With 2027 fast approaching, what’s your strategy?

With the 2027 end-of-support deadline for ECC fast approaching, all organizations still running ECC will need a clear strategy about what to do moving forward. Should you continue to run legacy software? And if you choose to move to SAP S/4HANA, given the anticipated skills shortage, when – and how – should you move? 

For most organizations, the challenge will be realizing this shift from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, which means now is the time to start laying the groundwork. Executives must understand the reality and challenges involved in such large-scale organizational change. Assessing your company’s options, building a business case for change and early preparation work are critical first steps that need a proper runway for successful completion.

This blog features ten lessons learned in making this transition and to help take critical steps. This list is based on my experience with many programs over the years, with the hope that it will help you be well prepared for and ease the journey towards a new strategic platform.

The list could easily be a top 20 or 30 list, but for now, let’s start with the essential items I would share first with companies just embarking on the move from ECC to SAP S/4HANA. 

• Document what you have and start preparing now: Most companies have some documentation from their ECC implementation and possibly from support work. However, over time this often lapses in completeness and correctness. The core scope of the business and functional solutions must be documented at a basic level. This does not need to be a complete detailed re-documentation, yet it does need to be available to support engagement with key stakeholders and discussions with all parties on the formal scope and approach of any program.

  Additionally, selected preparation can significantly help to de-risk the work ahead and build a solid initial platform for success. Agreeing on the right items to address early and effectively using available resources are critical first steps. Using SAP’s supplied processes and a practical fit-to-standard approach can mean larger requirements gathering and detailed business processes documentation may no longer be needed. Hence, focus on what is right for your situation.

• Have a clear vision and strategic objective: The business and supporting technical objectives and strategy behind any change program must be communicated clearly to provide the underpinning principles and framework. This vision and strategy will guide the project team in making business and technical decisions about the approach and implementation. Additionally, the vision and strategy need to support the business case and benefits expected from the program. This must influence the implementation and provide a long-term guide for the roadmap and the company's overall target solution.

  My recommendation is to address broader influences, such as:

  • Business aims and objectives - Any information that can be shared on expectations around business growth, acquisitions, divestments, movement into new business areas or new products or services.

  • Current or expected parallel initiatives - Any general areas or covered topics in other projects that may also impact the ECC to SAP S/4HANA program, such as increased automation, application of AI, central services, outsourcing or other equivalent initiatives.

  • Understanding of SAP’s solution and roadmap, as well as SAP’s methodology and typical delivery approach - SAP shares a wealth of information in this area, and you need to have a general awareness of both functional and technical areas. Yet there are usually specific hot topics that companies need to discuss in more depth, so make sure your teams have time allowed for this.  

  • Deciding if you will adopt SAP’s managed cloud offering “RISE with SAP” - This is a significant topic and other useful HCLTech blogs which can help inform and advise. From my client experience, most companies consider this and want to keep this option open in the future. If nothing else, RISE can’t be ignored and hence must be a fundamental strategic decision and influence on your roadmap.

  • Level of adoption and use of new technology and changes in approaches to solution delivery - For example, the level of use and preference for cloud solutions, Software as a Service (SaaS), Complimentary off the Shelf (COTS) systems and use of corporate and heritage solutions. How the overall strategy is impacted by these solution layers, through supporting solutions and services that will have ongoing use, can significantly impact a company's strategy. Hence, discussions and agreements with businesses and architects must be a factor. 

• Don’t underestimate the time needed from initial business case to project start: Expect a significant amount of time and effort to be spent just getting the program formally started (and in getting through discovery and design). I often see what is expected to be a two-to-three-month phase to extend the program to six to nine months. This start period is integral to get right, yet also needs tight management to avoid unnecessary time delays and budget consumption.

• Use and understand SAP’s best practices: People have used the phrase 'best practices' for many years when discussing SAP solutions, but they often have very different views on what this means. Within current SAP projects, 'best practice' has a much more specific meaning, with each best practice formally documented by SAP. These include documented process flows, supporting configuration, test cases and more comprehensive supporting items such as business roles. 

  Understanding SAP’s new best practice process flows, solutions and configuration is a critical first step in adopting standard processes and returning to a cleaner core. Projects can formally record the percentage of standards being adopted (per best practice scope item) to force increased visibility of this topic across the business process scope. In this way, a formal scope in terms of best practice items and level of standard adoption can be physically measured.

