As part of an overall SAP data management strategy, it is really important to look at information lifecycle management. This is not just limited to data, but also includes any documents and also addressing legacy systems. A structured approach will result in huge cost savings and can also simplify migrations depending on your existing scenario.
Information lifecycle management
Robust management of data, guarantees ongoing benefits
Considerations for information lifecycle management
There are a few things that you need to consider when you are preparing your information lifecycle management strategy.
What is your starting point
You really need to understand what your current situation is in terms of data. Analysing how much data you have, how long you’ve had the data for and where all personal data is kept, is a good starting point. These become the inputs in your overall data strategy and will determine the best approach to follow.
Legal and business requirements for data
For you to create a retention policy, it is important to understand what regulatory requirements apply to your business. This includes – how long you need to keep data for and when data should be deleted. In addition, you need to take into account business requirements as well as personal data distribution.
Information lifecycle management is a value add to your SAP data management strategy - let us work with you to determine the best route for your business
How Proceed can assist you
We have worked with hundreds of customers on managing the lifecycle of their data and documents. Based on this experience, we can provide unrivalled advice on optimising your systems. The approach for information lifecycle management depends on the system you are currently using.
ECC6, CRM, SRM, EWM, SEM and HCM
Although there is a push for migrating to SAP S/4HANA, many customers choose to stay on their existing system for the time being. As we always say – it is always a good time to start managing your data. It will bring immediate improvements with the added benefit of more cost effective and simplified migrations in future, if that is the route you choose.
Assessing your data
We provide a free assessment that gives a high-level overview. For actionable insights we recommend a data deep-dive to enable us to create a data-driven plan. Let’s start that assessment as soon as possible and get a plan in place.
Analysing personal data
You also need to know where personal data is kept. With our GDPR data analysis tool we analyse the database tables looking for private data and map it back to both its functional source and potential ILM objects. This can then be actioned as part of the overall plan.
Archiving for SAP
Archiving data in SAP is at the heart of any information lifecycle management strategy. With the help of tools such as SAP ILM and our expert consultants, we will set-up your archiving taking into account the relevant retention policies applicable to your business.
Proceed Archiving Service
In addition to setting up your archiving, it is important that you have an ongoing approach to making archiving part of the business as usual processes. We can either do the archiving on your behalf or support your internal team or SI. You can have access to the experts.
Content management
When putting an information lifecycle management plan together you also need to take into account where the content will go. This is not only data, but also includes documents. Proceed offers a range of content management solutions to fit your needs.
Decommissioning of systems
There might also be instances where you decide to decommission a legacy system or even section off very old data. We will take a holistic view of your full SAP systems landscape and make and implement the recommendations that will have the largest impact.
SAP Business Warehouse (BW)
When you are using SAP Business Warehouse your information lifecycle management approach will be similar to other systems, however the tools that we use is different. The benefits remain the same – archiving and deletion of data to reduce cost and improve performance.
SAP BW Database Analyser tool
This tool allows you to control data volumes, determine the memory usage for InfoCubes, DataStore objects and PSA tables in your BW database. You can use all measuring values for comparison analyses to estimate the expected database growth for specific InfoProviders.
SAP BW NearLine Storage solution
If you’re a SAP BW customer, we can help you achieve unprecedented performance levels, with the SAP BW NearLine Storage solution. Keeping your current data in SAP BW, we will use SAP IQ to archive your infrequently used data.
SAP S/4HANA and Business Suite on HANA
Once you are on SAP S/4HANA, Business Suite on HANA or BW/4HANA it is critical that you manage your data volumes. There are added tools that can be applied to help you accomplish this.
Archiving your data
Whether you archived before the migration or you moved everything across, ensuring you have the leanest database size is important to control cost and prevent unused resources. Our data deep-dive, helps you achieve this.
Optimisation of "hot" data storage
One benefit of the HANA environment is that you have the ability to take the oldest data in your production system (ie. the hot data) and put this in cheaper storage. This data becomes what is known as “warm data”. The data is still fully accessible and editable, but costing you less.
Archiving for SAP
As in the previous generation SAP systems, archiving is critical within your SAP environment. Implementing archiving rules based on retention policies will not only save costs, it will also drive compliance. Wherever you are with archiving, we can be of assistance.
Proceed Archiving Service
To reap the full benefits of archiving it is important to make archiving part of your day-to-day. Our Archiving service does not just give you the option of us running archiving, we can also support growth management and deal with reporting.