In recent times something is becoming obvious. It seems that companies who are long time users of SAP Variant Configuration are struggling with two main issues, and these are becoming apparent as they assess moving to S4HANA.
VC Modelling Approaches
The first issue is how they structure their models. Long time users of VC - I am talking probably from the mid-1990's - have models built using SAP Help. Back then, there were not good modelling practices and so companies have many preconditions, procedures and no clear idea how it all works.
One of my customers used our VC Essentials Online Training to learn good practice approaches. Now they have a baseline of what a good VC model should be, and now are proceeding to rebuild their VC models. This is a good move. Currently, they are on ECC6, and so when they move to S4HANA they will be in a lot better situation.
VC Golden Clients
However, there is another issue. How do you best manage your VC Models? One of the foundation pieces is to use a VC Golden Client. This is an SAP Client just for VC Modellers and has only VC Modelling data and no transactional data.
Then by using ALE the changes to the VC models can be distributed to QA clients and the live system.
This has many advantages, and implementing a VC Golden Client approach is possible if it does not currently exist. It just needs some thought, planning and execution.
In the video, I provide a 5-minute quick overview on the reasons to Use a VC Golden Client.