Migrate to S/4HANA in as little as 16 weeks, at a fraction of the cost.
When a CFO hears “migration,” what they really hear is “millions.” Millions tied up in consulting fees, millions sunk into redesign workshops, millions spent chasing transformation. It’s not just the money either. They picture the timeline creeping from 18 months to 3 years. They imagine their best finance leads pulled into endless workshops, month after month. They worry about disruptions to closing the books, processing orders, or meeting compliance deadlines. And beneath it all sits the bigger question: is the return worth the risk?
For many mid-market organisations, it just does not seem feasible. Not because they don’t see the value of S/4HANA, but because the way it’s usually sold doesn’t fit their world. And yet, the clock is ticking. ECC support is ending. Security risks are growing. Integration challenges keep piling up. The pressure to move to S/4HANA is real, but the traditional path feels designed for someone else’s business.
What mid-market companies need isn’t transformation for the sake of it. They need a smarter way to migrate. Something that builds on the way their business already operates, while still giving them the benefits of a secure, cloud-ready ERP.
The Mid-Market S/4HANA Migration Challenges
For large enterprises, a move to S/4HANA often comes with big transformation budgets, dedicated program teams, and the ability to absorb years of disruption. Mid-market organisations live in a very different world. Their IT teams are lean, their budgets are finite, and their businesses can’t afford to hit pause while systems are rebuilt from the ground up. On paper, the migration journey looks straightforward: evaluate the current ECC system, design a future-state model, clean up data, rebuild integrations, and move. In reality, those steps hit very differently when you don’t have 50 SAP specialists sitting on the bench.
This creates a unique set of technical and operational challenges that make the traditional path to S/4HANA feel out of reach for mid-market companies:
• Heavy customizations in ECC: Years of Z-tables, user exits, and bespoke reports have shaped ECC to fit the business. But those same customisations now complicate the move. Deciding what to retire, rebuild, or migrate is a resource drain for teams that don’t have months to analyse the backlog.
• Integration complexity: Even smaller enterprises rely on a web of connections — ECC tied to tax engines, logistics providers, banks, and e-commerce platforms. Rebuilding all of these during migration adds risk, cost, and potential disruption to day-to-day operations.
• Data quality and volume: Master data is often messy, fragmented, and inconsistent. A “clean it all before you move” approach stalls projects before they even begin. Mid-market businesses need migration tools that can carry data forward quickly, while giving them room to clean and harmonise once on S/4.
• Infrastructure choices: On-prem, RISE with SAP, or hyperscaler cloud — each comes with trade-offs in cost, compliance, and scalability. Mid-market IT leaders need clear options and accelerators that simplify provisioning, so infrastructure doesn’t become another project bottleneck.
• Testing and validation overhead: Full regression testing across finance, supply chain, and reporting requires resources that mid-market businesses don’t have. What’s needed is a smarter way to validate automation, selective testing, and accelerators that target what actually matters.
• Time-to-value pressure: Multi-year roadmaps don’t align with mid-market realities. Businesses need to see value in months, not years, and can’t afford the risk of prolonged disruption just to get to a “future state.” They need a migration approach that delivers immediate operational benefits while laying the foundation for future innovation.
Introducing MVP+ (Minimum Viable Product Plus) Migration Approach
For mid-market businesses, moving to S/4HANA can feel like a choice between two hard roads. One is expensive, disruptive, and drawn out, and the other is standing still, while ECC support ends, security risks rise, and integrations grow increasingly fragile.
MVP+ offers a third way, ensuring your business remains secure while avoiding the complexity of a full-scale S/4HANA transformation. Rather than pulling every legacy process into S/4, MVP+ zeroes in on the areas that actively support your business today. The outcome is a clean-core environment that reflects your reality, reduces risk, and positions you for future growth without the baggage of a full-scale migration.
Here’s what makes MVP+ different:
• Keep What Matters: Focuses on active processes and customizations, leaving behind redundant or dormant elements. You get a clean, streamlined system that mirrors your business as it runs today. This ensures that every feature you rely on is preserved while unnecessary complexity is eliminated.
