1 of my Data Migration Projects at ABB

Project 1: Data Migration from ERP Syspro to ERP SAP
i. Project Summary
1. Identification
Client’s Company Name ABB South Africa
Trading Name/s ABB South Africa
Company Size Over 150,000
Business Address Reporting Office:
ABB Campus, 2 Lake Road,
Longmeadow BusinessEstate (North
1644, Modderfontein,Gauteng,ZA
Contact Numbers Tel: +27 10 202 5597 [Reporting Office]
+27 10 202 5597 [Head Office]
Fax: : +27 11 597 8326
Web Address www.abb.com
Email Address
Nature of project Data Migration
Location of project South Africa
Name of your employer ABB South Africa
2. Duration
From To
Total project duration 08/2008 11/2010
Your involvement 08/2008 11/2010
3. Resources
Your Team Client
Project team size 200 200
Size of team led by you 20 0
4. Personal Involvement
Please list the phases of the project in w hich you were personally involved
Start Completion Phase Description
08/2008 11/2010 Data Migration Blue Print
08/2008 11/2010 Data Migration systemdevelopment
08/2008 11/2010 Data Migration Cleansin
06/2010 11/2010 Moc and go live cut over
5. Describe your role(s) and responsibilities, including the leadership aspects.
Roles and Responsibilities
1. My role w as the data migration lead. I w as responsible for alldata migration activities and a successfulgo live
ii. Business Opportunityor Problem

1. Describe the business opportunity or problem(s) this project addressed and how it related to the (internal or external)
client’s needs.
1. ABB South Africa has decided to migrate from ERP Sypro to SAP, ABB had 4 instances of ERP Syspro that needed
to be migrated onto 1 SAP system
2. Describe the scope and complexity of the problem.
1. There w as 4 instances of the legacy systemthat needed to be migrated onto 1 SAP system
2. Before data migration could start w e first had to consolidate all master and transaction data of the 4 legacy system.
3. Systems needed to be developed to monitor the data and a database needed to be designed to host the data.
4. Super user teams in business needed to be setup for the project of cleansing the data and creating data .
3. Describe your relationship and communications w ith client management / user management / end users.
1. Daily, w eekly and monthly feedbackand reporting needed to be given to the stakeholders of the project.
2. I had to manage a team of 15 data migration consultance and +/ 100 business super usersfor data cleansing

iii. Solution
1. Discuss your contribution to the solution, project or engagement including the rationale behind key choices. Please
enumerate the alternatives you considered and your reasons for their rejection.
1. My solution began by investigating the data consolidation for the 4 legacy systems master and transaction data
process like customers, vendors, GL accounts and materials,
2. Need to develop a systemthat w illhandle the consolidation and a database to host the consolidation data, developed
a systemin .net and database in SQL .
3. Next w as to cleanse the data, there w as more data required in SAP that the legacy systems had that needed to be
created. So I decided to extract the data into excelfrom the hosting data base and derived most of the created data
based on X and Y values
4. The stakeholders decision w as that 1 legacy company go live after the other, so there had to be a solution to cater for
new master and transaction data that w as captured in the legacy systemw hile the other one w ent life. I decided that
there should be dedicated staff in place to great master data in the legacy systemas w ellas the SAP system. For
example, new vendor has been greated in one of the legacy systems that has not been migrated to SAP yet, that
vendor needs to be created in the other legacy systems not yet on SAP as w ellon the company that is already on
SAP
5. Project management w as a key factor in this migration project, needed to setup a project plan and activities w ith
deadlines and staff involvement and monitor
6. There w as a requirement fromthe auditors to have a trail report to show that the data in Dev that has moved to
Quality and then production w as consistent. Idecided to w rite an SAPABAP report and created a functionalmodule
in all 3 environment. The ABAPreport w illcall all 3 functionalmodules and extract the data in question from their
instance database and compare the data of all 3 environments line by line
7. With Data migration there w as a requirement to produced and develop criticallegacy reports in the new SAPsystem.
I decided to put a hold on report development, first investigate w hat standard reportswasavailable in the SAP
systemthat w illsatisfy the reporting requirement business had, this saved this business a huge amount of money as
there w as no need to pay the implementation partner for developing customSAP reports that w as already available
as standards reports in the system
8. With all the 4 companies migrating to SAP, there w asconfusion and frustration with assigning authorizations to +/
3000 staff members that is going to w orkon SAP, management had a manual paper systemin place to assign and
monitor authorizations rolls to staff, Ihave decided to build a electronic w eb flow systemw ith .net with an SQL
database, w ith this systemthe assigning of sap authorizations has made it pleasant for managers to assign their staff
to the correct rolls for SAP
9. I decided to great a cur over strategy document: This document describes the plan and various cutover activities
during three staged Go-Live of ABB ZA fromlegacy systemto SAP ECC 6.0. The cutover activities checklist would
cover the activities for transport / migration of the SAP System Configuration, Development Objects, Master Data
Objects required for the business and Open Transaction Data at the time of cut-off period before go-live. The cut-
over plan w ould cover the activities and guidelines to ensure smooth transition fromlegacy systemto production
systemof SAP.
Objective of the document:
This document is to be used to communicate the cut over strategy to the Business and Project Management for
approvalof the proposed strategy. Subsequently, the cut-over strategy is to be communicated to all relevant team
members and business people. For the successfultransition, it is important that all the stake holders have got clear
picture of roles/responsibilities for the cut-over activity.
2. Enumerate and describe the key decisions you made, and the reasons for making them as you did.
1. One of the key decisions that I made w as to consolidate the data in a host database and from there export the data
to a different host database for data cleansing
2. Systems in the market w as available to use for data migration that come s w ith a huge price, but I have developed
my ow n systemwith .net and that is customized to the solution ABB needed for data migration and it also didn’t cost
ABB anything as it w as developed by me in-house. The systemcould be adjusted anytime to cater for unforeseen
problems w ith the data
3. I have also made the decision to derive created data automatically w ith my .net systembased on X and Y, this cut of
a huge amount of time and human errors for capturing new data

