SAP S/4HANA

2027. That is when mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC 6.0 ends. Extended maintenance runs until 2030 — at a premium. After that: no patches, no security updates, no support. For roughly 30,000 companies worldwide, the countdown to SAP S/4HANA has begun.

What S/4HANA does differently

S/4HANA is SAP's next-generation ERP, built on the HANA in-memory database. No more aggregates, no index tables — everything is calculated in real time. The data model is radically simplified: ACDOCA as the Universal Journal replaces dozens of FI/CO tables. The Business Partner replaces separate customer and vendor masters. Account-based and costing-based CO-PA merge.

For end users: Fiori interface instead of SAP GUI. For controllers: real-time reports instead of overnight batch jobs. For IT: a leaner data model with less customizing debt.

Three migration paths

Brownfield (system conversion): existing data and processes are carried over into S/4HANA. Faster, cheaper, but legacy stays. Greenfield (reimplementation): completely new system, best practices first. More expensive, longer, but clean. Selective Data Transition (bluefield): you choose which data and processes to take along. The pragmatic middle ground.

Costs? €250,000 to €1.2 million for mid-market companies, depending on complexity and customizing depth. Timeline: 12-24 months. The most common mistakes: starting too late, underestimating master data quality, and not migrating New GL beforehand.

The AI bridge: S/4HANA delivers a unified real-time data model for the first time — the prerequisite for AI applications in finance. Anomaly detection, cash flow forecasts, automated account assignment. Without S/4HANA, the data foundation is missing. With S/4HANA, finance becomes the AI use case.