What ASUG's Latest Survey Reveals About Real-World Migrations

The survey's numbers on project duration are worth internalizing before setting a schedule: SAP S/4HANA transitions took an average of one and a half years among those surveyed. That is a useful planning anchor, but it comes with a caveat the report itself highlights — organizations live on S/4HANA for more than three years (“pros,” in the report's framing) actually took longer to realize business value from the system than more recent “S/4 newcomers” did: 7.2 months versus 4.4 months respectively. Better tooling, clearer onboarding and more shared best practice across the SAP community appear to be compressing the value-realization curve for organizations migrating now, relative to early adopters who had to find their own way.

Cost predictability also showed real improvement year over year. Only 31% of respondents reported costs exceeding expectations, an 18-percentage-point improvement from 2024, while 34% reported costs landing in line with expectations, up 11 points. That is a genuinely encouraging trend, and it likely reflects a maturing market: more experienced system integrators, better-understood pricing models, and organizations doing more thorough scoping before committing to a number.