Where the Transformation Budget Actually Goes

Most S/4HANA business cases are built on a number that turns out to be wrong. Consulting eats the majority of the budget, day rates are climbing, and the technical debt nobody scoped surfaces halfway through. We talked to 20 SAP leaders about what changes when AI carries the assessment and remediation work instead of bodies.

Key findings

40–60%

of total migration spend goes to implementation consulting — the single largest line item in nearly every program

50%

increase in SAP migration day rates in 2026/27 versus 2024, as certified capacity tightens

70%

of large enterprise ERP migrations will run severe budget overruns from technical debt discovered too late (Gartner)

A complete playbook for spending less to get further

The new success metric: how top SAP teams measure AI impact (and why it isn't day rates or headcount ratios anymore)

Building the investment case for AI when 40–60% of the program budget is already committed to consulting

Why 30-day POCs beat 12-month RFPs

How the SAP team becomes a platform for the business, and what that looks like when delivery capacity stops scaling with contractor spend

The emergence of the SAP Platform Engineer: what this role is, and why it matters for building capability in-house instead of renting it