Future ready with SAP S/4HANA Utilities

Like many SAP systems, ENGIE‘s SAP IS-U system, which is nearly 40 TB in size and more than 20 years old, is affected by the official end of maintenance in 2027 in favor of SAP S/4HANA. That is why the energy provider decided to start a strategic modernization project, which involved repositioning the customer groups and billing platforms. This process started with the B2B customer base. The goal was to migrate the entire customer base, including five years of data history, to the new SAP S/4HANA Utilities platform within a project duration of just 10 months. The maximum permitted business interruption was only 40 hours. This was a challenge, given the size of the legacy system.

ENGIE launched a call for tenders to find support for the successful implementation of this project. Together with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Natuvion came out on top and convinced ENGIE of the selective data migration approach. The decisive factors included Natuvion‘s migration expertise in the utilities sector and the availability of its high-performance transformation tool. In addition, the partnership approach of TCS and Natuvion as well as the proposal conditions contributed to the decision.

Analysis first, migration second

The migration project began with an intensive analysis of the historically grown SAP IS-U system. The relevant B2B data had to be identified and classified based on more than 10 million active customer records. Three companies with a five-year data history had to be migrated to the new S/4HANA Utilities environment, including various special constellations and Z developments. In order to accomplish this within the specified timeframe with minimal business disruption, ENGIE opted for the selective data migration approach right from the start. The Natuvion migration team also used the Natuvion DCS in the analysis phase, helping to speed it up significantly.

Standardized ETL process accelerates migration

Once it was clear which data was to be transferred to the new system landscape, ENGIE, TCS and Natuvion defined the migration implementation rules in joint workshops. All technical work was then handled by Natuvion migration experts and the Natuvion DCS. Natuvion‘s professional Project Management Office (PMO) also organized the coordination of the complex project. The migration approach followed the proven ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) principle, which is largely standardized for SAP IS-U. First, the migration-relevant data was selected and extracted from the source system. Mapping and transformation of the data followed, and eventually the data was imported into the new SAP S/4HANA Utilities system.

The challenge was the enormous size of the source system. Even though Natuvion was able to iteratively increase the quality and performance of the data transfer in several test migrations, one thing became clear after various adjustments to the read behavior, packet sizes, write methods and more. Without adjusting the systems with supplementary servers and storage capacity, the amount of data could not be migrated in the required time. Once the necessary hardware requirements had been agreed, however, the specified downtime of 40 hours was successfully met, both in a further test migration and in the dress rehearsal as well as in the go-live. This was not only due to special performance tests, but also to the close cooperation between the technical sub-project teams and the SAP Basis of ENGIE.

Time, budget and quality targets successfully met

Despite additional test migrations and initial system problems, the project went through the home stretch on schedule. Natuvion successfully completed the migration of ENGIE‘s B2B business on time and on budget. All with a downtime of less than 40 hours. Now the B2B customer base is right at home on the new SAP S/4HANA Utilities platform, which also allows ENGIE to take advantage of other benefits of S/4HANA technology to manage B2B customers.

Jerome Horvilleur, S4EC Program Director at ENGIE, is impressed: „Migrating a table with more than 7 billion entries from A to B within a few hours can make you break out in a cold sweat. But the task was mastered with flying colors by everyone involved. Despite the time, language and cultural barriers that the project members from France, Germany and India faced on several occasions, the jointly declared goal was to complete the project to the highest level of customer satisfaction. This was absolutely achieved with a 100% migration rate.“

What‘s next: now that Natuvion has successfully migrated ENGIE‘s first customer group to SAP S/4HANA Utilities with its B2B business, the energy provider plans to transfer around 400,000 more SME and B2C customers to the new platform in the next step. TCS and Natuvion are also waiting in the wings with the identical teams.

Read the Success Story with all the details.