The Role of the Business Analyst in SAP Conversions and Integration Projects
In this session at BA-Day, we will discuss the role of the Business Analyst in SAP roll-out and transformation scenarios, such as SAP HANA conversions or the integration of subsidiaries during a carve-out. We will review typical checklists and outputs from a discovery phase, highlight common pitfalls, and share lessons learned for achieving a smoother and less disruptive transition.
The Business Analyst complements SAP experts and project leadership by helping the team better understand and structure user requirements — particularly when users have limited SAP experience or when the existing landscape has grown historically and lacks proper documentation. While project managers focus on timeline, budget, and resources, the BA adds functional depth: identifying dependencies with non-SAP systems, prioritising requirements, and translating business needs into implementable structures across SAP and its surrounding systems.
The session will also include a short demo of AI-supported data exploration. Using Cursor and a Jupyter Notebook, we will show how a Business Analyst can quickly consolidate and analyse datasets — for example sales data from Salesforce and business partner data from SAP — to guide discussions with SAP and data teams and better assess data quality, integration complexity, and expected effort.