How some businesses are cutting years off their SAP S/4HANA migration

Companies are increasingly opting for faster, phased SAP S/4HANA roll-outs instead of big-bang implementations as SAP’s 2027 deadline to complete cloud migration draws near, says Abe Iruegas, Chief Revenue Officer at K2 Partnering Solutions.

Traditionally, consultants spend years designing and building a complete S/4HANA solution that gets switched on all at once. “That’s why many companies assume migration has to be a long, slow and complex process,” says Abe. 

While a full-scale transformation can be the right choice in some cases, many clients now prefer an incremental approach – breaking the migration into smaller, manageable phases instead of undertaking a massive, multi-year overhaul. “It’s like renovating a house one room at a time with a trusted contractor, rather than tearing everything down and rebuilding all at once,” explains Abe. 

A phased implementation reduces operational disruption and gives the business flexibility to pivot its priorities mid-project. A phased implementation helps minimize disruption and gives businesses the flexibility to adjust priorities as the project evolves.

“The goal is small-t transformation: focus on quick wins, deliver incremental value, and avoid locking the business into a five-year plan before seeing any ROI from S/4HANA. We’ve seen large enterprises successfully migrate parts of their systems to S/4 in just a few months,” says Abe.

For example, a company might roll out finance enhancements in the first half of the year, followed by supply chain updates in the second, each phase led by agile squads or pods.

To facilitate this incremental approach, many organizations are turning to application management services (AMS) to automate routine tasks and ensure stable operations on their existing on-premise SAP systems throughout the migration.

Companies have until the end of 2027 to migrate to S/4HANA, when mainstream support for on-premise SAP ECC is set to end, although they can extend ECC maintenance until 2030 by paying an additional fee.