AFS to S/4HANA Fashion Assessment for a Leading North American Fashion Company

Company Profile

The customer is a leading North American fashion manufacturer with a strong presence in both Canada and the United States. It caters to a diverse customer base across North America, distributing its products through multiple channels, including major retail chains, specialty stores, and direct-to-consumer platforms.

Challenges and Objectives

The client needed to replace their outdated SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution (AFS) ERP system, which was no longer meeting their evolving business needs and decided to migrate to SAP S/4HANA Fashion by April 2025. Their key challenge in choosing a migration approach was ensuring that the SKU management functionality they had developed for handling seasonal product changes could be retained in the new ERP system. The lack of accurate data on actively used custom objects in production further complicated the migration scoping process. Before the migration, the client approached Applexus to provide a rapid assessment, a cost-effective migration plan, and a detailed roadmap to ensure a smooth transition to S/4HANA for Fashion.

What we did

• Conducted a thorough assessment using Applexus CeleRITE to evaluate the current AFS environment, identifying 311 actively used RICEFWs that required remediation.
• Identified the custom objects that could be directly lifted and shifted and those that were impacted by J tables and required enhancements.
• Developed a project roadmap with milestones, timelines, and cost estimates to ensure a smooth transition by April 2025.
• Provided recommendations for a Hybrid/selective migration approach, balancing existing customizations with the new capabilities of S/4HANA Fashion.
• Addressed the complexities of SKU management, ensuring that the implementation could retain the SKU management functionality developed to handle the high volumes of new SKUs introduced twice per year.
• Proposed leveraging CeleRITE’s automation to streamline the migration of 71% of the RICEFW objects, reducing manual intervention.

Key Outcomes

• Rapid assessment using Applexus CeleRITE.
• Developed a cost-effective migration plan and roadmap. 
• Proposed a Selective migration strategy.
• Confirmed that 71% of RICEFW objects could be automated leveraging CeleRITE

Key benefits identified through the assessment

1. Identified critical elements that required manual migration to ensure a focused and efficient migration process, minimizing disruptions.
2. Confirmed that 71% of RICEFWs could be automated using CeleRITE, reducing manual intervention and saving time.
3. Recommended a hybrid approach of migration where valuable functionalities like SKU management could be migrated with minimal change management, ensuring continuity.
4. Quantified the impact of AFS-specific data structures and identified custom objects that could be optimized for S/4HANA Fashion migration.
5. Identified 93 RICEFWs impacted by J tables and recommended either a lift-and-shift or enhancement approach based on the suitability for each RICEFW.