Why Are SAP Customers Worried About S/4 Hana?

It recently emerged that SAP have extended their end-of-support deadline for legacy products, changing from 2025 to 2027 – with a transitionary period of three years, and a final cut-off point of 2030. Customers who aren’t on S/4 Hana by then will be transferred to a “customer specific maintenance model” – translated: your support will become much more expensive.

In the run-up to their deadline(s), SAP have waged a long marketing war in order to move their customers to S/4 Hana; not just the use of deadlines as an ultimatum, but also releasing positive survey results and customer numbers, to encourage any who are undecided.

However, Support Revolution is sceptical of SAP’s methods, because their results and statistics aren’t consistent with what we’re seeing in the wider ERP market.

SAP say everything’s okay, nothing to see here

In June 2019, SAP released the results of a survey. Analyst firm IDC had surveyed 300 SAP clients to report how many were ‘on the move to S/4 Hana’.

The study states, “The 300 participants […] spanned 10 countries covering three regions, from organizations with 1,000-25,000 employees across a multitude of industries and were either planning to deploy (73%), have in production (9%) or currently deploying (18%) SAP S/4HANA.”

The survey results suggested that, of 300 participants, 100 percent of them were either deploying S/4 Hana in the near future, or were already doing it. It is also worth noting at this point that this survey was funded by, and samples were provided by, SAP.

As you might expect, the figures SAP have given here seem a little far-fetched, compared to what other surveys and reports have found and the general opinion of S/4 Hana at the moment.

But how do SAP’s customers really feel?

Nucleus Research suggests that, “9 out of 10 customers indicated they would not consider a future investment in S/4HANA and appear to be following a slow tapering-off strategy as they evaluate other opportunities in the market.”

These are the sorts of figures we’ve been seeing, certainly nowhere close to SAP’s claims of 100 percent customer involvement.

In fact, the popular reaction from SAP’s customers is they’ve been reluctant to move at all.

In 2019, the Register reported on an annual member survey, in which we learned that of 467 user organisations, 58 percent of them had no intention of migrating onto S/4 Hana in the next two years. 27 percent of them had no plans to upgrade in the next three.

And these are just the potential customer projection figures; the actual sales figures speak for themselves. Numbers of customers adopting S/4 Hana have been fairly unremarkable; just 173 S/4 Hana systems went live in North America in 2019, according to an official SAP FKOM presentation at the beginning of 2020.

Considering that SAP currently serve more than 440,000 customers worldwide, 173 adoptions of S/4 Hana in North America represents 0.04 percent of their overall customer figures.

Are SAP starting to listen to their customers?

SAP announced their original 2025 deadline, and in the intervening time between then and now, it doesn’t seem to have had quite the effect that SAP intended. But rather than digging their heels in, SAP seem to be changing their tactics, in the favour of their customers.

SAP extended the deadline

Firstly, there’s the reasoning behind the extension itself. SAP’s 2025 deadline was their way of combining lots of individual products’ deadlines into one vast cut-off point. For a while, SAP seemed fairly adamant on this point, until February 2020, when the 2027 deadline extension was announced.

Around the same time, information published online suggested that SAP, or more specifically SAP’s CEO Christian Klein, had noticed that while organisations did want to move to S/4 Hana, larger organisations in particular just wouldn’t be ready for 2025.

Now, it may be possible that SAP extended the deadline with more of their own interests at heart than their customers’ – if an organisation can’t migrate, then it potentially won’t, and SAP lose an upgrade sale – it does demonstrate that SAP are responding to customer feedback.

It seems they are willing to be… not flexible, exactly. There is still going to be a deadline, after all, but they’re willing to bend the rules a little in the name of sales.

SAP refocused on on-premise

That said, SAP do seem to be in a process of taking a new path; or more accurately, returning to one they’ve walked before. In other recent news from SAP, they’re apparently returning to their roots, highlighting the importance of on-premise systems rather than a cloud-first approach.

SAP’s CEO Christian Klein doesn’t share the same ‘Cloud First’ mentality as his predecessor, Bill McDermott. Instead, he acknowledges the benefits of on-prem systems. He has made it quite clear he will listen to his customer’s needs and wishes.

Klein’s on-premise-friendly announcement is certainly a welcome and refreshing change after SAP’s pre-2020 behaviour, meaning their cloud fixation, establishing the 2025 deadline, and remaining suspiciously quiet on what would happen to customers who didn’t upgrade.

This may be because he’s realised this is where the majority of SAP’s customer base (and SAP’s revenue) currently is, but regardless, we’re glad to hear SAP talking more about their on-premise customers again.

Too little, too late for SAP?

So far, SAP have surveys that don’t match up with their customers’ sentiments (and are also funded by SAP), they’ve re-extended their deadline for the second time, and now they seem to be backtracking towards their on-prem roots.

This is good news for customers, especially given current world events and market pressures, but is it all too little too late?

The current focus of most organisations right now is not going to be on an ERP upgrade; even 2027 is looking unlikely as organisations hunker down and look for savings wherever they can.

We’re advising organisations worldwide to take a long, hard look at their current ERP setup and ask whether it really needs an upgrade now, or even in the next 3 to 5 years. If the answer is no (it probably is, given the lack of new features in S/4 Hana), you then need to consider how you are going to support your ERP software as SAP steadily increases its support fees.

Why are customers worried about S/4 Hana?

We’ve established that SAP’s marketing strategies are inconsistent; namely, their customer surveys don’t actually line up with their customers’ feedback.

