What's going on the largest SAP Clients in Europe

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In perhaps the least scientific study ever commission, I downloaded a list of the largest 180 organizations in Europe and by networking and talking to partners, made an assessment of where they were in the SAP journey with a focus on the move to S/4.?

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I did not manage to clearly find out what was going on in all of them but in 68% of them I have a pretty good idea.?

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This is my findings (remember these will typically be organization’s turning over more than €10bn and will typically be multinational and complex) …?

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So out of the large company universe, 87% have SAP in their estate of some type, and a further 4% were planning to adopt SAP. 8% were on other ERP’s and did not change and the remining 1% really confused me.?

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So, I conclude the largest European organizations have SAP and those that don’t are probably poor fits for ERP, also interestingly no one at this scale was planning to take it out! ?

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I then looked at how many were moving to S/4…?

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Off those with SAP I found 71% had started, 16% were planning it and 13% had not started or I did not find any evidence that they were (I could be wrong). This will be very interesting to do again and see how the numbers change, I wish I could travel back in time and see how this has ramped up.?

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I then looked at how they supported and implemented their SAP S/4 solutions and 78% of those with SAP were using multiple partner and 22% were faithful to one or did it themselves. However, I feel that with current resource constraints and large S/4 transformation the trend is to more multi-partner deals.?

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Then I looked at how those large clients were moving to S/4 and the answers were Greenfield 29% , Brownfield 7% , Selective data migration 16% and a hybrid approach with a bit of all the approaches, i.e. upgrade, transform, and extend and roll out . My gut tells me we will see more hybrid and selective and brown as we get near to 2027, and I guess the organizations that had done nothing will probably be brown.?

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And then finally when will they complete the move to S/4, well a very small number - 2% were to all intents and purposes were complete, 12% felt they would complete this year, 2% in 2024, 3% by 2025, 2% by 2026, and 30% by 2027. 49% could see the move to S/4 taking longer.?

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I am not sure what this all means, it will be more interesting as we watch how the percentages change, but it is clear the S/4 wave is now pretty much up and running but still has a long way to go. I would observe anecdotally that as the waves moves forward more are moving to hybrid, brown and Selective data migration, and the 48% that will complete will smear across the following years.?

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And remember these are very large organisations often with multiple and disparate SAP systems so it does take a while to work out a plan and to complete, it is to be expected.?