Data Migration for Business Partners: questions

[mohammad23sap]

HI,

My organization is starting a Data Migration phase from Oracle 12c to SAP. Our vendor is proposing the use of Excel sheet upload as the standard provided by SAP. Currently we are focusing on migrating business partners, and I have the following questions.

1. Business Partners: Partner General Data

For data migration testing and reference, we investigated the option of using the current system’s (Oracle) ID as SAP Business Partner ID. If this is doable, data migrate does not have to depend on SAP generated ID, then get the newly inserted SAP ID for each partner and store them back in current system’s database to migrate other business-partner-related objects with SAP ID. As far as I understand this option is available but once SAP stops using its own sequence, the user in the future will have to manually enter each new partner ID instead of leaving it to the system in case the migrated data were given SAP ID from the beginning (for example, if current system IDs are from 200-15000, SAP will not be able to generate new partners starting from 15001 and user will have to choose 15001 and maintain this sequence manually).

Can you please verify/correct my understanding?

2. Business Partners: Business Partner Role

As far I understand, the options available in SAP are

- T001 Agreement beneficiaries

- T050 Agreement suppliers & contractors

- T099 Agreement partner

- ZAFB Banks

While our current system needs more elaborate roles, for example: contractor, supplier, purchaser, beneficiary, financial institute, bank, external organization… etc.

Is there another place where a partner can be given a role without being restricted to the abovementioned SAP roles and still be used in filtering and handing partners in other SAP areas?

3. Business Partners: Partner Address

Unfortunately address in our current system is written one line (including city, PO Box, street… etc. while SAP structure requires splitting them into separate fields. The current data has been updated (in an external excel sheet) which is going to be used in Data Migration, however, probably we will need to update this sheet and add to it or completely delete it and migrate a new one. I read the below article (Delete all button section):

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_CLOUD/d5699934e7004d048c4801b552f3b013/0f38350490ec4025980a57be...

to see if deleting a data migration object is possible or not. My understanding is that SAP uses staging tables (not final tables) for data migration, and those tables can be fully or partially deleted as long as integrity and consistency is considered before such as action. In other words, it is possible to complete data migration on stages, and if the testing of a certain stage requires re-migration, SAP provides the option of deleting the migrated data (business partners in this case) and migrate it again.

Can you please verify/correct my understanding?

Regards,

[Saumitra]

Hi @mohammad23sap: You asked multiple questions in the same thread. 🙂
Would have appreciated if one question per thread was posted.

However to answer your query:

1. BP Number Range - In SAP S/4HANA Cloud you can use internal or external number range for BP number generation. Please check the configurations - 'SSCUI 102241 Define Groupings and Assign Number Ranges' and SSCUI 102296 Define Number Ranges.
Depending on the configuration you can decide what type of number range will be applicable for your migration of the customers/suppliers.

2. Business Partner Roles which you are looking for are available. Please check the following

Business Partner Role
3281953 - Migration of Business Partner with multiple roles.
2748819 - Migrate Business Partners with Supplier and Customer data
2637481 - Changing business partner roles in migration object modeler for object customer and suppli...

3. Staging Tables for Data Migration - I think you have misunderstood the concept of Staging tables. Staging Tables is a temporary area used by the Migration Cockpit for preparation & mapping tasks. It does not provide you an area to test the data migration before you are actually migrating the data in the backend application tables. For a better understanding of what the Staging Tables are, please check my blog - What is the Combined Staging Table Approach for the New Fiori App Migration Cockpit in SAP S/4HANA C...
So what you need to understand is Staging tables is different than backend application tables and it is exactly like the templates which you are filling in with the raw data. You use these staging table for preparing & mapping the data from source structure to that of the target structure. In your case Oracle system being the source and target being the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. So always keep in mind that the Staging tables are structured from the Source system point of view and in no way resembles the target application tables in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Having said that you can always delete the entries in the staging tables and re-prepare.

Hope I was able to answer your queries.

Thanks,
Saumi