Will migrating to S/4HANA deliver business benefits? Among SAP’s French-speaking customers, expectations are waning. At least according to satisfaction surveys conducted by their representative association, USF.
In 2022, 26% said they were considering S/4HANA for this reason. Two years later, that share had fallen to 23%. This year, it stands at 20%.
On the ERP Cloud offering—another angle, but the same trend—the business benefits are the main motivation for only 6% of respondents. Most (61%) say it is primarily about aligning with SAP’s strategy.
They are 67% to say the same about S/4HANA; 44% point to the obsolescence of existing SAP systems (+3 points compared to 2024). In any case, 31% have now completed their migration, up from 14% two years earlier. In the background, the end of maintenance for ECC 6 in 2030. In the previous survey, 48% of organizations judged this deadline unsuitable. They are today only slightly fewer (45%).
Cost concerns are becoming more and more evident
When SAP users are asked to name the barriers to migrating to S/4HANA, costs consistently receive the most votes, and this is rising: from 63% in 2022, to 70% in 2024, then 74% in 2026. Following this is the difficulty of demonstrating the benefits of projects (59%, vs 57% in 2024).
For Cloud ERP, the USF does not talk about barriers but uncertainties. Pricing remains the top concern. 47% of respondents worry about project costs; 54% worry about ongoing costs (32% say they have clear visibility into the TCO over five years). They are also 42% to fear a loss of autonomy from SAP. And, in the same vein, only 6% consider reversibility guarantees to be sufficient.
Integrated AI, deemed economically uninteresting
Among those familiar with Cloud ERP offerings, 36% still signed a contract (vs 13% in 2024) and 16% have completed deployment.
The rollout of integrated AI is less advanced. 9% of organizations have deployed use cases in their environment, even as they recognize advantages in exploiting structured data (47%), in process automation (39%) and in usability (38%). It should be noted that the licensing model attracts only 12% favorable opinions. More broadly, only 4% of respondents perceive an economic advantage compared with external AI solutions.
SAP as a lever for savings: satisfaction rate declines
Alongside rising concerns about costs, fewer organizations report satisfaction with the savings achieved through SAP. Specifically, 26%, down from 33% in 2024. They are also less satisfied with the speed of project implementation (21%, down from 26%).
Concomitantly, fewer customers describe their commercial relationship with SAP as a trust-based partnership (16%, down 3 points). And more believe that it rests mainly on the editor’s pursuit of financial gains (49%, up 10 points, returning to the level seen at the end of the 2010s).
* Of the 450 member companies and administrations, 154 participated. In 2024, USF had obtained 134 responses.