• Use Activate aligned with your own methodology – While SAP has a very clear methodology for implementations and upgrades, typically, there are also company-specific methodology components and project phase gates that also need to be adhered to. How SAP and it’s methodology fits into this needs upfront discussion and agreement. 

  Your team should understand SAP's Activate methodology and use it to guide the program phases, tasks, milestones, approaches and use of templates or accelerators. This will help ensure a suitable sequence of functions with the correct level of guidance, governance and controls. 

  Linking SAP's Activate to any broader company methodology can also help ease the company's Project Management and business change processes. Programs now typically exist in a more hybrid landscape, with more agile delivery and various supporting toolchains, platforms and services. 

• Understand what a ‘cleaner core’ is: For years, developers have had access to many of SAP’s development tools, SAP data and various methods to extend business processes. SAP has now addressed this via a smaller set of pre-defined methods and tools for extensibility and through a separate platform (i.e., SAP’s Business Technology Platform, or BTP) for developments linked via more open APIs and events. Now that the core ERP can be kept clean, what results is a fundamental shift in functional solutions and how they are realized technically.

  The overall benefit of the clean core is that it is a more standardized system that can be upgraded or added over time with SAP's innovations and product developments. Extensibility and extensions can still occur more controlled and be de-coupled from the application modifications, supporting more flexible and open (cloud native and cloud-first) developments. 

  All parties, including the technical teams, wider architects, functional resources, management and business representatives, need to understand and be able to adopt this significant shift in strategic thinking and technical delivery.  

• Have a good plan: For many programs, a quality plan is one of the core pillars that supports the broader team in realizing their joint objectives. Building up a high-level milestone plan that can be broken down into detailed tasks (with dependencies) is a fundamental part of the program. The good news is that SAP now provides the plan and detailed tasks with supporting delivery guidance for the Activate methodology and how they can be tailored to your program's scope. SAP's Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) supports this for core SAP solution delivery. 

  In addition, HCLTech has an “Activate+” methodology to support more agile and experience-led delivery. It expands the SAP methodology (and the underlying plan) to cover broader topics, including any non-SAP scope and utilizes Agile and DevOps delivery. 

• Get the right people: The successful delivery will ultimately be down to the people involved. Getting – and supporting – the right people will probably be the most critical task for successful organizational change. 

  Identifying people already in the business or technical areas is an obvious first step, but freeing up these people from existing roles and bringing in additional people or supplementing the company with specific skills or experience for this future journey is also crucial. Training and developing your team for the journey ahead must start early as the core team is identified and roles are understood.

• Take the business with you: Visualizing SAP’s new best practices in a clean core system and via working systems (such as SAP’s Enterprise Management Layer or HCLTech’s Base90 demo systems) is a great way to ensure the business sees the detail of business processes (as best practices) within a working system right from the start of the program. Involving the process owners and core team members helps to ensure the business is taken along the journey of discovery, design and delivery as the solution evolves. 

  The old waterfall approach and waiting for large-scale configuration and developments (or engaging the business only in User Acceptance Testing) are no longer the way to realize SAP solutions. Visibility through the initial best practices and ongoing solution refinement is now a continuing and parallel task throughout the program, ensuring business involvement and input at all delivery stages. Many parts of the delivery will have aspects of agile delivery and will be completing tasks earlier (termed shift left), so the business and technical resources need to be aware of these changes.

• Don’t underestimate change within the program: It is critical that the management team and delivery representatives from the business, technical and support teams understand the SAP S/4HANA journey and program phases. In addition to the program journey, there is also visibility of the company’s end-state business solution and supporting the strategic vision that must be communicated. Often, this visibility gets lost, especially with the gradual flow of new joiners. Hence, change management and communication are vital tasks that must be addressed up-front and in ongoing delivery. Do not underestimate change within the program.  

Overall, the above reflects that, in many ways, the challenges of shifting from SAP's ECC to SAP S/4HANA still reflect typical project and program issues, yet with some SAP specifics. Addressing these topics with a company-specific lens and detailed awareness of SAP's newer solutions is critical to ensuring a successful shift from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA.

It’s been done before, so can this be made more accessible for others? 

A huge wealth of supporting information is available and people can help you with this transition.

We at HCLTech recommend that the business case for change is made, a formal assessment of the current solution and an exploration of the scope, strategy and future roadmap also be instigated. Additionally, many initial steps can be made to ease the journey toward SAP S/4HANA and identify your company's path to immediate and early benefits. We can help you with access to best-practice SAP systems, industry solutions (if needed) and a supporting business transformation platform in a physical or virtual lab environment.