Your SAP Centre of Excellence (CoE) should be the engine of business value, driving innovation and enabling your organization to extract maximum return from your SAP investment. But for many organizations, the CoE has become something quite different: a bottleneck, a black hole for requests, or worse, an expensive team that merely keeps the lights on.
If you're planning a move to S/4HANA, understanding whether your CoE is truly functioning is critical. The transition to S/4HANA isn't just a technical upgrade; it demands a fundamental transformation in how your CoE operates, the skills it maintains, and the value it delivers.
The Three Warning Signs Your CoE Is Failing
1. Poor Business Adoption and System Value
The clearest indicator of CoE failure is when the business can't effectively use the system you're supporting.
Watch for these symptoms:
- Multiple helpdesk tickets for basic tasks: If your business users are constantly raising tickets for simple, routine activities, your CoE isn't enabling self-sufficiency
- Heavy reliance on Excel: When business processes that should happen in SAP are instead managed in spreadsheets, your CoE has failed to deliver usable system functionality
- Business can't articulate SAP's value: If stakeholders struggle to explain what value SAP provides, your CoE isn't connecting system capabilities to business outcomes
- Manual workarounds are the norm: Processes that should be automated remain manual, creating inefficiency and risk
These aren't just inconveniences. They're tangible evidence that your CoE is failing to deliver system value to the organization.
2. The CoE is a Blocker, Not an Enabler
A functional CoE accelerates business capability. A failing CoE does the opposite.
Common blocking behaviours include:
- Tickets that disappear into a black hole: Requests sit unresolved for weeks or months, with no transparency on status or priority
- Excessive resolution times: Even simple changes take unreasonably long to implement
- No active change management or governance: There's no structured process for delivering small changes and continuous improvements
- Shadow IT emergence: Frustrated business units find alternative solutions that bypass both the CoE and the SAP system entirely
When the CoE becomes a blocker, dangerous patterns emerge. Business units might employ contractors directly to "get stuff done", bypassing established governance. They design workarounds that create data inconsistencies and compliance risks. They stop engaging with SAP altogether, reducing your return on a significant enterprise investment.
The ultimate sign of failure: When business stakeholders actively avoid involving the CoE because it's easier to work around the system than work with the team.
3. The CoE Is Stuck in "Keep the Lights On" Mode
Perhaps the most insidious failure pattern is the CoE that's lost sight of its strategic purpose.
These teams are characterized by:
- Reactive firefighting: All energy goes to incident management and break-fix activities
- No innovation roadmap: There's no plan for exploiting new SAP capabilities or delivering business value
- Risk-averse culture: Any change is seen as dangerous; stability is the only objective
- Technical debt accumulation: Custom code is never reviewed, remediated, or replaced with standard functionality
- Disconnection from business strategy: The CoE operates in an IT bubble, disconnected from broader business objectives
This pattern is particularly common in long-running ECC environments. Teams that have spent years maintaining stable systems often internalize a "don't break what's working" mentality. Innovation stops. Value delivery stops. The CoE becomes an expensive maintenance team rather than a strategic asset.
The S/4HANA Transformation: Why Your ECC CoE Model Won't Work
If your current CoE exhibits any of these warning signs, the transition to S/4HANA will be especially challenging. That's because S/4HANA fundamentally changes what a successful CoE looks like.
The shift isn't merely technical. It's cultural, operational, and strategic.
From Reactive to Proactive
- ECC CoE Model: Respond to incidents, maintain stability, avoid change where possible.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Actively drive continuous improvement, stay ahead of quarterly releases, proactively identify opportunities for innovation.
In the ECC world, customers could decide when and if to apply patches. Change happened on your schedule. S/4HANA operates differently, with regular quarterly updates and a continuous delivery model. Your CoE must shift from passive maintenance to active management of change.
It's worth noting that how much control you have over the timing and pace of these changes will depend on which S/4HANA deployment model you've chosen. Your options aren't one-size-fits-all, and the level of flexibility you retain varies accordingly. Regardless of your setup, the direction of travel is the same: your CoE needs to be ready to manage change, not wait for it.
From IT-Owned to Business Co-Owned
- ECC CoE Model: IT team that supports business processes defined elsewhere.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Cross-functional team with strong business ownership and shared accountability for outcomes.
S/4HANA success requires business leaders who understand the platform's capabilities and can drive adoption in their domains. The CoE facilitates this but doesn't own it alone.
From Customize First to Clean Core First
This is perhaps the most fundamental shift.
