Written by Konda — Paddy & Water Inc. / Strategy

SAP ECC → S/4HANA Migration: Making the Case to Executives

— Common Pitfalls and How to Design a Winning Pitch —

Failure/Success Case Studies / Key Messages / Proposal Template / Governance

July 2026

This paper organizes, based on public case studies from Japan and abroad, the common pitfalls in pitching an SAP ERP (particularly ECC/Business Suite 7) migration or upgrade to S/4HANA to executive management, and how to design a pitch that succeeds. To state the conclusion up front: the biggest cause of failure is framing the initiative as an “IT refresh project,” while the key to success lies in framing it simultaneously as business continuity, governance, transformation resilience, and return on investment — presented as a staged decision. The primary intended readers are practitioners in corporate planning, information systems, and PMO functions who are preparing proposal materials.

Table of Contents

・Chapter 1 Why the “Pitch to Executives” Determines Success or Failure

・Chapter 2 Common Pitfalls in Pitching to Executives

・Chapter 3 Lessons from Failure Cases (Public Case Studies)

・Chapter 4 Lessons from Success Cases — Inverting the Pitch Structure

・Chapter 5 Designing a Pitch That Resonates with Executives

・Chapter 6 Pitching by Theme — Told Through Concrete Manufacturing Cases

・Chapter 7 Items and Template to Include in a Proposal Document

・Chapter 8 Project Governance Checklist

・Chapter 9 Conclusion

Chapter 1 Why the “Pitch to Executives” Determines Success or Failure

1-1 Time Constraint — The External Condition of Mainstream Maintenance Ending in 2027

SAP has set mainstream maintenance for Business Suite 7 (ECC, etc.) to end at the close of 2027, and extended maintenance to end at the close of 2030 (with a 2031–2033 migration option, and an Innovation Commitment for S/4HANA itself through 2040). This is an external constraint on migration, but SAPinsider surveys show that “end of maintenance” is the leading driver of migration (roughly 57%), while barriers cited alongside it include “not wanting to start a long project in the current economic environment,” “the value of S/4HANA is unclear,” and “the project is long and expensive.” ASUG’s 2025 survey likewise found that only about 56% of member companies have gone live in production or are mid-migration — even with a deadline in place, adoption has not happened all at once.

💡 The judgment that “there is still time” is dangerous. The reason so many companies remain unfinished is that the essence of this undertaking is not the deadline but its “complexity.” Companies that start after 2026 will face a shortage of certified consultants and architects, premium pricing, and insufficient time for custom code remediation. Extended maintenance is not a “safety net” — it can amount to deferring the decision at a higher cost.

1-2 The Biggest Failure — Framing It as an “IT Refresh Project”

The single biggest cause of failure in pitching to executives is underselling the initiative by framing it as an “IT version upgrade.” SAPinsider points out that the business case for S/4HANA is difficult to build on the strength of the IT department alone, and that treating it as a technical upgrade causes organizations to miss out on the transformation value it actually offers. Meanwhile, the migration requirements companies actually prioritize most are “minimizing business disruption,” “regulatory compliance,” “integration with surrounding systems,” and “data cleansing” — meaning executive concerns center on business continuity rather than technology itself.

💡 What executives really want to decide is not “whether to adopt SAP” but “which operating model to move to, what to standardize, which risks to accept, and which outcomes will confirm the return on investment.” The object of persuasion is not the “budget” — it is the “management trade-offs.”

Chapter 2 Common Pitfalls in Pitching to Executives

Looking across public case studies, failed pitches share a common pattern. The representative pitfalls are organized below.

① The single-issue play of the maintenance deadline: Emphasizing only “we need this by 2027” without explaining why this particular company needs to change now, in what scope, and in what order. A deadline is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

② Framing ROI only in terms of “efficiency”: Touting abstract efficiency gains, visibility, and DX without showing which KPIs will improve by how much, which KPIs will temporarily worsen, and how that dip will be absorbed. Frontline staff perceive it as “the workload increases first,” while management perceives it as “it costs a lot of money and it’s unclear what actually changes.”

③ Reassuring people too much that “it’s just an upgrade”: Leaning on messages like “only the screens will change” or “business processes won’t change” invites a backlash of “nobody told us this” later, when Fit-to-Standard requirements, authorization redesign, redesign of surrounding integrations, and data cleansing surface.

