Migration of Lotus Notes applications to SAP

Although companies today use a leading ERP system to support strategic business processes, there are still a large number of legacy applications that have been developed and optimized as isolated solutions over many years. However, the efficiency gains and added value that can be achieved by replacing these applications with digital processes and functions that are already integrated into the ERP system are obvious. "Our many years of practical experience confirm this," emphasizes CLC Managing Director Christian Bach.

Especially when a previously used isolated solution appears to be working well, the uncertainty of the specialist departments is great and the step to replace it seems risky: "After all, the application is technically mature and was only developed for this one specific purpose". There are also concerns about large amounts of data that would have to be transferred to a new system. And the question of whether the process can be mapped as well after integration into the leading ERP system as before also carries weight. Nevertheless, the assumption "never change a running system" seems to be misplaced here.

Christian Bach: The applications used have often been developed to meet a very specific need and have then grown historically. Needs and new requirements are regularly incorporated "on the fly" without thinking through and documenting this in an integrative manner. At some point, you inevitably reach a point where a lack of clarity, modernity or expandability gives you cause to check whether new requirements for the legacy system still fit at all and whether their implementation is future-oriented. The latter is often done in the course of business process reengineering, which we accompany.

Christian Bach: There are many! For example, you no longer want to accept the license models of the legacy system manufacturers within your own IT infrastructure. Another common reason is that the legacy system is based on outdated technology. Maintaining isolated solutions also means more capacity tied up in your own IT: keeping and maintaining many different systems in productive operation naturally ties up resources.

Christian Bach: An isolated database context of a legacy application is of little help for holistic process mapping. On the other hand, transferring an application to an SAP system offers the great advantage of being able to integrate business process data directly in the ERP system, thus eliminating the need to develop complex interfaces. As a result, all processes can be mapped more dynamically and flexibly in just one system. This, in turn, is received very positively by all areas of the company, also because it means that overarching processes can be controlled in the same way by users using core data and in a technically uniform manner.

Christian Bach: For example, the existence of different interests of the departments involved in the company can be quite challenging in project practice. The interests of IT do not necessarily have to coincide with those of a specialist department, so it is very important to mediate a little, allay fears and reduce concerns. Our many years of experience in change management is certainly very helpful here.

Nowadays, almost anything is technically feasible, but the challenge often lies in finding a convincing compromise in the implementation with regard to the "human factor". You should take a close look at which departments are the focus of an upcoming application replacement. In the IT department of a company, there is usually a clear tendency towards the use of exactly one leading ERP system, and therefore the replacement of isolated applications. They are concerned about how long the old isolated solution can be maintained with their own knowledge and expertise. On the other hand, users in the specialist departments are often of the opinion that they should not change anything if a certain workflow of the old application has already been established over a long period of time.

Christian Bach: Since we as a CLC mainly work with SAP and carry out projects, I can define this as a rather uncritical factor. In fact, the SAP applications we use in practice can basically accept and process "everything" in terms of data formats - of course, it always depends a little on the data quality of the source system to what extent it has to be processed there first. Theoretically, the challenge lies more in exporting the old format of the data from the legacy application if such functions were not included in the original implementation. In most cases, however, the extraction and import tools are suitable for all data formats, so there are no major technical challenges here.

A typical legacy database is Lotus Notes, which is still used in many companies.

Christian Bach: That is true, but the trend here is clearly moving towards a replacement, especially if a fully-fledged ERP system is already in place. Notes databases have taken on a wide variety of tasks in all companies, but these can also be easily mapped by SAP.

Christian Bach: In recent years, we have replaced many different isolated applications and integrated them into SAP. Applications for the management of product data, product development and change processes, as well as gate reviews for projects, were and are "typical" in the sense of recurring. But our projects also include databases for a company-wide application system or CAPEX investments with controlled approval processes. And we are currently supporting companies in the chemical industry in the replacement of productive Lotus Notes databases, within which study reports relating to chemical substances are entered, managed and released on a workflow basis. Within the company, the decision was made to discontinue the use of these Lotus Notes applications. As a result, there was an urgent need to provide a future-oriented application with which the sensitive "document-based" business processes could be seamlessly continued. A long-needed optimization of user-friendliness and the provision of modern, role-based apps and digital assistants for users play a major role here. Furthermore, our ability to build a comprehensive document type concept integrated into the SAP system and a future overall data model with reference to existing SAP business data is trusted.

Christian Bach: The initial aim is to enable the relevant documents to be exported from Lotus Notes - naturally including the keywording and metadata defined in Lotus Notes. The aim is to provide all relevant legacy data and documents in a structured form. This information is then imported into the new target structures of the SAP solution using the "CLC-PADD® Process Engine" in a controlled, sequential and rule-based manner, taking all dependencies into account. The existing SAP archive infrastructure is then simply used, another advantage of the direct integration into an SAP landscape! Based on the document type concepts, data models and workflow processes defined in advance by CLC, digital processes are ultimately derived on the basis of CLC-PADD® in the SAP system, to which the transferred information from the legacy system is assigned. At the same time, the need for UI5-based apps for selected user groups is derived, which we can generate with our CLC-PADD® S Suite+. And when our customers are ready to discuss cloud service models based on the SAP Cloud Platform, we are also ready for this!

Thank you very much for your time and the interview!

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