valantic SAP Study 2025

Compared to the status of SAP S/4HANA transformations in 2024, there has been a remarkable development.: The share of companies with ongoing migration projects has risen from 21% to 40%.. 27% have already completed their SAP S/4HANA migration project.

57% of companies prefer the happy medium in their migration strategy: extended brownfield/bluefield conversion. This strategy combines the best of both worlds: a complete new start on a greenfield site and a purely technical migration (brownfield) that dispenses with process optimizations.

The discussion about cloud transformation projects has changed noticeably in recent years. Instead of technological exuberance, the picture today is characterized by a realistic assessment that takes into account both potential and limitations. Compared to the valantic SAP Survey 2024, there is a clear upward trend. Openness towards cloud models continues to increase.

However, awareness of the associated pitfalls is also increasing. The ambivalent assessment of costs is particularly striking. Many companies recognize the business benefits of the cloud, such as the elimination of in-house data centers or lower operating costs (44%). At the same time, almost as many report considerable financial hurdles during the migration itself. Complex customizing or costly integration work in particular cause headaches for companies (42%).

SAP BTP will remain the central technological backbone of SAP transformations in 2025, but its function within the SAP system landscape will change noticeably. The focus is increasingly shifting towards concrete value creation (30 percent). Thus, SAP BTP is evolving from a purely infrastructural element to a strategic enabler for data-driven innovations.

This development manifests itself above all in the increasing use of the platform’s analytical functionalities. The SAP Analytics Cloud acts as a central front end for reporting and dashboarding. Its role goes far beyond traditional evaluation. Rather, it marks the transition from operational data usage to action-guiding data intelligence.

Consolidated, high-quality data is the basis for business analytics, forecasting, reporting, artificial intelligence and the AI assistant Joule; it is the fundament for almost every SAP solution that companies can make use of. This “data foundation” is SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC).

As a result, it has increasingly moved into the strategic focus of the companies surveyed in the broader context of the increasing requirements for data-driven business models. More than half of the IT managers surveyed already consider SAP BDC to be an integral part of their future data management (54%).

This is remarkable in that it is a comparatively “young” platform whose range of functions continues to grow.

SAP AI is no longer just a pure promise of innovation, but a concrete technology with clear business relevance and real added business value. The proportion of companies that already use AI as an integral part of their business processes is now 29% (2024: 7%). A further 51% will be using AI services for the first time in 2025 (2024: 26%), i.e. on a project basis in selected specialist areas.

In addition to dialog-oriented assistants, the focus is primarily on other productive and far-reaching use cases. With GenAI capabilities, such as those addressed via SAP Build Code with Co-Pilot “Joule”. These achieve the highest relevance value with 48 percent. The AI Foundation of SAP BTP and the transformation of planning and analysis processes through AI are only just behind with 43% each.

The AI strategy is primarily motivated by economic drivers. Process acceleration and cost savings are each cited by 51% as the main motives. However, it is equally clear that companies do not view AI solely as an automation tool. Improved problem analysis (44%), safeguarding the future (42%) and targeted relief for employees (39%) underline the fact that AI is perceived as a strategic lever for transformation in the SAP world.