Build Your S/4HANA Migration Plan

With SAP’s end of mainstream maintenance for ECC approaching, migration to S/4HANA is no longer a question of “if,” but a question of “how” and “how well.” For many organizations, the easiest path is to leave the migration decisions to implementation partners – a move that could prove to be the riskiest. This research provides a structured approach to help SAP and ERP leaders make informed strategic decisions and walk into migration conversations with full understanding of the interdependencies between critical migration decisions and their long-term implications.

S/4HANA migrations are large-scale, complex transformations with requirements and implications that are often not fully understood. A technical implementation partner is essential to execute the migration; however, they do not have the organizational context to make strategic decisions – a responsibility that must remain with your organization. While there is no one path to a perfect migration, there is certainly a wrong one: migrating without understanding the associated risks and trade-offs.

1. Do not underestimate the scope.

S/4HANA migrations should be treated as full ERP transformations, not simply system upgrades. Migration stakeholders must understand the current state and define clear success metrics to support informed decision-making throughout the migration journey.

2. Decisions cannot be made in isolation.

Critical S/4HANA migration decisions are deeply interconnected. Optimizing for one often introduces constraints on another. Evaluate the migration path holistically, weighing what you may be giving up against the value you expect to gain.

3. Ownership cannot be outsourced.

Implementation partners can support technical delivery, but the organization must provide the direction, maintain alignment, and ensure the migration stays anchored to business objectives. Leaders must stay accountable for the decisions that shape long-term ERP value.

Leverage this research to build an informed S/4HANA migration path

This research provides a structured methodology, along with practical tools and guided assessments, for SAP internal teams to translate strategic intent, readiness, and complexity into a cohesive, pressure-tested plan. This enables the team to own critical migration decisions before engaging with implementation partners.

Discover your current SAP landscape by understanding your internal constraints, defining your strategic intent, and assessing your current complexity.
Define your migration path by assessing the benefits and trade-offs, enabling you to select the optimal migration plan based on your migration priorities.
Prepare your migration by formalizing governance processes and creating a clear communication plan to hand over to your implementation partner.

Build Your S/4HANA Migration Plan Research & Tools

1. Build Your S/4HANA Migration Path Storyboard – A structured approach to help SAP migration teams develop a migration strategy and lead the S/4HANA migration with implementation partners.

This research walks you through a three-phase methodology to discover your current state, define your migration path, and prepare for execution with your technical partner.

Assess your organization’s internal capabilities and technical complexity to establish a foundation for your migration path.
Evaluate migration strategies and deployment methods to identify the path best aligned to your priorities.
Formalize project governance and rollout expectations in a clear plan for your implementation partner.

2. S/4HANA Project Management Worksheet – A structured template to help you set up and formalize the internal team that will support your S/4HANA migration.

This worksheet helps you assign key roles, define governance processes, and document organizational realities, so your migration team operates with clear accountability.

Assign your project manager, project sponsor, and key supporting roles across the business.
Define governance processes, key metrics, and activities that are in or out of scope.
Document organizational constraints and timelines to anchor downstream decision-making.

3. S/4HANA Complexity Assessment – An Excel tool to help you assess the overall technical complexity of your current ECC system and guide your migration decisions.

This worksheet evaluates the migration’s technical complexity across four core areas and provides a general understanding of how complex your environment is before you engage a technical executor.

Assess complexity across data, business processes, customizations, and integrations to identify key areas requiring focused remediation.
Leverage SAP's Readiness Check 2.0 to assess your current ECC system’s readiness to migrate to S/4HANA.
Surface high-complexity areas to flag for your technical executor, so their detailed discovery builds on an informed starting point.

4. S/4HANA Decision Guide – An interactive Excel tool that allows you to analyze the benefits and trade-offs of various migration path combinations.

This tool allows you to select a strategic intent, deployment model, migration strategy, and complexity level, and it will automatically populate the trade-offs and implications for your chosen combination.

Compare migration path combinations to identify which are aligned or incompatible with one another.
Review the priorities and trade-offs across budget, timeline, transformation ambition, and remediation effort for each path.
Iterate on your selections until your choices align with your organization’s priorities, then commit to a path with full visibility into what you are accepting.

5. S/4HANA Migration Readiness Brief – A customizable presentation that summarizes all your migration decisions into a single kickoff document for your implementation partner.

Use this template to summarize your findings from the previous activities into a structured handoff document, so your implementation partner executes your vision from day one.

Summarize your strategic intent, deployment method, migration strategy, and complexity findings into a clear, structured brief.
Present the trade-offs your organization has evaluated and the rationale behind the path you selected so critical decisions are not revisited during execution.
Ensure your organization leads and owns the migration by setting the direction, scope, and expectations before your implementation partner begins technical delivery.

Turn complexity into clarity to make informed S/4HANA migration decisions.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

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Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive multiple touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Discover Your Current SAP Landscape

Call 1: Understand the current system and define the project management team.
Call 2: Establish vision, scope, and goals. Define your strategic intent.
Call 3: Assess your current technical complexity.

Guided Implementation 2: Define Your Migration Path

Call 1: Evaluate and select your deployment method and migration strategy.

Guided Implementation 3: Prepare Your Migration

Call 1: Define your project governance processes and metrics.
Call 2: Define your migration rollout approach and prepare your migration readiness brief.
Call 3: Summarize results and plan next steps.