④ Praising “standardization” as a virtue without saying what will be given up: Standardization is also a decision to “stop doing exception-based work.” If the pain is concealed, frontline units later bring back individual exceptions, and management retreats, thinking “was this really that big a change?”

⑤ Overconfidence in vendor dependence: “We’re safe because it’s a major SI vendor,” “the vendor will absorb it.” A vendor can act as an “agent” but cannot substitute for “decision-making.” Projects deteriorate due to ambiguous business requirements, insufficient staged design, unclear design authority, and lack of governance.

⑥ Mistaking top-level commitment for a mere “order from above”: What matters is not the “strength” of support but its “quality.” Have design principles been approved, is there final authority for approving exceptions, are benefit metrics defined, is there accountability for governance, and are risk thresholds documented? “Do it because it’s the president’s project” alone leaves frontline staff unable to raise objections, delaying the upward flow of bad news.

⑦ Not designing a channel for bad news to travel: Escalation of commitment (selective perception, illusory control, optimism bias) reshapes bad news into forms like “testing is just a little stuck” or “the shipment halt is temporary.” Design must extend to specifying which indicator crossing which threshold triggers who to propose halting, scaling back, or delaying, and in what forum.

⚠ Four more commonly overlooked points: scope creep, underestimating data migration, misjudging licensing/indirect use (digital access), and neglecting organizational change and frontline training. These tend to surface only “after the fact,” creating a pattern in which the business side ends up absorbing them out of working capital after go-live.

Chapter 3 Lessons from Failure Cases (Public Case Studies)

The following are cases reconstructed from public information (company disclosures, SEC filings, and major news coverage) in which failures in executive messaging and project execution spilled over into business impact. This is not limited to pure S/4HANA migrations; it also includes cases equivalent to SAP overhauls, consolidations, and upgrades, since the pattern of failure messaging is largely the same.

Company	Event	Main Impact	Lesson
Ezaki Glico	Data inconsistency and order-processing delays after core-system cutover	Shipment halt for refrigerated products; downward revision of full-year outlook (investment reportedly rose from about ¥21.5 billion to ¥34.2 billion)	Neglecting data migration and inventory visibility directly caused shipment halts
Revlon	SAP ERP go-live in the U.S. impaired manufacturing and shipping	About $64 million in unshipped revenue, over $53.6 million in additional costs, a material weakness in internal controls	The more aggressively ROI is promoted, the bigger the backlash if it fails
Lamb Weston	Reduced visibility into distribution-center inventory after ERP migration	About $123 million in revenue impact, about $83 million in EBITDA deterioration	Loss of inventory/order visibility translates immediately into lost sales
SPAR (South Africa)	Go-live/integration problems at distribution centers	About R1.6 billion in lost sales, about R720 million in profit impact	Operational risk of a big-bang cutover
Lidl	Tried to absorb the gap between the standard and business practice through customization	About €500 million invested before the project was ultimately cancelled	Heavy customization instead of standardization worsens performance, cost, and duration
Haribo	Migration across 16 plants in 10 countries caused disruption	Delivery delays; Gold Bear’s 2018 sales reportedly fell 25%	Neglecting organizational change and frontline adoption
Woolworths (Australia)	Stores lost daily sales/margin/loss information during the migration	Store-level operational accountability was impaired	Loss of frontline information and operating capability is itself business damage
MillerCoors	Large-scale SAP project with a system integrator	Claims of staffing shortages, missed deadlines, and defects, leading to a lawsuit seeking over $100 million in damages	Ambiguous division of responsibility and decision-making authority
Diageo / AB InBev	Indirect-use (digital access) charges	Disputes over large additional payments (later settled / licensing model revised)	Contracts and licensing are not just a “legal matter” — they are an “architecture matter”

3-1 Three Types of Failed Pitches

・The single-issue deadline play: Emphasizing only “we need this by 2027” without explaining the value or the sequencing

・Abstracted benefits: Touting efficiency, visibility, and DX without showing the magnitude of KPI improvement, the temporary deterioration, or how it will be absorbed

・Concealed pain: Holding back, until later, the business changes that come with Fit-to-Standard, add-on reduction, elimination of exception-based work, and the costs of closing, logistics, and training

💡 Many public case studies combine these three types. In food, retail, and consumer goods in particular, inventory/order inconsistencies translate immediately into lost sales; in manufacturing and B2B, the effects tend to spill over into billing, accounting, and internal controls.

