In the era of globalization it occurs more and more often that company divisions are purchased or sold. Also the centralization or decentralization of business processes often leads to the integration of clients, company codes, plants or other organizational structures in the SAP ERP system.

As at the conception of the company structure during an ERP implementation such scenarios are seldom taken into account, only at this point it is realized how complex split or merge activities can become. We were able to prove at multi-national companies that, when combining technical and economical knowledge, such tasks can be managed in appropriate time.

Special challenges occur when combining charts of accounts, stocks, different number ranges, etc.. Also elder data must be taken into account. How else should a reasonable planning be done in the future? Especially for the data transfer, a suitable method has to be provided.

Another important point is the question, how to deal with open, not accomplished processes (partly delivered orders and production orders, open invoices, commitments). Here, especially organizational measures should be determined. Customers, suppliers and other external partners are to be informed or arrangements have to be made. Which influences does the reorganization have on ongoing production processes; how can production downtimes be avoided.

Corresponding preparations and our know how avoid that time and effort attain the dimension of a new system implementation.

All data transfer procedures run according to the same basic model:

		Selection of the relevant data
		Data transfer to the new organizational structure (clients, company codes, plants ...) with the methods mentioned above
		Control of the data quality and if necessary correction
		Elimination of the transferred data in the legacy system
		Close-down of the old organizational structures (e.g. no new creation of orders in the old client)
		Technical closure of process orders
		Set of marks regarding finished works (final delivery, final invoice, reason for rejection, ...)
		Transfer-posting of material stock

Also the later input of transferred data in the correct sequence plays thereby an important role. It does not make much sense to take over open positions before the creditors or debtors. An exact project plan for these activities is an absolute must.

Before the transfer of basic data it should be resolved, which processes still are to be handled in the "old company" and which operations should be created in the "new company" (orders, process orders, customer orders). Often the transfer volume can already be reduced considerably by closing open orders, customer orders and other already started business processes in the old organizational structure.

Because of the necessary rework of such open processes, as a positive effect the system is subject to a thorough revision, which improves the data quality considerably.

The relatively high efforts for the integration and function tests should not be underestimated. Here all business processes have to be tested newly, because the overall client settings in the target system are often forgotten. These can lead to a down-time when going live.

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