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Dive Brief:
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SAP introduced five line-of-business software bundles to simplify migrations to S/4HANA cloud-based ERP, the company said Tuesday at its annual SAP Sapphire conference.
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The Business Suite packages are customized for finance, supply chain, human resources, procurement and customer experience. Each bundle integrates the S/4HANA ERP system with the SAP Business Data Cloud analytics platform, SAP Business AI tools and the SAP Business Technology Platform control plane, the company said in the announcement.
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The move marks a shift in strategy as the company moves closer to ending mainstream support for its on-premises ERP Central Component systems in 2027. “This is a massive simplification,” Jan Gilg, chief revenue officer and president, SAP Americas and Global Business Suite, told CIO Dive. “It's no longer the customer’s job to integrate those things together anymore.”
Dive Insight:
SAP’s singular focus on moving its massive ECC base to S/4HANA has evolved into a multipronged effort to lure customers to the cloud.
In January, the company extended business continuity support for some customers who are planning a migration to 2033. SAP partnered with Databricks to deliver the Business Data Cloud analytics platform the following month.
Last year, SAP added migration credits to the RISE with SAP incentive program, armed its Joule AI assistant with agentic tools and rolled out industry-tailored integrations for manufacturing and retail businesses. To help ease cloud transitions, CEO Christian Klein pledged to provide a dedicated enterprise architect to every RISE customer in July 2024.
“For a lot of our installed-base customers, especially the large customers, it's really difficult to move core ERP in one step to a full SaaS model,” Gilg said. “Often they have customizations from decades ago.”
Incrementally untangling accumulated technical debt through smaller, line-of-business migrations is an easier lift, he added.
IT services firm Kyndryl prioritized the finance function to ease an 18-month RISE with SAP migration as it decoupled its tech stack from former parent company IBM. Kyndryl has since built a RISE consulting practice around the experience.
“If you peel back the onion and you look into the finance premium package, you will see it's basically an administrative ERP,” Gilg said. “You have core finance capabilities, operational procurement, sales order management, project management, Sales Cloud and Concur for travel and expense entitlements — everything a company that's not manufacturing anything needs to run their core processes.”