Chapter 4 Lessons from Success Cases — Inverting the Pitch Structure

Success cases show an explanatory structure that is the exact opposite of failure cases: ① business-led, ② standardization policy documented explicitly, ③ benefits management from day one, and ④ complexity control through phased rollout and a clean core.

Company / Source	Key to Success
NYK Line (Nippon Yusen)	Consolidated accounting infrastructure across about 350 companies, reducing more than 900 add-ons to about 50 (standardization = management itself took ownership of the decision to stop exception-based work)
Ricoh, Kagome, Sumitomo Heavy Industries, EagleBurgmann	Thorough Fit-to-Standard adoption, clear choice of migration approach, single-instance consolidation
Mizkan	Business-process standardization and faster decision-making (official SAP case study)
Terumo Europe	Successful ECC → S/4HANA migration in a short timeframe with low effort
PwC’s analysis	Successful programs are “business led with high executive engagement,” manage benefits from day one, plan data migration early, and maintain strong governance
McKinsey × SAP (Merck)	An ERP roadmap/business case that integrates business value and IT change under CEO-level governance

4-1 Success Factors (Common Patterns)

・Active executive involvement: Top leadership understands the importance of the initiative and provides fast decisions and budget support — not as a mere “order from above,” but through approval of design principles, exception approvals, and benefit metrics

・Thorough Fit-to-Standard adoption: Eliminating non-standard functionality that does not directly drive competitive advantage, preventing add-on bloat

・Data and process readiness: Thorough pre-migration business-process inventory and master-data cleansing to ensure post-migration quality

・Realistic scope management: Focusing on priority functions aligned with the objective and avoiding excessive scope expansion

・Selecting a trusted partner: Establishing a delivery structure with a vendor experienced in SAP, aligned around shared goals

Chapter 5 Designing a Pitch That Resonates with Executives

5-1 Translating the Message — From “Efficiency” to the “Value of Avoidance”

What works is not “things will get better if we adopt SAP” but “we are proceeding in this sequence in order to govern the cost of failure.” The maintenance deadline is a fact and an external constraint, but rather than using it as a threat, it should be reframed as an investment that protects supply continuity, closing-process controls, audit readiness, customer retention, and contract integrity.

Common Pitch (Efficiency Language)	Pitch That Resonates with Management (Value of Avoidance)
Business efficiency, productivity gains	Avoiding supply/shipment stoppages (business continuity)
Real-time visibility	Avoiding closing delays and internal-control deficiencies (governance)
DX / future readiness	Securing resilience and speed to change for future business shifts
Reduced maintenance cost	Avoiding talent shortages, reduced flexibility to modify, and indirect-use charges

5-2 The Five Questions to Ask in the Executive Meeting

If left unmanaged, the venue for persuading executives shrinks into a mere “budget approval meeting.” It is effective to narrow the discussion to the following five questions.

① The cost of the status quo: Quantify business stoppage, control lapses, talent shortages, and reduced flexibility to modify after the maintenance deadline

② Business processes that could stop during cutover: The five areas of order entry, inventory, pricing, billing, and accounting close

③ Exception-based work to be eliminated for standardization: Quantify any retained exception not as “because it’s important” but as “because profit would decline if it were not retained”

④ KPIs to measure success: Which KPIs will improve, which will temporarily worsen, and how that dip will be absorbed

⑤ Authority to halt or delay: Define go-live abort conditions using “business-continuity indicators,” not “technical indicators”

5-3 Recommended Messaging and Phrases to Avoid

[Recommended message example] “This decision is not an IT refresh — it is a redesign of supply, accounting, and governance. Rather than rushing simply because of the go-live deadline, we need to decide the scope of standardization and the order of cutover so that we do not disrupt five things: order entry, inventory, pricing, billing, and accounting close. Please evaluate the return on investment not just in terms of cost reduction, but by the value of avoiding shipment halts, audit findings, additional licensing, and customer attrition.”

By contrast, the following phrases represent an optimism that “creates backlash later” and should be avoided.

