Split-screen of document migration from SAP Business ByDesign to another ERP system

Extracting Business Partner Data from SAP Business ByDesign During ERP Migration

When transitioning from SAP Business ByDesign to another ERP solution, one often overlooked aspect is the extraction and preservation of attached documents associated with your business partners. These attachments hold significant business value that extends beyond the structured data in your database.

The attachments often contain critical contractual information, correspondence history, terms and conditions and other documentation that forms the foundation of your business relationships. Without proper extraction, this valuable information may be lost during migration, potentially creating operational gaps in your new system.

The ERP migration process often focuses on transactional data and master data, yet these attachments provide essential context that might not be captured in standard data fields. They represent the institutional knowledge of your business relationships: copies of signed agreements, special pricing arrangements or delivery specifications that your team references regularly.

Most new ERP systems offer robust document management capabilities, but they can only manage what you provide. Downloading and properly cataloguing these attachments ensures business continuity and maintains your audit trail. This is particularly important for highly regulated sectors where documentation accessibility is mandatory.

It is important to develop a systematic approach for this extraction process:

  • Begin by identifying critical business partners and prioritising their attachments
  • Create a consistent naming convention and folder structure that will facilitate efficient importing into your new system
  • Document the relationship between attachments and business partner records to preserve these connections during migration

Remember that data migration presents an opportunity to review and clean your documentation!

You should clean your data by assessing the relevance and validity of attachments, discarding obsolete data while retaining those with ongoing business or legal significance.

The technical process itself is straightforward but time-consuming. Most organisations underestimate the volume of these documents and the effort required to properly extract them, there could be gigabytes or even terabytes of data to download. Starting this process early in your migration timeline allows for methodical extraction and proper quality control.

Fortunately, ERP Cloud Ltd offers a specialised solution that simplifies this otherwise manual process of attachment extraction. Our purpose-built tool automates the downloading and cataloguing of business partner attachments into folders for each business parter, with that folder name being the business partner ID all by providing the application a simple list of the business partner IDs to download for. This significantly reduces time and effort whilst maintaining document integrity.

For more information about our solution, please visit:

Please do also discuss this option with your ERP implementation partner or data migration team to determine how it can help streamline your transition process.

The effort invested in preserving these business partner attachments pays dividends in maintaining relationship continuity and operational efficiency as you transition to your new ERP solution. It protects the historical context of your business relationships and supports a more comprehensive migration that goes beyond merely transferring data points.