{"id":10363,"date":"2026-02-11T10:12:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/us\/?p=10363"},"modified":"2026-02-11T10:13:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:13:56","slug":"navigating-the-s-4hana-migration-part-1-key-findings-from-recent-industry-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retarus.com\/blog\/us\/navigating-the-s-4hana-migration-part-1-key-findings-from-recent-industry-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating the S\/4HANA Migration \u2013 Part 1: Key Findings from Recent Industry Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a> offers particularly valuable insights into the strategies companies rely on and the challenges they encounter in their S\/4HANA projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSpeed is paramount<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Integration issues influence almost half of all delays<\/h2>\n\n\n\n