・”In practical terms, it’s really just a version upgrade.”

・”Day-to-day operations will barely change.”

・”The vendor will absorb it, so the risk is limited.”

・”As long as we get it done by 2027, we’ll be fine.”

・”ROI will emerge naturally from efficiency gains.”

・”Let’s go live first and sort out governance and access controls afterward.”

・”We’ll just add this one exception later.”

・”Even a big-bang cutover is manageable enough.”

5-4 Risk Communication Flow — Translating Technical Failures into Business Failures

Issues reported from the field — “inventory discrepancies,” “interface errors,” “access-control gaps” — do not land with executives as-is. A mechanism is needed to translate them into business impact for each executive, the same day. As Revlon and Lamb Weston show, ERP problems can turn into revenue, profit, and control problems within a short span of time.

Frontline Event	Translated Into	Reported To
Inventory discrepancy / stockout	Lower order fill rate, lost sales	COO / Sales
Billing delay, delayed accounting close	Impact on financial results, cash	CFO
Access-control gaps, control lapses	Material weakness in internal controls	Audit Committee
Interface errors, shipment halts	Operational stoppage, customer attrition	COO / CEO

Chapter 6 Pitching by Theme — Told Through Concrete Manufacturing Cases

The successful pattern for pitching to executives is not to make “responding to the maintenance deadline” the main message, but to reframe the context as building an “offensive foundation” for business growth and solving management challenges. Here, this reframing is shown by theme, using actual manufacturing cases. The “pitch message” for each theme can be used as-is as language for talking to executives.

6-1 Told Through S&OP and Global Supply Chain Integration

[Sumitomo Heavy Industries] While triggered by the 2027 maintenance deadline, the decisive factor in the decision was “responding to a fiscal year-end change to December, in pursuit of truly global management” and “building a common global platform to support overseas operations.” A straight conversion consolidated accounting and logistics across 33 domestic companies, and the company cut over on schedule in May 2023 even with roughly 100 people developing fully remote during the pandemic. It centralized management of inventory, shipping, and purchasing to enhance demand forecasting (S&OP), and began data-driven management by applying AI analysis to accumulated data.

[Optex] Three domestic and fourteen overseas companies had each been running separate core systems, but they were consolidated onto a single instance of S/4HANA. FI/CO was introduced at headquarters first to make consolidated management information visible early, then rolled out to 16 sites in 8 countries over five years. Consolidated sales grew from ¥20.3 billion to ¥23.5 billion (roughly +16%), while growth in indirect-department headcount was held in check.

[Ajinomoto Foods] S/4HANA was adopted as the core of a new backbone system at the same time the company itself was formed through a business integration. It consolidated multiple previously separate ERP systems, building a group-wide common platform for grasping management data in real time in an extremely short six months.

▶ Pitch message: “This is an investment to unify supply/demand planning (S&OP) across domestic and overseas sites so we can respond immediately to geopolitical risk and parts shortages. By consolidating inventory, shipping, and purchasing onto a single platform, we gain the ability to reorganize demand forecasts and production plans in real time.”

6-2 Told Through Factory Automation, Smart Factories, and IoT/AI Integration

[Honda Tsushin Kogyo] A shift in its core products meant the existing backbone system could no longer keep up, so the company used the S/4HANA rollout as an opportunity to consolidate systems across four domestic companies and two plants. As a digital platform driving IoT/AI, it linked plant equipment and operational data to S/4HANA, improving utilization rates and achieving “rakukinka” — making frontline work more efficient and less burdensome. This standardized model established a foundation for horizontal rollout to overseas sites (using Kobelco Systems’ HI-KORT template plus SAP on Azure).

[Nishida Seiki] Aiming to move away from its own proprietary inventory-management approach, the “Nishida Standard,” the company introduced a jointly used ERP that includes S/4HANA, MES (manufacturing execution), and a supplier portal. Production and inventory on the shop floor now link in real time with the entire supply chain, achieving both shop-floor automation and highly precise process control.

▶ Pitch message: “This is a manufacturing DX platform that reflects MES/IoT equipment data into cost and inventory in real time, enabling real-time cost visibility and immediate traceability of defects. It eliminates visual logging and manual data aggregation, fusing shop-floor (OT) data with management (IT) data.”

