Brownfield, Greenfield, or Bluefield? Choosing a Path Before the Clock Runs Out

A separate ASUG survey of 168 members, sponsored by BearingPoint, found a similar but not identical split among organizations already live or in the process of moving: 44% brownfield, 29% bluefield, and 26% greenfield. The gap between the two surveys' numbers is less important than what they agree on — brownfield is the plurality choice, and a meaningful share of organizations are consciously choosing not to commit fully to either extreme.

There's a reason ISG's researchers flagged this pattern as a risk rather than simply a preference. Their report notes that brownfield and hybrid approaches, chosen for speed, can limit long-term benefits and make it harder to adopt newer technologies later — including the AI-driven automation and forecasting capabilities that are increasingly the actual business case for being on S/4HANA at all. Fragmented processes and legacy data structures, carried forward rather than redesigned, constrain which of those newer capabilities can be effectively deployed after go-live.