ERP Project Failure Rate Statistics (2026): Budget, Schedule and S/4HANA Data

Ask "what share of ERP projects fail?" and you will get answers from 19% to over 70%. Each one comes from a real study, but each study defines failure differently. Some count missed budgets, some count missed schedules, and some count missed business-case goals. This page collects the current, sourced numbers for each definition, with extra detail on SAP S/4HANA programs. Each number is labeled with the population it describes, so you can tell which ones apply to your program.

Key takeaways

The headline failure rates, and why they disagree

The most-quoted failure rates measure different things. Gartner measures whether an ERP initiative delivers its original business case. BCG measures whether a large tech program lands on time, on budget and on scope. The Standish Group sorts IT projects into successful, challenged and failed. None of these is a "failure rate" in the sense of a cancelled project.

• Gartner predicts that by 2027, more than 70% of recently implemented ERP initiatives will fail to fully meet their original business case goals, and as many as 25% of these will fail catastrophically.
• In the same research, Gartner cites a survey in which 75% of ERP strategies are not strongly aligned with overall business strategy. Gartner's analysis blames technology-centric approaches that ignore stakeholder engagement.
• BCG's 2024 Build for the Future study surveyed more than 1,000 C-suite executives across 20 sectors. It found that more than two-thirds of large-scale tech programs (more than 3% of the annual tech budget) are not expected to be delivered on time, within budget, or within scope.
• BCG Platinion's reading of the same 2024 study: only 30% of companies fully meet timeline, budget and scope expectations in large-scale tech programs.
• BCG also estimates that a failed program can cost a typical large company more than €20 million a year (BCG, November 2024).

Source: Gartner; BCG Platinion, 2025, on BCG's 2024 study; Standish Group CHAOS 2020, via BudgetOverrun

Historical baselines still quoted in board decks

The two figures below are old, but steering committees still quote them. Treat them as context, not as current benchmarks.

Source: Standish Group CHAOS 2020, via BudgetOverrun (historical)

• Historical: CHAOS 2020 is still the latest edition. BudgetOverrun points out that the 2015 change in how Standish defines success makes the rise from 16% successful in 1994 to 31% in 2020 overstate real improvement. OpenCommons' summary of the 2020 data says large projects had under 10% success, while small projects reached about 90%.
• Historical (2012): The McKinsey–Oxford study of IT projects with initial budgets over $15 million found that they ran 45% over budget and 7% over time on average and delivered 56% less value than predicted. 17% went so badly they could threaten the company's existence.
• Historical (2020): BCG's earlier study found 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives. ReliaMag's breakdown of the same report: 30% fully succeeded, 44% created some value but missed targets, and 26% created little or nothing.

Budget overruns: how often and how badly

Panorama Consulting's annual ERP Report is the most frequently cited independent ERP survey. The 2026 edition covers 170 respondents, with data collected from January 2025 to January 2026. The median respondent has $200.5 million in annual revenue, and 56.5% are multinational. Panorama's own summary says more than a quarter of organizations exceeded their project budgets.

Source: Panorama Consulting 2026 ERP Report, as reported by MSDynamicsWorld, 2026

• Panorama's 2024 report: more than half of organizations stayed within budget, and the median project cost was $450,000. Of those that went significantly over budget, only 33.3% had used technology assessment services.
• SAP-specific (2024, 208 ASUG members): 49% of respondents already live on S/4HANA said costs exceeded their original budgets, up 17 from 2023. Consulting fees were the main source of unexpected costs.
• SAP-specific (2025, 168 ASUG members, BearingPoint-sponsored): 31% reported costs exceeding expectations, 18 points better than 2024.
• SAP-specific (2026, 194 ASUG members): 35% said costs met budget expectations and 3% came in under budget. Systems integrators and partners were the largest cost, at 37% of the budget.

Share of ASUG S/4HANA respondents reporting costs in line with expectations. Sources: ASUG, 2024; ASUG 2025 via Orpington; ASUG 2026 via ERP Leaders. Each year's sample is different.

