SAP Information Lifecycle Management

The Comprehensive Guide

Iwona Luther, Nicole Fernandes, Frank Buschle, Carsten Pluder

• Publisher: SAP PRESS
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781493219599
• eBook ISBN: 9781493219605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Master SAP ILM, from retention management to lifecycle management for custom code. Follow step-by-step instructions and walk through all major functionality including policy creation, legal case management, data archiving, and more. Whether you're on SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, or SAP ERP, you'll find the details you need to configure and use SAP ILM. Control and protect your data! Highlights include: 1) Retention management
2) GDPR
3) Data security
4) Blocking data
5) Data deletion
6) Archiving data
7) Legal case management
8) Data controller rule framework
9) Custom code data lifecycle
10) SAP S/4HANA
11) SAP S/4HANA Cloud
12) SAP ERP HCM

1 Introduction to SAP Information Lifecycle Management

A majority of customers didn’t pay much attention to the lifecycle of data stored in their SAP systems in the past. They didn’t want to delete the data because they may need it someday, and they didn’t know how to create a central location for retaining all data. However, the subject has increased its relevance since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force, and with SAP Information Lifecycle Management (SAP ILM), SAP is providing a solution that we’ll present comprehensively to you in this book.

What is the notion hidden behind information lifecycle management (ILM), and why has it recently been mentioned more often in conjunction with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the simplified blocking and destruction in SAP Business Suite and in SAP S/4HANA? Perhaps you’re looking for a profound answer to this question in this book. Perhaps you’re already familiar with certain aspects of this concept, and you’re interested in further in-depth information and details. For both cases, there are many things waiting for you. Let’s begin with the foundations and SAP ILM’s development history.

1.1 From Data Archiving to Information Lifecycle Management

A couple of years ago, the main work group responsible for data archiving at SAP was increasingly confronted with the question of how SAP ILM could be useful and what its benefits could be. These questions were raised in contacts with SAP’s customers, consultants, partners. This section lists some of the topics that help answer these questions, and that will be covered in more detail later in the book.

External reasons for implementing SAP ILM could be as follows, for example:

• Legal retention obligations
• Product liability
• Legal proceedings (blocking due to legal cases, e-discovery)
• Tax notifications, audits
• Innovative technologies

In addition, there are some company-internal challenges to which the use of SAP ILM could be a solution, as follows:

• High costs for hardware and administration
• Guidelines and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• Harmonization/centralization of the system landscape
• Mergers and acquisitions

SAP ILM, as a solution for the preceding requirements, can lead to the following positive results for your company:

• Reduced data volume
• Legal compliance
• Fewer risks
• Reduced overall operating costs

It appeared that the reason for the rise in interest among customers was the increasingly stringent legal requirements regarding the retention period and retention location of data. Customers seek to store retention periods for their data in the SAP system as well and also expect the system to inform them when these periods have expired and archive files can be deleted or, depending on the legal situation, even have to be deleted. The growing number of legal proceedings, and thus the need to identify the data affected by them and to protect it from deletion until the proceedings are concluded (especially when the standard retention period has expired), has also led to growing interest in SAP ILM.

[»] Data Subject to Retention

Data subject to retention refers to data that has been assigned retention periods on the basis of the following:

• Legal regulations (e.g., concerning tax audits or product liability)
• Company-internal regulations
• Other legal, statutory, or contractual provisions

The retention period can be a minimum or maximum retention period.

A further reason was apparently an increasing tendency toward harmonization and consolidation of system landscapes as well as the familiar customer desire to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO).

However, SAP didn’t have an answer to these challenges at that time. SAP Data Archiving, which was still in demand, simply didn’t include the option of defining retention periods for the data. Neither was it possible to include archived data in a legal case and instruct the system to delay the release for destruction after the retention period had expired to until the legal case was closed.

Finally, SAP Data Archiving couldn’t be used to harmonize and reduce the number of your systems when you had the desire to decommission some of them. This was also unavailable in the case of mergers, acquisitions, and when harmonizing and consolidating system...

Table of contents

• Dear Reader
• Notes on Usage
• Table of Contents
•   Foreword by the Fathers of SAP ILM
•   Foreword by DSAG
•   Foreword by SAP SE Chief Financial Officer
•   Preface
• 1   Introduction to SAP Information Lifecycle Management
• 2   Basic Functions in SAP ILM
• 3   Additional Functions in Retention Management
• 4   Simplified Blocking with SAP ILM
• 5   Blocking and Destruction with SAP ILM in SAP S/4HANA Cloud
• 6   Blocking and Destruction in SAP ERP HCM
• 7   Implementing an SAP ILM GDPR Project
• 8   System Shutdown with the Retention Warehouse
• 9   Managing the Data Lifecycle of Custom Code with SAP ILM
• A   References
• B   The Authors
• Index
• Service Pages
• Legal Notes