3. Describe the design method you used on this project and the rationale for its selection.
1. The design method consisted of tw o phases.
2. The first phase w as simple research ABB is an international company w ith branches in every country, what Idid w as
to consult some of the countries that has already been through a data migration process to see w hat approach they
took for data migration and to get lessons learned fromtheir project
3. The second design phase w as to get the hosting databases designed and the development of the system
documented and the data migration process allapproved by the stakeholder
4. List the design tools you selected for use on this project and discuss the rationale for their selection.
1. I used Microsoft VISIO for the finaldiagrams, as w ellas the simple pen and A3 paper for the actualdevelopment and
adapting of the technology to our situation. I find it far quicker to use an eraser and pen correcting fluid to develop a
solution. A quick revision or correction to the design can be made in a matter of seconds with a pen and paper, but in
VISIO it usually takes much longer to achieve. A w hiteboard also achieves a similar result.
2. For the data migration systemI used .net to develop the system.
3. For the hosting databases I used SQL and SQL scripts
4. Data w asextracted fromSQL to Excel, allot of VBA coding has been done in Excel to automate and checkinput from
cleansing staff
5. I used my usual problem solving process was again more than adequate for the task at hand. It consists of:
a. Phase 1 – What do I have and w here amI?
b. Phase 2 – What do I finally w ish to achieve or the final objective?
c. Phase 3 – Any required research
d. Phase 4 – What steps are required to get me from w hat Ihave/w here Iam to w here Ineed to be/the final
objective?
e. Phase 5 – What are the requirements for each step to reach the final objective?
f. Phase 6 – Implement the requirements for the steps to realize the finalobjective.
g. Phase 7 – Carry out the steps to realize the final solution.
5. List the major deliverables of the project that you w ere responsible for or contributed to, and summarize the reason
for their inclusion.
1. The major deliverable w as a cleaned and created data in a WBS template to hand over to SAP functionalstaff to
import into SAP.
2. This included all 4 legacy companies data consolidated and cleansed
3. The final thing w as that ABB had to have a smooth cutover fromSyspro to SAPand data migration played a big part
on that
iv. Results
1. Was your solution implemented? If so, describe the role, if any, you had in the implementation. If not explain w hy
not.
1. My solution w as successfully implemented in its entirety for ABB South Africa Data Migration process.
2. As the Data migration manager I had to oversee and took responsibility to deliver clean and created data of all 4
legacy systems to import into SAP

2. Assessthe overallsuccessor failure of the project. Comment on client satisfaction, attainment of objectives, and
ultimate versus proposed cost and schedule.
1. The project has been a success. The data migration costs have not only been reduced, but managed dow n to
expected levels..
2. All the existing infrastructure and hardware in place w as used. The only real “cost” incurred was the man hours
involved in managing and cleansing data. There w as budget and the data migration process stickfar within the
budget as the systems used w as developed by me in-house
v. Lessons Learned
In retrospect, what you might have done differently on this project and w hat lessons did you learn?
1. One very important lesson learned is to take the super users complete out of their day to day w ork to only focus on
data cleansing, stuff wasverytired as they had to concentrate on their day to day jobs as w ellas data migration
2. In this instance, I w ould have not changed anything that I did.

1 of my Data Migration Projects at ABB

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