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Your S/4HANA system is one of your company's most significant financial assets. While your IT team focuses on terabytes and archiving objects, the financial impact of this asset is clear on your balance sheet. Data Volume Management (DVM) is not a technical housekeeping task; it is a key financial lever for managing costs and maximizing the return on your S/4HANA investment.

This guide translates the technical benefits of DVM into the financial terms that matter to you.

1. DIRECTLY REDUCE RECURRING INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS

The primary recurring operational expense (OpEx) of an S/4HANA system, particularly in the cloud, is directly tied to the amount of expensive in-memory RAM it consumes. This is where DVM has its most immediate impact.

• The Technical Action: A DVM project reduces the data in the primary database, which means **reducing the HANA memory footprint**.
• The Financial Result: A smaller memory footprint allows your company to run its S/4HANA system on a smaller, less expensive cloud instance. This directly **lowers the hardware TCO** and results in immediate, predictable savings on your monthly cloud bill.

2. AVOID UNPLANNED INFRASTRUCTURE SPEND

Unmanaged data grows exponentially. This inevitably leads to a future budget crisis when the system runs out of capacity, forcing an unplanned, emergency capital expenditure (CapEx) for more hardware or a sudden, costly jump to a larger cloud subscription.

• The Technical Action: A proactive DVM program makes data growth predictable and manageable.
• The Financial Result: This strategy allows for predictable infrastructure budgeting and **avoids unplanned infrastructure spend**. It turns a potential fire drill into a managed, forecastable expense.

3. IMPROVE THE ROI ON YOUR S/4HANA INVESTMENT

Your company invested in S/4HANA to become a more agile, efficient, and data-driven enterprise. A slow, bloated system prevents you from realizing that full value.

• The Technical Action: DVM improves system performance by ensuring the database only contains relevant, active data.
• The Financial Result: Faster system performance leads to tangible business benefits that directly **improve the ROI on your S/4HANA investment**. This includes increased employee productivity (less time waiting for reports), an accelerated financial close, and a more agile platform ready for future innovation.

CONCLUSION

Data Volume Management is a strategic financial initiative. It is one of the most effective tools at your disposal to control runaway IT costs, avoid budget surprises, and ensure your company extracts the maximum possible value from its significant investment in the S/4HANA platform.