• AI-Driven Selection: Intelligent tools analyse ECC code, reports, and workflows to decide what to migrate, remediate, or retire — cutting guesswork and accelerating planning. The AI approach also reduces risk by identifying hidden dependencies that might otherwise be missed.
• Fast, Predictable Delivery: Live in 16–20 weeks instead of years, with fixed scope, clear milestones, and automated processes that make timelines and budgets reliable. This speed allows businesses to start realising operational benefits almost immediately.
• Minimal Disruption: Core operations continue uninterrupted, integrations remain stable, and internal teams aren’t consumed by lengthy workshops. Teams can focus on running the business, confident that migration won’t derail daily operations.
• Cost-Efficient Migration: By focusing on technical migration over full transformation, MVP+ typically costs 75% less than traditional approaches, freeing capital for growth initiatives. This approach lets mid-market companies modernise without stretching budgets or tying up resources.
• Clean-Core Ready: With MVP+ migration, you get a system free from unnecessary clutter and legacy baggage, providing a foundation for future optimisation or innovation without forcing immediate change. It gives IT leaders a solid platform to scale, improve, and innovate on their own timeline.
Understanding the “+” in MVP+
MVP+ takes care of moving your essential ECC processes quickly, safely, and with minimal disruption. That’s the foundation. But S/4HANA itself brings something extra to the table, and that’s the “+.” These are built-in capabilities that come with the platform, fully functional and ready to use from the moment you go live.
• Built-In Capabilities: These S/4HANA features are ready to use from day one, supporting your key processes and boosting efficiency without extra setup.
• Embedded Analytics: Access pre-built analytical tools that provide real-time insights without extra setup, helping you make faster, informed decisions.
• No Extra Development: Everything works out-of-the-box, so there’s no coding, configuration, or custom work required to start realizing value.
• Enhanced Reporting & Operations: Built-in functionalities improve reporting, operational execution, and integrations alongside your migrated processes.
• Seamless Expansion: The system’s value grows naturally, letting you adopt additional capabilities without impacting migration scope or timeline.
How MVP+ Migration Works
From discovery to go-live, each step of MVP+ builds on the previous one tackling complexity, safeguarding business operations, and delivering measurable results along the way. This approach makes the process visible, manageable, and predictable, so you always know what’s happening and why it matters.
Stage 1: Intelligent Discovery
We start by analysing your ECC system with AI to identify active processes, dormant code, integration points, and critical data, creating a precise migration blueprint.
Stage 2: Selective Migration Planning
Next, we design your clean-core S/4HANA environment, mapping functional processes, remediating active custom code, streamlining data architecture, and defining integration strategies for a fixed, predictable scope.
Stage 3: Clean-Core Build
Then we construct the system, activating core processes first, transforming 80% of custom code automatically, modernizing and validating data, and implementing security roles from day one for a production-ready environment.
Stage 4: Parallel Testing
After that, we validate the system with functional, performance, and integration testing, alongside user acceptance, using automation to reduce cycles while ensuring operational continuity.
Stage 5: Go-Live and Support
Finally, we cut over with minimal downtime, provide 24/7 support, monitor system performance, and ensure your S/4HANA environment delivers immediate operational benefits.
Why Mid-Market Companies Choose MVP+
Mid-market companies don’t have the luxury of time, resources, or endless budgets. They need a migration approach that understands their scale and priorities. MVP+ is designed with that reality in mind — it’s precise, focused, and built to deliver meaningful results without overcomplicating the journey. Costs are lower, timelines are shorter, and operational disruption is minimal. Mid-market companies gain a system that works today while laying the foundation for future growth, rather than a “future state” they can’t reach for years.
Now that you know what MVP+ is and how it works, ask yourself this: Is your business ready to move to S/4HANA in a way that actually fits your scale, your priorities, and your timeline? Think about what it would mean to complete a migration in weeks instead of years, with minimal disruption to your teams, predictable costs, and a system that works from day one.
If that feels like the kind of migration your business needs, it’s time to reach out. We can show you exactly how MVP+ can make S/4HANA practical, achievable, and impactful for your company.
To learn how MVP+ can make your S/4HANA migration faster, safer, and more secure, get in touch today!
