Staying on SAP’s path to the cloud can be riskier than you think, even if you delay the move to SAP S/4HANA.

The slow road to S/4HANA is problematic. On the slow road, customers continue operating the deployed Business Suite and continue to pay for maintenance. This ensures an eventual upgrade path to S/4HANA, but at the risk of falling behind on innovation now. There is also significant risk if S/4HANA is slow to mature or misses the mark – or worse – which has happened with some SAP products. IT leaders wonder whether it’s time to make some kind of change.

The fast road to S/4HANA has its own roadblocks. Customers can initiate a move to a new, unproven technology and application set now at a huge resource cost and risk, with the potential of being unable to fully support the business. While S/4HANA may eventually mature into a robust business platform, today it presents existing SAP customers with the prospect of a costly reimplementation that offers no obvious ROI. Most see it as new, expensive and risky to deploy.

Draw Your Own Roadmap

In reality, those are not the only choices. With third-party support from Rimini Street, you can cut the cost of ongoing support for SAP, reinvest the savings and avoid a forced migration to S/4HANA. Or you can use what you save with cost-effective, high-quality support to offset the expense of beginning the reimplementation of your ERP on S/4HANA – but at your own pace.

In this research report, Rimini Street VP of Market Research Pat Phelan explains how to lower the cost and risk posed by SAP’s roadmap so you can focus on investments that drive competitive advantage.