What 20 SAP Leaders Are Actually Doing With AI

SAP teams have spent a decade maintaining custom code written by people who left years ago, while the business waited for the modernization that never got funded. We talked to the leaders who stopped waiting and started rebuilding with AI — and turned what we learned into a playbook for the teams ready to do the same.

Key findings

40%

share of custom ABAP sitting in the average ECC landscape that is unused or redundant: dead weight inflating every migration estimate

58%

of IT leaders name custom code remediation as their single largest technical hurdle in S/4HANA migration

32%

of SAP developers now use AI on production projects, up from 21% a year ago

A complete playbook for modernizing with AI

The new success metric: how top SAP teams measure AI impact (and why it isn't objects closed or consultant hours anymore)

Building the investment case for AI against a custom code estate nobody has fully inventoried

Why 30-day POCs beat 12-month RFPs

How the SAP team becomes a platform for the business instead of a queue, and what that looks like in practice

The emergence of the Custom Code Owner: what this role is, and why it matters for talent and retention as ABAP expertise ages out