This article is the first of our three-part blog series on SAP S/4HANA migrations. Part 2 will focus on risks resulting from discontinued connectors and how to mitigate them with native integrations, and Part 3 will focus on a practical example.
With the end of maintenance for SAP ECC and SAP NetWeaver approaching, the pace of SAP S/4HANA migrations continues to accelerate. Several recent publications from user groups, SAP and consulting firms explore how organizations tackle their migration journeys. A 2025 survey by ASUG offers particularly valuable insights into the strategies companies rely on and the challenges they encounter in their S/4HANA projects.
Speed is paramount
One of the clearest signals from this survey is the emphasis on speed: almost two thirds of surveyed organizations plan to move all or most of their processes to S/4HANA as quickly as possible. This focus on speed nicely links to another dominant trend: the preference for brownfield migrations. Organizations are largely choosing to preserve as much as possible from the previous system and to migrate with no process disruptions wherever feasible. The likely goal is to keep processes unchanged, minimizing the efforts and costs associated with changing user behavior.
Integration issues influence almost half of all delays
Despite this pragmatic approach, the research also highlights that S/4HANA migrations remain complex initiatives. On average, migration projects take around 18 months to complete. On top of that, delays are common, and their causes are interesting: nearly half of all reported migration project delays are influenced by integration-related issues. This leads to an intriguing conclusion: even when the core migration project follows a well-defined trajectory, the solutions connected to SAP applications can introduce unexpected complexity.
The top three risks organizations mentioned when surveyed by ASUG are change management, project duration and customizations in legacy systems, with the latter being the most prevalent risk. In addition to settings and configurations, these customizations of legacy systems also include tightly integrated third-party solutions. By now, these have become an integral part of many organizations’ SAP landscapes. The move to S/4HANA has serious implications for these integrations: many widely used connectors from previous SAP systems are not supported by S/4HANA and where SAP NetWeaver used to provide an integration platform, BTP does not.
Integrations into SAP systems are therefore rightfully perceived as potential sources of delays and as risks to project success.
A basis for broader discussions
ASUG’s findings paint a clear picture of today’s S/4HANA migration landscape. Organizations are under time pressure, favor pragmatic migration paths, and are aware of various risks that can derail their projects.
In part 2, we will look at how businesses can leverage native integrations and preconfigured packages for SAP BTP to mitigate the abovementioned risks and delays.