Conflict to note: Panorama's 30% overrun rate describes a mostly mid-market, mostly cloud population. Horváth's S/4HANA study, covered below, found that budgets were heavily or strongly exceeded in about two-thirds of transformed companies. These two studies measure different kinds of project. Use Horváth's figure for an ECC-to-S/4HANA program, not Panorama's.

Schedules and timelines

Schedule results in Panorama's 2026 survey were somewhat better than budget results. Projects have also become much shorter.

Source: Panorama Consulting 2026 ERP Report, as reported by XoroSoft, 2026

Panorama project timeline. Panorama's March 2025 release calls the drop from 15.5 to nine months a fall in the "average" timeline, and the 2026 report gives a nine-month "median." Sources: Panorama via EIN Presswire, March 25, 2025; Panorama 2026 ERP Report

• Panorama links the shorter timeline to SaaS. It says respondent makeup stayed consistent, so the drop may reflect high SaaS adoption. In the 2026 sample, 73.5% of deployments were cloud, hosted, managed or SaaS.
• S/4HANA programs take much longer. ASUG's 2026 research found an average go-live of 1.4 years, and 61% of go-lives on time in 2026, up from 56% in 2025.
• Horváth found that S/4HANA transformations take on average 30% longer than originally planned.

Average S/4HANA go-live duration by approach, 194 ASUG members. Source: ASUG research via diginomica, October 2026

S/4HANA transformations: the SAP-specific evidence

The most detailed independent outcome study of S/4HANA programs comes from Horváth. It surveyed 200 top executives from six countries and published the results in April 2025.

Source: Horváth, April 10, 2025 (budget figures refer to companies that have completed the transformation)

• On schedules, Horváth reports that fewer than one in ten companies that have completed the transformation stayed within schedule.
• Horváth also found that 75% of companies rely on cloud hosting. Manufacturers and large companies mostly take a brownfield approach, and service companies mostly go greenfield.
• Vendor data: a Precisely/ASUG survey from November 2025 found that 30% say their SAP migration projects are either delayed or over budget.

Conflict to note: ASUG members reported 61% on-time go-lives in 2026. Horváth found fewer than one in ten completed transformations stayed on schedule. The populations differ: ASUG surveys North American user-group members, and Horváth surveyed executives in six countries. The questions also differ, since a go-live date can be re-baselined while the original plan cannot. Ask which baseline your steering committee is using.

Why projects run over: the root causes

When respondents explain overruns, they mostly name organizational problems and fit problems found late. Technical execution is mentioned less often.

Reasons cited by over-budget or over-schedule organizations (multiple answers allowed). Source: Panorama Consulting 2026 ERP Report, as reported by MSDynamicsWorld and XoroSoft, 2026

• Panorama links the additional-technology cause to selection: organizations often discover fatal misfits late and turn to additional technology, scope expansion and custom builds.
• That cause is becoming more common. In Panorama's 2024 report it was again the top budget-overrun reason, up from 32.8% of over-budget respondents the year before. Resource constraints were the top schedule-overrun reason, up from 37.7% in the prior report.

Top barriers to S/4HANA migration (vendor data). Source: Precisely with ASUG, November 4, 2025

Quality, data and testing

Quality is the part of failure that budget and schedule numbers leave out. A project can go live on time and still fail its users.

• Horváth found that 65% report strong to very strong quality deficits, despite time and budget overruns. Overspending does not buy quality.
• Secondary summaries of the full Horváth study cite scope creep, weak project management, and underestimated data migration and testing phases as the causes. We could not read that section of Horváth's press release ourselves, so treat this as reported rather than verified.
• Data problems were reported by 29.4% of over-budget companies and 36.8% of companies that ran late in Panorama's 2026 study.
• Vendor data: in the Precisely/ASUG survey, automation use in SAP processes stood at 57%, down 1 point from 2024. The share considering automation fell from 25% to 22%. Migration budgets are pulling money away from automation.

