The Leadership Shake-Up Quietly Driving Up SAP Migration Costs

Only 39% of SAP's ECC customers have actually licensed S/4HANA so far. That means most of SAP's customer base is heading toward a hard deadline without a real plan, and now there's a second complication nobody was pricing in a few months ago, SAP itself is going through its second major leadership reshuffle of the year.

If you're negotiating a migration right now, both of these things affect you at the same time.

The deadline hasn't moved

SAP ECC is the ERP backbone a huge share of the world's biggest companies run their finance, supply chain, and operations on. S/4HANA is meant to replace it, and switching isn't simple, so plenty of companies kept putting it off.

That delay is catching up now. SAP's mainstream support for ECC ends December 31, 2027. After that, SAP stops issuing security patches, bug fixes, and compliance updates. The system won't stop working overnight, but every security risk and regulatory change from that point sits unaddressed.

A migration like this takes 18 to 36 months for a large enterprise, which means mid-2026 was basically the last safe point to start. Anyone starting later isn't migrating anymore, they're rushing, and rushing is where SAP migration costs stop being predictable. Consulting rates could spike 10 to 20% in the final year, and demand for S/4HANA talent could outstrip supply roughly three to one by 2027.

Why the leadership reshuffle changes your negotiation

SAP has just been through two executive reshuffles in 2026, both centered on AI, and they change who's actually on the other side of the table.

Muhammad Alam, who held product and engineering responsibility on SAP's Executive Board, isn't renewing his contract, and CEO Christian Klein has already absorbed most of his remit early. SAP has also consolidated Customer Success and Customer Services & Delivery into a new Customer Value Group under Thomas Saueressig, whose role has expanded to Chief Customer Officer.

For a company mid-negotiation, your named contact and escalation path can shift underneath you while a deal is still open. A vendor rebuilding its own commercial structure is also more focused on hitting internal targets than on giving you a great deal. That's exactly the moment SAP migration costs quietly creep upward, not because the technology changed, but because the people setting the terms did.

Whose terms you migrate on

This was never just about starting the migration, it's about whose terms you migrate on. SAP would prefer everyone lands on RISE or a cloud ERP subscription, but that isn't automatically your best path. Going independent or leaning on third-party support both keep real leverage on your side, as long as you negotiate before the deadline, and before SAP's reshuffle settles, forces your hand.

Why handeling SAP migration alone costs more

A migration this size eats time, headcount, and internal expertise most procurement and IT teams don't have sitting idle. Doing it alone means negotiating against a vendor whose commercial strategy is built around hitting margin, deadline or reshuffle notwithstanding.

Bringing in outside help isn't an added cost so much as insurance against a much bigger one. The businesses that end up overpaying are usually the ones that tried to navigate both the migration and the shifting SAP migration costs on their own.

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