6-3 Told Through Data-Driven Management

[Asahi Kasei] The company had run SAP ERP since 2003 and consolidated 13 instances in 2015, but structural complexity made it difficult to quickly extract and analyze management data. With maintenance ending in 2025 approaching, the company set “optimization for data utilization” as the top priority for its next-generation ERP and decided on a full rebuild (greenfield). Working with its partner TIS, it examined roughly 2,400 add-ons one by one and eliminated about 1,300 of them, consolidating roughly 1,400 types of BI reports down to about 300. On HANA Enterprise Cloud, it now uses complete data instantly, driving carbon-footprint visualization and data-driven DX.

▶ Pitch message: “This is an investment to rebuild the platform so that the data management needs can be retrieved instantly and accurately. By cleaning up bloated add-ons and reports, we gain a data platform usable for decarbonization (carbon-footprint visibility) and supply/demand decisions.”

6-4 Told Through Fit-to-Standard and Clean Core to Pay Down IT Debt

Add-ons that have accumulated over years of operation create a management risk: rising maintenance costs and a diminished ability to keep pace with change. Fit-to-Standard and clean core resolve this structurally and secure the flexibility to quickly adopt future AI and new functionality.

・Asahi Kasei: Eliminated roughly 1,300 add-ons and consolidated roughly 300 report types (as above) — a dramatic repayment of technical debt

・Kobe Steel: Used a template for plant engineering businesses (HI-KORT for Eng.) to adapt business processes to standard functionality, minimizing custom development

・Mitsubishi Electric Engineering: Used process mining to visualize company-wide operations and objectively surface issues. Built a workflow/electronic-forms platform, achieving both electronic approval processes and compliance with the Electronic Books Preservation Act at the same time

▶ Pitch message: “Add-on bloat is itself a management risk — rising maintenance costs and reduced ability to keep pace with change. Standardization (clean core) resolves this structurally and reallocates IT resources from ‘maintenance’ to ‘supporting business growth.'”

6-5 Comparison of Thematic Cases

Theme	Company	Pitch Logic	Main Effect
S&OP / global integration	Sumitomo Heavy Industries	Fiscal year-end change + global common platform	Unified supply/demand planning, launch of data-driven management
Global standardization	Optex	Higher consolidated profit × restrained indirect headcount	Consolidated sales +16%, headcount growth restrained
Rapid consolidation	Ajinomoto Foods	Consolidation of fragmented ERPs	Real-time platform in an effective six months
Smart factory	Honda Tsushin Kogyo	IoT/AI platform, easing frontline burden	Higher utilization rate, horizontal rollout overseas
Manufacturing DX	Nishida Seiki	Moving away from person-dependent inventory management	Shop-floor automation, highly precise process control
Data-driven	Asahi Kasei	Optimization of data utilization	1,300 add-ons eliminated, 300 report types consolidated
Cost reduction / standardization	Mizkan	Maintenance costs at roughly 80% of the IT budget	Consolidated/retired more than 100 systems
Fit-to-Standard	Kobe Steel / Mitsubishi Electric Eng.	Minimizing custom development, visualization	Electronic approvals, compliance with the Electronic Books Preservation Act

6-6 Choosing a Migration Approach Suited to the Theme

・Greenfield (rebuild): If existing add-ons and data structures are holding back management change, do a full rebuild. Thorough add-on reduction lowers long-term TCO (Asahi Kasei)

・Brownfield (conversion): If minimizing schedule risk and business disruption is the top priority, use a conversion based on a thorough upfront assessment (Sumitomo Heavy Industries)

💡 Three principles common to thematic pitches: ① Never lead with the 2027 maintenance deadline — always connect the message to management strategy (S&OP, factory automation, global integration, data-driven management); ② Rigorously evaluate the migration approach (greenfield/brownfield) based on technical debt and goals; ③ Drive it as a company-wide business-transformation program, not an IT department project (67% of transformation failures stem not from technology but from leadership and human behavior change). This is the concrete prescription for the pitfalls described in Chapter 2 — the “single-issue deadline play” and “abstracted benefits.”

Chapter 7 Items and Template to Include in a Proposal Document

Approval materials for executives should present a balance of quantitative information (investment, ROI, schedule, risk impact) and qualitative information (business impact, organizational structure, governance, vendor management).

