Based on Insights From Resulting IT’s SAP Success Report
This article is part of Resulting IT’s 7 Deadly SAP Delivery Sins blog series, based on insights from our SAP Success Report – research conducted with former Gartner SAP Research Director Dr Derek Prior, drawing on the experiences of 113 SAP professionals across 105 organizations.
2. Why Failure to Standardize Turns SAP S/4HANA into an Expensive Mess
SAP won’t fix your complexity; it will faithfully reproduce it.
Too many organizations treat SAP S/4HANA implementations as technical upgrades rather than opportunities to drive process standardization and simplification. Local variations, legacy workarounds, and unnecessary customizations get lifted straight into the new system – just faster and more expensively.
Less than half of the organizations in our research believed they had used their SAP program as a genuine opportunity to standardize.
In this penultimate instalment of the 7 Deadly SAP Delivery Sins series, we explore why standardization is so hard to achieve, the warning signs that chaos is creeping back in, and how to build a clean, scalable SAP core that actually delivers on the promise of S/4HANA.
*
If you bring the chaos with you, don’t expect SAP to clean it up. Too often organizations treat their transformation as a technology upgrade rather than a business simplification opportunity.
The result is a shiny new system built on the same fragmented, inconsistent and over-engineered foundation.
When you lift-and-shift local variations, historic workarounds, or custom logic into S/4HANA, you lose the benefits of pre-configured, best practice processes, inherit technical debt in a new wrapper and spend more time maintaining exceptions than delivering value.
Inconsistent processes confuse users, limit training effectiveness and erode confidence.
Standardized processes enable more focused training and communication, improve cross-functional collaboration, and help teams learn from each other rather than reinventing the wheel.
How to Spot a Lack of SAP S/4HANA Standardization
Warning signs of a failure to standardize include business units pushing for their own versions of SAP, process workshops that default to “how we do it today,” a lack of challenge on unnecessary customizations and the absence or neglect of global design principles.
If you’re not willing to change your processes, you don’t need a new ERP – you just need a server refresh.
How to Build SAP S/4HANA Standardization into Your Delivery
Your program delivery team should be the champions of standardization. The more standard you go, the less legacy baggage you carry and the more value you unlock from your transformation.
Set the Standard Early and Stick to It
Define what must be standard from day one. Whether it’s data, processes, or platforms, make the rules clear, and stick to them. If you leave it open, every team will do their own thing.
Design for Business Outcomes, Not System Options
Start with what the business needs to achieve, then design a solution to support that. SAP can flex, but only when it has a clear direction.
Challenge Every Customization and Exception
Customization is fine but only if it adds value. Every deviation from standard should be questioned, justified and documented. No exceptions for “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
Make Standardization a Change Journey
Standardizing isn’t just a design decision; it’s an organizational shift. Get your business leaders on board, show teams what they’ll gain and support the mindset shift.
Keep It Clean for the Long Haul
Design for longevity. The more consistent your foundation, the easier it is to scale, upgrade and evolve. Tools like process mining can help you stay on track over time.
Key Takeaways
Standardization isn’t about restricting the business, it’s about unlocking scale, agility and simplicity.
If every team builds their own version of SAP, you don’t have a solution, you have a mess. Set the rules, stick to them and support the change. Because if you’re not ready to simplify, you’re not ready for S/4HANA.
Struggling to drive standardization in your SAP S/4HANAprogram?
We help teams define global design principles, challenge unnecessary complexity and build solutions that are simple, scalable and ready for whatever’s next.