SAP data migrations are now a key element of the business that is trying to transform its enterprise technology environment. But as the complexity of these migrations rises, the question of compliance with several standards and regulations appears to be more urgent.
Sreenu Maddipudi, an industry expert, has not only dealt with this challenge but also has been successfully implementing migrations while keeping compliance and governance a priority. Over the years, he has assisted in managing many big SAP conversions where he managed the data migration process successfully and compliant with the stringent guidelines. He oversaw the SAP S/4HANA migration for a global manufacturing company that complies with GDPR. His approach to data migration was thorough and included thorough validation and data archiving that became a benchmark for future projects. Moreover, for a multinational client, he optimized the migration schedule, thus, decreasing the migration time by a third while maintaining compliance and data accuracy.
Maddipudi also played a key role in integrating compliance and risk management into the core of SAP migration projects. He added, "I worked closely with legal, audit, and IT teams to identify and mitigate risks associated with data transfer and transformation". This partnership resulted in the creation of a governance structure that would dictate how the data collected was processed, in compliance with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA and SOX. Consequently, the organisation enjoyed less legal risks and improved image on data security and accuracy.
He also transferred more than 2 TB of data for an international hardware supplier, which had to meet the requirements of the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as completed an international data transfer for an international chain of stores. Each project involved detailed data mapping, testing, and validation to meet multiple data protection laws such as GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California. These high-stakes projects have given him a rather specific experience of the challenges that are inherent in compliance across jurisdictions.
"By optimizing the data migration strategy, I successfully shortened the overall project timeline by 35%, reducing it from 12 months to 8 months", Maddipudi shared. The validation in the process reduced the post migration errors by 40%. Additionally, all the project that he managed achieved compliance audits without any non-compliance findings and clients got certifications like ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance.
However, the professional faced certain challenges. Data conversion, especially when there are transformations, and the project involves converting data from old SAP systems is complicated. To this end, he worked with development teams to build reconciliation tools that would reduce differences between source and target environments. Another difficulty was compliance with the different local data protection laws during worldwide migrations. These complexities were well managed due to his proactive development of a sound compliance framework.
Sreenu Maddipudi anticipates that the future will see that the usage of cloud-based SAP solutions will add the factor of compliance to data migrations. With increased regulatory demands in organizations especially in data-intensive industries such as healthcare and finance, AI as well as machine learning will be instrumental in compliance. He suggested that the migration process should involve pre-migration risk assessment, cross-functional team, and the use of automated compliance check to ensure that the migration process is efficient, and the data is not compromised.