7-1 Sample Proposal Template

Item	Example Content
Purpose / Background	Addressing the end of ECC mainstream maintenance (2027) while standardizing core business processes. The need for a real-time management platform to support growth
Investment Cost	Total migration cost (design/build/data migration/training) plus contingency, stated explicitly
Expected ROI	Business-efficiency benefits plus reduced maintenance/operating costs; payback period. Also quantify the “cost of inaction” and “opportunity cost”
Schedule	Milestones from planning completion → start of testing → production go-live
Key Risks and Countermeasures	System downtime → minimize downtime plus BCP / data inconsistency → thorough upfront cleansing
Organizational Structure	CIO as project owner, PMO established, progress monitored at a monthly management meeting
Vendor Management	Selection of an SAP-certified partner, regular status meetings, deliverable acceptance process, clearly documented division of responsibility

7-2 Issue × Countermeasure Matrix

Issue	Countermeasure (Mitigation)
Add-on bloat	Thorough Fit-to-Standard adoption (eliminate unnecessary add-ons)
Data migration / quality risk	Thorough pre-migration cleansing / testing and rehearsals; verify by matching business results
Indifference from management and the frontline	Executive commitment (approval of design principles) plus frontline involvement
Scope creep	Clear initial scope definition and a change-management process
Insufficient testing	Prepare test environments with clearly divided responsibilities; set completion-rate targets
Vendor dependence	Develop in-house IT capability and joint working arrangements; clarify division of responsibility
Indirect-use charges	Legal and architecture teams jointly review indirect use/digital access at the approval stage

Chapter 8 Project Governance Checklist

The following are governance items for an SAP upgrade, suitable for a management meeting or investment committee even when the industry is unspecified. Each item corresponds to an issue that actually caused problems in a public failure case.

・☐ Is the principle of aligning with standard functionality documented, along with the conditions under which exceptions are permitted?

・☐ For each exception requirement, is the “reason to retain it” — revenue, gross margin, regulatory response, etc. — quantified?

・☐ Have multiple end-to-end tests been run using production-equivalent data across the five areas of order entry, inventory, pricing, billing, and accounting close?

・☐ Has the data-migration result been verified not merely by matching record counts, but by matching business-processing results?

・☐ If a big-bang approach is chosen, can the reasoning be explained as more rational than a phased migration?

・☐ Is budget secured for the 90 days after go-live for temporary staff increases, interim workarounds, customer notifications, and handling returns/stockouts?

・☐ Have the CFO/audit officer reviewed the remaining risks to internal controls and the accounting close?

・☐ Has legal reviewed indirect use, digital access, surrounding integrations, and conditions for additional charges?

・☐ Does the vendor contract clearly state deliverable standards, quality standards, staffing standards, division of responsibility, and escalation conditions?

・☐ Have business process owners signed off on requirements, testing, and the go/no-go decision for migration?

・☐ Are go-live abort conditions defined by “business-continuity indicators” rather than “technical indicators”?

・☐ Does the approval documentation include, in addition to expected benefits, the “worst-case loss scenario” if the project fails?

・☐ Are the 2027/2030 deadline response and the business-architecture redesign separated into a staged investment?

Chapter 9 Conclusion

The biggest pitfall in pitching an SAP upgrade to executives is talking about the “risk of not doing it” while failing to talk about the “risk of how it is done.” The failure cases stemmed less from the merits of SAP itself than from recurring management habits: rushing based solely on the deadline, not changing business processes, neglecting data, deferring contract issues, cutting frontline training, and leaving the division of responsibility ambiguous.

💡 Final message: The most effective pitch to executives is not “we must migrate by 2027,” but “management needs to control the scope of standardization and the order of cutover in order to avoid supply stoppages, closing-process disruption, additional billing, and customer attrition.” This is the most reproducible conclusion, regardless of industry.

(This paper was prepared based on public information, SEC filings/securities reports, major news coverage, SAP’s official maintenance policy, SAPinsider/ASUG surveys, practical insights from PwC/McKinsey/IBM and others, and award-winning cases such as the SAP Japan Customer Award. Figures in the failure cases are public values based on each company’s disclosures and news coverage; some statements attributed to management meetings include reconstructions from secondary sources.)