- ECC CoE Model: When faced with a business requirement, custom development (Z* programs) was often the default solution. If the CoE had ABAP skills, they could offer quick resolutions without strict governance.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Clean Core principles demand robust governance to ensure customizations are the exception, not the rule. The CoE must have strong processes to ensure the right solution is defined, exploring standard functionality, configuration, and extensions before considering custom code.
Maintaining a Clean Core requires a completely different mindset and skillset. It requires CoE members who understand S/4HANA's extensive capabilities and can guide the business toward standard solutions.
From Project-Based to Continuous Delivery
- ECC CoE Model: Changes happen in discrete projects with long gaps between implementations.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Continuous delivery of incremental improvements aligned with quarterly release cycles.
This shift demands different ways of working, different governance models, and different stakeholder expectations.
From Single System to Platform Ecosystem
- ECC CoE Model: Focused on maintaining one monolithic ERP system.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Managing a platform ecosystem that includes SAP BTP, embedded analytics, intelligent technologies, and integrated cloud solutions.
The S/4HANA CoE must understand how these components work together and how to orchestrate them to deliver business value.
From Stable Skills to Continuous Learning
- ECC CoE Model: Skills remained relatively stable year-over-year. What you knew in 2015 was largely applicable in 2020.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Continuous learning is mandatory. New capabilities arrive quarterly. The platform evolves rapidly. Teams must constantly upskill to remain effective.
Organizations that don't invest in ongoing CoE development will find themselves with teams unable to exploit S/4HANA's value.
From Stability Focus to Value and Innovation Focus
- ECC CoE Model: Success measured by system uptime and incident volume.
- S/4HANA CoE Model: Success measured by business value delivered, innovation adopted, and competitive advantage created.
This requires different KPIs, different conversations with stakeholders, and a fundamentally different conception of the CoE's purpose.
What Actually Defines a Strong S/4HANA CoE?
If your current CoE shows the warning signs described above, transformation is necessary. But what does success look like?
1. A Clearly Defined Roadmap and Vision
Strong CoEs articulate the business outcomes and value they will deliver. This isn't a technical roadmap of patches and upgrades. It's a business-focused vision that connects SAP capabilities to strategic objectives.
Your roadmap should answer: What business capabilities will we enable? What inefficiencies will we eliminate? What competitive advantages will we create?
2. Strong Business and IT Sponsorship
S/4HANA CoEs can't succeed as IT-only initiatives. They require active business sponsorship from senior leaders who understand the platform's strategic importance and are willing to drive adoption in their domains.
Joint ownership creates shared accountability for outcomes.
3. Robust Governance Model
Clean Core adherence, change management, and continuous improvement all require robust governance. This governance ensures that guiding principles are followed, that decisions are made consistently, and that the right solutions are implemented.
Strong governance doesn't mean slow bureaucracy. It means clear decision rights, transparent processes, and appropriate escalation paths.
4. A Programme of Continuous Improvement
Effective S/4HANA CoEs actively look for new innovation and explore how it can be exploited. They monitor quarterly releases, assess new capabilities against business needs, and maintain a pipeline of improvement opportunities.
In ECC, it was often about maintaining the status quo. Nobody wanted to change much in case processes broke. The result was that innovation was never delivered, and custom code was never reviewed or remediated even when new standard functionality could replace it.
S/4HANA CoEs break this pattern, treating innovation as a core responsibility.
5. Good Data Ownership and Governance
Data is the foundation of S/4HANA value, particularly for analytics and intelligent technologies. Strong CoEs ensure clear data ownership, robust data governance, and trusted data quality.
Without this foundation, advanced S/4HANA capabilities can't deliver their potential value.
6. Continuous Upskilling
Both CoE members and business users must continuously learn to use and exploit new features and innovation. Strong CoEs invest in training, create communities of practice, and build internal expertise systematically.
This isn't a one-time training event. It's an ongoing commitment to capability development.
The Transformation Challenge
Moving from an ECC-era CoE to an S/4HANA-ready team is one of the most underestimated aspects of SAP transformation. Organizations focus on technical migration but neglect the people, processes, and culture changes required for success.
The warning signs described above aren't permanent conditions. They're symptoms of a CoE model that may have worked in a different era but won't deliver value in the S/4HANA world.
If your CoE is stuck in reactive mode, disconnected from the business, or unable to drive adoption, the move to S/4HANA is an opportunity for fundamental transformation. But that transformation won't happen automatically. It requires deliberate design, investment, and leadership commitment.
Is your CoE ready for S/4HANA?
Resulting IT helps organizations design and build Centres of Excellence that drive business value, not just system stability.
We work with you to assess your current state, define your target operating model, and execute the transformation needed for S/4HANA success. Contact us to discuss your CoE strategy.
