Maximizing value after a technical upgrade requires focus

A technical upgrade remains one of the leanest and lowest-risk pathways to SAP S/4HANA — enabling organizations to transition with minimal disruption by focusing on essential changes, critical simplifications and targeted improvements. A technical upgrade really does just what it says — it takes the current ERP ECC system and completes the necessary tasks to upgrade it to SAP S/4HANA. 

While this technical upgrade approach does bring benefits across security, performance, compatibility and crucially, SAP support and maintenance — it does not unlock the full transformative power of a functional upgrade or newer technical capabilities. 

Following a technical-only upgrade, many customers are left with key questions about how to develop a roadmap of incremental projects to realize SAP S/4HANA’s full potential and reduce any carried-forward technical debt. Because process changes and adoption of new SAP functionality or features increase workloads, the challenge is how far — and when — to take this improvement and change forward.

Key questions often include:

• How can organizations leverage new SAP capabilities and innovations?
• What steps are needed to reduce technical debt and achieve a true clean core?
• How can genuine business improvement be realized beyond the technical transition?

This blog follows on from my earlier blogs, such as “SAP S/4HANA Migration Preparation Guide” and provides priority areas for organizations that have completed a technical-only upgrade from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA as the first phase of their journey to SAP S/4HANA. 

Five ways to chart a path from stability to transformation after a technical upgrade

1. Enablement of Fiori and intelligent technologies

To fully realize the potential of SAP S/4HANA, organizations must go beyond legacy interfaces such as SAP GUI. The Fiori apps and intelligent technologies (including AI, Copilot and Joule) represent major productivity and usability gains and build the foundation to support copilots/assistants and AI-enabled solutions.

Enablement should encompass both technology adoption and business empowerment:

• WalkMe can help with adoption through training/assistance and in assessing frontend use and experience, providing an effective complement to SAP Signavio, which supports process efficiency.
• Citizen-led innovation through low-code/no-code platforms, workflows, automations and AI/Agentic use is supported for SAP users, helping unlock more cross-system solutions. For example, Microsoft users (such as applications or office tools) can increase their interaction with/use of SAP without needing specialist SAP SME’s, developers or knowledge.
• The introduction of agentic and AI-driven assistants, guided by established governance, ethical standards, AI strategy and operational controls, should be carried out within each company's existing governance framework using approved and supported AI solutions and tools.
• Organization and change management will drive adoption and build user confidence, supporting business-led use and development. Users need guidance on embedded AI capabilities through to fully enabled AI solutions, which will support adoption, use-case identification and helps manage any backlog of delivery of AI solutions.

2. Develop a robust security roadmap fit for RISE

Security remains a dynamic and critical dimension of any SAP environment. Under RISE with SAP, organizations still retain accountability for many critical areas — critically, the shift from a transactional approach to security to a role-based one via Fiori.

Additionally, as Cybersecurity evolves rapidly, so too must your security posture. Particularly relevant to organizations with complex processes, such as make-to-order manufacturing or processes spanning multiple systems, is the challenge of effectively recovering and resuming operations following a cyber incident. In these environments, the recovery process can be as demanding as the incident response itself. Therefore, comprehensive solutions should encompass not only preventative security measures but also mechanisms to facilitate swift interruption and recovery in the event of an incident.

A robust security roadmap should include:

• Integration of security considerations across Fiori, new SAP functions/products, AI and multicloud environments, hence addressing new or updated security topics.
• Governance models that work alongside user experience (Fiori), AI adoption and hybrid multiple-cloud (and on-prem) solutions.
• Managing historic data and potentially platforms, as those platforms may move out of support (and thus be security and GDPR/PII risks).
• Continuous assessment and enhancement of the existing security framework, governance and controls.
• Alignment with enterprise-wide cybersecurity frameworks.
• Capabilities and functions to ease resilience, manage active incidents and recovery from threats.

3.  Ongoing business improvement requires focus on functional upgrades

Each functional area within SAP Cloud ERP and the newer cloud-based suite of SAP solutions offers continuous enhancements and many new capabilities. A structured, ongoing improvement program is essential to identify, evaluate and adopt what is directly available and new features/innovations as upgrades occur.

Key steps include:

• Establishing an innovation and value realization governance and framework to assess new items and prioritize adoption initiatives based on business value and ROI.
• Continuous review of new functional releases across modules is required. This style of review and assessment can be included in other areas, such as innovation, AI and data management. These topics are often interrelated, so agreeing on a governance approach across differing areas of innovation and new capabilities (including data, AI and other relevant areas) needs to be considered within a company.
• Process re-design and alignment to modern best practices.
• Process improvements, optimizations and enterprise automations to ensure overall efficiency, avoid delays and reduce human workloads.
• Addressing associated, data alignment, data quality and integration within the business and with partners, customers or vendors.
• Organizational change management to embed new ways of working, train and develop your talent base and engage them in delivery and improvements.

4.  Achieve a clean core

Achieving a clean core extends far beyond code remediation. It encompasses simplification across process design, data, integration, extensibility and operational models, as well as the underlying software stack.

To create and sustain a clean core:

• Implement measurable KPIs for core health across level-four processes and all developments and have a backlog to continuously improve based on agreed priorities.
• Leverage SAP Signavio and LeanIX for enterprise-wide process transparency, decision making and improvement tracking and WalkMe for training and adoption.
• Complete the necessary steps to establish and/or validate that you have a clean core. SAP has formal frameworks, measures and tools to assist this and there are many solutions in the market that can also help.
• Refresh your technical strategy, development methods, ways of work and architectural templates/patterns — taking account of automation and AI.
• Continually evolve tooling and governance to adopt new innovations and best practices over time.

5.  Understand the critical role of surrounding systems and enterprise context

While the focus may be on SAP S/4HANA, surrounding systems play a critical role in achieving an integrated enterprise architecture. Post-upgrade transformation must align SAP’s evolution with broader corporate digital initiatives.

Considerations include:

• Ensuring interoperability with other enterprise platforms.
• Aligning SAP improvements with wider business and IT transformation programs.
• Integrating SAP within enterprise growth and modernization strategies.
• Enabling more open access to SAP data or processes for other teams, reducing their need for specialist in-depth SAP skills or resources.
• Promoting a holistic approach to application rationalization and platform modernization.

Conclusion

These five areas form the foundation for a structured post-upgrade transformation roadmap and can inform considerations before or during an upgrade. They address the interplay between technology, business value and operational maturity.

For organizations seeking to accelerate innovation — whether through business transformation, enterprise architecture modernization or generative and Agentic AI adoption — HCLTech can support through our GenAI Labs and Innovation Labs.