Migration approach when FM live on the middle of production run

[Former Member]

Hello SAP expert,

How is your experience regarding with introduce FM live on the middle of production run? We plan to live FM in 1st July. How is your common experience about migration data of budget, actual and commitment to funds management. Using cutt of or migrate all the data? How is the pro and con?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Dewi

[former_member184992]

Hello Dewi,

I did many projects during 12 years and I experienced all the situations.

But in any case, I believe you should pay attention more in the commitmetns. Actuals are actuals and not too much to worry about. The same for the budget.

But commitments will be actuals one day and you need to define the initial date of migration that would be closely defined with the logistics area of your company. For example, how long stays one PO in your company until the invoice is made? Ok, you will have all the situations, PO´s with a GR and IR in the same day and a PO wich represents a commitment around the years and are opened long time ago.

You will not cover all the situations (dont worry about it) but you need to define a date that will represents for example 80% of your open commitments. The rest (specially the ones that are opened and will be consumed in more than one year) will be treated case by case and you will migrate PO (by using the reconstruction tools) by PO (few cases).

I suggest also a clean up in the PR´s and PO´s (delete it) that will be not used and are in the system only because someone forget to delete it. You must do this before you migrate. Sometimes, depending on the company, there are a lot of trash PO´s and PR´s that will be never used in the future. This will avoid trash data in FMIOI table for example.

Usually I migrated at least 2 years before the current year, but this also needs to be discussed with the Basis team due to the database size. Depending on it, you can migrate 5 years, for example.

Another thing that I remembered now, usually I suggested the company to stop the creation of new data in MM (PR´s, PO´s, GR and invoices) 2 days before the go-live. But again this decision needs to be made with Management areas involved from MM, FI, PSM, Basis team.

A big holiday is a good date to migrate but if it is not possible (for example only a weekend), usually friday the system is not used and all areas finished their normal work on Thursday to be able to migrate in a static database. This helps in the future.

Normally, my first date in one go-live was in the reconstruciton transactions because one important PO was not able to be invoiced that was out of the range date defined to migrate. But this will happen and you need a scheema to record this further changes to know which data you have migrated after the planned migration. Be aware that PO´s that are not included in the range date defined will not have PSM-FM data and will cause errors in MM area and FI area too. So, the communication and the directions that users must follow in the first date after FM goes live, is really important.

Usually, I asked for a cross-team in a room with phones and all company were advised that if they have any error in the first week first call this team. This team have people from Treasury, Accounting, material management areas and authorization to use reconstruction tools with my supervision. These people were usually like Team Leads or experts users of the areas. It worked really good but the company needs to be aware that some errors will appear in the screens and it will be a team available and able to resolve it.

The errors usually will be that one old PO or PR or a GR or IR will shows an error saying that no update will be possible. The errors will have different numbers, but with the document you can check in FMIOI (commitment) or FMIFIIT (actuals), it it is not there you should run the reconstruction programs to create this records and then the user will be able to finish the work.

By the way, all the projects that I participated to implement FM, it was with the production run, so I believe some information is useful to you since you will experience the same. Good luck and preparate the company to the first week. It will be hard work but it will be a great satisfaction when the storm goes away

I hope I could help a little bit

Best Regards,

Vanessa.

[mar_novalbos]

Hi,

I would only like to point out something:

Actuals are also important when implementing FM in a live (productive) system.

Take into account PO's which are still opened with GR's & IR's before the go-live. Those documents should carry a valid account assignment so you can continue operations after the go-live: posting subsequent GR's, IR's, payments and reversals or cancellations

It could also be a good idea if your customer processes the FI parked documents: approval or deletion before the go-live

Cheers and good luck

Mar