Six Ways an S/4HANA Migration Goes Sideways
This is also how Orpington Technologies Inc. approaches SAP work. The Canadian ERP advisory and delivery firm has built its SAP practice around one move, ECC to S/4HANA, and staffs it with a highly trained team that does this kind of migration for a living: the readiness assessment, the code and data work, the mock cycles, the cutover weekend. It plans backward from SAP-set deadlines, so the questions in the table below get asked in the first weeks of a program rather than the fourteenth month.
If you are not sure where your own program stands, a conversation is a reasonable place to start. Orpington’s team will look at your production system, your code and your data with you, and tell you plainly which of these six you are closest to, even when the honest answer is that you are in better shape than you feared. You can reach them at www.orpingtontech.com. None of the six is hard to spot in month one. They are just expensive to discover in month fourteen.
The six pitfalls at a glance
Pitfall
Where it bites
Question to ask early
1. IT-only project
Design decisions, user acceptance
Who in the business owns each process area?
2. Approach by habit
Timeline, scope, testing load
Have we compared greenfield, brownfield and selective on our own data?
3. Unexamined custom code
Estimates, the build phase
Has the code scan run, and against real usage?
4. Messy master data
Data loads, first month-end
Who signs off the business partner merge?
5. Thin testing and cutover
Mock runs, go-live weekend
How many full mock cycles are in the plan?
6. Roles and training
Access, help desk, adoption
Are roles rebuilt for Fiori, not copied from ECC?
Sources & Further Reading
[1]
Panaya – “Planning Your SAP S/4HANA Migration: The 5 Common Mistakes ECC Customers Make,” February 2025
[2]
SAP Community – “SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration: Lessons Learned, Pitfalls, and Proven Best Practices,” January 2026
[3]
Kellton – “SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration Challenges Complete Guide,” April 2026
[4]
Entrans – “SAP ECC to S4HANA: Migration Steps, Challenges, and Solutions,” June 2026
[5]
SAP Help Portal – “Conversion Guide for SAP S/4HANA 2025,” version 2.0, February 2026
[6]
SAP Community – “SAP S/4HANA System Conversion – Custom Code Adaptation Process”
[7]
LeverX – “How to Choose an SAP S/4HANA Migration Strategy,” March 2026
[8]
CDQ – “Boost Data Quality for SAP S/4HANA: The Role of Customer Vendor Integration (SAP CVI),” April 2026
[9]
Quinnox – “SAP Data Migration Best Practices: Checklist for S/4HANA Projects,” June 2026
[10]
adesso – “Strategic Harmonization of Master Data: Business Partner Migration in the SAP S/4HANA Greenfield
Scenario”
[11]
DataLark – “Top 7 SAP S/4HANA Migration Challenges and How to Overcome Them,” November 2025
[12]
Datagaps – “Migrating to SAP S/4HANA: Material Master Test Automation,” June 2026
[13]
Synthesized – “From ECC to S/4HANA: How Better Test Data De-Risks Parallel Testing and Cutover,” May 2026
[14]
Quinnox – “SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration Guide: 2026 Roadmap”
Orpington Technologies | SAP S/4HANA Migration Insights
© Orpington Technologies Inc.
www.orpingtontech.com
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