland. With its 41 schools, ten clinics, 20 museums and cultural institutions, four youth welfare facilities, the state youth welfare office, and the network of curative education aids, it fulfills tasks that are carried out throughout the Rhineland. The LVR is Germany's largest service provider for people with disabilities and is committed to inclusion in all areas of life. "Quality for people" is its guiding principle. The 13 independent cities, together with the 12 districts in the Rhineland, as well as the cities in the Aachen region are the member authorities of the LVR. In the Regional Assembly of the Rhineland, elected members from the Rhenish municipalities shape the work of the association.

Task for master data maintenance in Data Governance

The customer's wish was to establish a uniform data governance process with decentralized pre-entry when creating and maintaining master data. Since LVR InfoKom had already been using the Marlin Duplicate Check (MDC) solution for about 15 years, ISO Professional GmbH and its products and services were already well-known to those responsible. During a telephone conversation with the division manager for data quality at ISO Professional Services GmbH, Mr. Frank Fäth, LVR InfoKom reported on the upcoming change from the SAP ERP ECC 6.0 system used to date to S/4HANA and the desire to carry out decentralized pre-entry of master data. ISO then presented the Marlin Data Governance products for the business partner and material master.

SAP SE was one of the contenders. In the course of the evaluation on the part of LVR InfoKom, however, it became clear that a change to the solution offered by SAP would not be economical. The positive experience that LVR InfoKom has had with ISO over the past 15 years ultimately tipped the scales.
The customer's goal was to have the various company groups maintain their master data themselves in the future. The release of the creation and maintenance of the data should be carried out centrally by employees with the appropriate roles. This is easily possible with the ISO tools. For this purpose, LVR InfoKom requested a specific extension of the software to control the authorization for processing request documents. This requirement could be accomplished by a new ISO logic in the software.

 

Project course of the migration

LVR InfoKom chose the Greenfield approach for the migration to S/4HANA for LVR and is implementing this successively. To be able to use the ISO tools on the S/4 system for the new business partner object in the future, the ISO project team had to reimplement the tools and reconfigure the generic governance process. Various, partly complex requirements on the part of the customer posed a challenge, which could however, be implemented as far as possible.
The milestones were defined as follows: first, the implementation was carried out according to the best-practice concept. Then, the new system had to be available with its basic settings in a timely manner. Customer-specific enhancements (customer requests) then had to be implemented. This was followed by the adjustment of processes and solutions per the requirements defined jointly in the workshops. Integration tests, key-user training, and Go Live support followed. These steps were fully implemented over a period of only one year.

Results: Data-Governance-Prozess in SAP S/4HANA

At the end of the project, the main objectives and some extended objectives were achieved. These include the decentralized preliminary entry per the dual control principle as well as the introduction of customer-specific developments such as an internal control system, which is a quality assurance instance for checking the bank details in the activity bar. The Marlin Material Governance (MVM) product is also successfully used as a workflow solution for material master data (as used in purchasing, for example).

“The ISO Marlin Material Governance (MVM) solution is the standard tool for material master maintenance at the Landschaftsverband Rheinland.”

Nina Senz, Abteilung Geschäftsprozess-Lösungen, LVR InfoKom
 

Further adjustments are conceivable because the Marlin data governance process did not Go Live until January 3, 2022. For this reason, both LVR InfoKom and ISO are gathering further practical experience with the new system. However, the projected processes have been all working smoothly so far.
 

Prospects

Project management is planning further steps. For example, the introduction of the ISO Marlin Data Governance Business partner (MGB) solution is also planned for other LVR operations. As a result, they will also work with the successfully tested tools, such as the duplicate check and address validation, which are firmly integrated into the governance process.

To this end, LVR InfoKom is preparing the second migration phase from SAP ERP ECC 6.0 to S/4HANA for LVR so that other company divisions can use the ISO solutions for the business partner and material master data.

Ultimately, we plan to connect the various LVR departments, which will mean a further booking circle. These departments already use a business partner process. However, since this means that some of the LVRs and the affiliated companies' employees will be working with it, there is still “some way to go”.

“We at ISO are proud to have been able to count the Landschaftsverband Rheinland among our existing customers for many years. Furthermore, we are very pleased that LVR InfoKom, as LVR's systems house, will continue to include ISO Professional Services in future plans to optimize data quality and processes. This testifies to the special trust that the customer places in us. We place a lot of value on that.”

Mario Kalschne, Team Lead Consulting SAP at ISO Professional Services.