But why are SAP’s customers hesitant in moving onto the newest product? What’s holding them back – and what should you, and your organisation, bear in mind before making your minds up?

SAP’s customers don’t want to play

Customers have understandably been cautious about moving onto S/4 Hana. Any organisations moving to the cloud-based, SaaS S/4 Hana would not see a typical ‘lift-and-shift’ upgrade – rather a full system reimplementation. Almost like installing a brand-new ERP system.

Therefore, any customisations that customers have developed on their systems become very difficult to shift onto the new cloud platform. The options of customers who want to stay with SAP generally come down to these three choices:

1. Deny the S/4 Hana upgrade, and, in 2030, be put onto the maintenance model;
2. Accept the upgrade, and make every effort to rework the new S/4 Hana software to suit their needs (an expensive and in some cases impossible option);
3. Accept the upgrade, and change working processes to suit the new S/4 Hana functionality.

Overall, the transition process can be complicated, expensive, disruptive, and very time consuming.

SAP have advertised that S/4 Hana will help speed up queries and increase the response times of your system; but until your teams become more acquainted with the new set-up, you might not see the speed you’ve invested in.

With all that in mind, is it any wonder SAP customers are reluctant to move?

SAP needs time, too

While SAP’s customers need more time to prepare themselves, SAP, too, could be developing and enhancing S/4 Hana.

S/4 Hana is, by existing ERP standards, an immature system, after all. It hasn’t had the years of development and enhancement that legacy products such as ECC 6 have had, for instance.

It could also, in an ideal world, be further developed to accept customer’s customisations more readily, or at least without the higher price label. SAP’s loyal customers have had years to customise and alter their systems to suit them and maintained them for extended periods of time. Now, threatening that business continuity, S/4 Hana either removes that functionality or charges a higher price to use it, with the risk of further complications when it comes to security patches or legislative updates.

We’re not alone in thinking that S/4 Hana needs more time to mature. In April 2019, Gartner expressed their opinion that SAP’s S/4 Hana still had a “significant” amount of platform development ahead, over the next “three to five years”. By their logic, customers should hold off moving to S/4 Hana until 2024.

Putting aside the need to develop infrastructure and applications; evidence suggests that SAP also need time to consolidate their transition process to move customers onto S/4 Hana in the first place.

After all, the 2025 to 2027 deadline shift was due to organisations being unprepared to move in time; but were SAP themselves ready to migrate that many organisations, some quite gigantic in size, and to that tight deadline?

Don’t join the growing list of S/4 Hana failures

Certain stories from the wider ERP market have provided good reason for SAP’s customers to remain where they are. The adoption and transition over to S/4 Hana has been, for some, fraught with difficulties and additional, unforeseen costs:

• Lidl lost €500m on an SAP implementation project.
• Miller Coors are facing legal battles, following an SAP ERP system introduction.
• Home24 and S Oliver both suffered implementation difficulties (KPS).
• Nanshan Life Insurance faced numerous incorrect outputs, caused by S/4 Hana.
• Leaseplan’s €100 million write off was caused by a S/4 Hana ERP failure.

The trouble here isn’t always a software or technical issue which arises during the transition – though that has happened to some of the above – but once again, it’s the matter of necessary timeframes to complete the migration.

S/4 Hana migration, or reimplementation, can be incredibly draining on resources. Yet, the entire time the transition is happening, organisations still need to maintain their BAU operations. If key departments are occupied with the transition, and/or if something goes wrong, it can massively disrupt business flow, and continues to cause a disruption until the issue has been fixed, and the transition process itself is finished.

And just as organisations have felt unprepared to take on the S/4 Hana transition, it’s highly likely that SAP wouldn’t have enough experts and consultants ready, to perform a smooth and relatively seamless S/4 Hana transition. To that end, SAP are possibly quite lucky that most organisations are holding off, rather than all moving across at once. That would have hit SAP very hard indeed.

(Not that SAP necessarily deserve sympathy on this matter. The deadline was SAP’s idea, so being unprepared to move organisations across before then should be their cross to bear, not their customers’.)

The support revolution of SAP

So, if organisations aren’t ready to move, and if SAP themselves aren’t fully ready to take them on, then it’s a stalemate.

This leaves a lot of customers not going anywhere, not receiving any innovation or added benefit from their existing ERP suite, and yet, they are still expected to pay SAP’s substantial support fees.

High prices, for a service of very limited return. In any other situation – gym membership, insurance, streaming services – you’d consider cancelling your contract and looking elsewhere. Which hasn’t really been an option for Oracle and SAP customers – until fairly recently.

A support revolution is quietly taking place for SAP’s customers thanks to third-party support providers. With a third-party support provider, you can:

• Ignore SAP’s deadlines (we support all software versions indefinitely);
• Make savings (over 50 percent per year) on one of your largest IT costs at a critical time;
• Continue getting regular patches, security and legislative updates.

And with the money saved on support and maintenance fees, organisations can redistribute their savings towards more important development and integration – essential given the current global pressures hitting nearly every industry.

Unlike S/4 Hana, third-party support has time on its side. It has had the chance to mature, establish itself well among the wider ERP market, and clearly demonstrated that a superior level of service can be provided for a reduced price.

Your priority should always be focused on your organisation, your roadmap, and your own directives. Use third-party support as a way of eliminating the issue of endless ERP changes and price increases – and to stave off the S/4 Hana migration a little while longer.