People, partners and change management

• Partner spend dominates S/4HANA budgets. Systems integrators and partners made up 37% of the budget in ASUG's 2026 research. In 2024, ASUG respondents named consulting fees as the main source of unexpected costs.
• 57% of ASUG respondents recommend starting change management early, up 7 points from 2024 (ASUG 2025 research via Orpington).
• Value takes time to arrive after go-live. In ASUG's 2025 research, newcomers realized value in 4.4 months, compared with 7.2 months for organizations live for more than three years.
• Few organizations put heavy effort into change management. Panorama's 2026 report found fewer than 25% of organizations put an intense focus on organizational change management (as summarized by ERPImplementationCost.com).
• DSAG's 2026 investment report found that skills shortages, parallel transformation projects and limited budgets are pushing schedules back. A DSAG board member said this happens even if this results in higher maintenance expenses.

AI: the next source of program risk

ASUG's research director says S/4HANA projects are what is straining budgets today, and that AI will be impacting them next.

142 ASUG members, February 2026, research with Microsoft and Intel. Source: CIO.com, 2026

• In ASUG's 2026 S/4HANA research, 31% are discussing SAP's AI without a meaningful strategy behind it.
• 72% of respondents use Microsoft Copilot, and more than half plan to use SAP's embedded AI and Joule agents.
• Panorama's 2026 report found that business intelligence, not AI, was the most significantly deployed digital initiative, at 55.3% of organizations.

Outlook: deadline pressure and the remaining migration wave

A large share of the S/4HANA wave is still underway, and the deadline is close. That timing raises risk for the programs that remain.

ASUG members planning to wait more than two years to move to S/4HANA. Sources: CIO.com on ASUG data (2023, 2025); ASUG, 2024

• 68% of ASUG members are live on S/4HANA or moving from ECC (2026), and 62% are still newcomers with less than three years on S/4HANA.
• Vendor data: 59% of companies are fully or partially live on S/4HANA, up 13 points from 2024 (Precisely/ASUG, November 2025).
• In the DACH region, DSAG's 2025 investment report found SAP ERP/Business Suite in use at 51% of respondents (2024: 68%). S/4HANA on-premises was at 42%, S/4HANA Private Cloud at 33% (2024: 11%) and Public Cloud at 13% (2024: 6%).
• DSAG's 2026 report says not every company will finish its S/4HANA transformation by 2027. Nearly half of those still investing in ECC plan to switch by the end of 2030, which puts them into extended maintenance.

Numbers we could not verify (and why we left them out)

• "73% of ERP projects fail" and "215% cost overruns." Both are widely attributed to Panorama. Nawaone checked Panorama's latest study and found neither figure in it. Related tables that cite a 68% failure rate and 189% overruns (for example Godlan) did not link to primary data we could check.
• Horváth schedule figures. Some secondary sources say almost 60% of completed transformations exceeded their schedule. Horváth's own release says fewer than one in ten stayed within schedule. We used the primary source.
• Misattributed barrier data. Some outlets credit the 49%/44%/37% barrier figures (process change, customizations, resistance) to Horváth. They come from the Precisely/ASUG survey.

What this means for your sign-off

• Agree on what "failure" means before the steering committee does. Gartner judges success against original business case goals, not go-live dates. Write two or three measurable business outcomes into your exit criteria, so sign-off covers results as well as completed test cases.
• Protect the test window from schedule slip. S/4HANA programs run 30% longer than planned on average, and testing sits at the end where delays pile up. Set fixed test phases and entry gates in a phase-by-phase migration test plan so earlier slips push the go-live date instead of cutting test time.
• Run data as its own test stream. Data issues show up in 36.8% of late projects. Plan multiple data-load rehearsals and reconciliations, and make masking decisions early. Our guide to S/4HANA test data covers copies, masking and synthetic data.
• Track approvals like defects. Organizational issues are the leading cause of schedule overruns, at 57.9% of late projects. Give business sign-offs named owners and dates, and use a formal UAT Sign-Off Form and Go/No-Go Readiness Checklist from the template library.
• Don't let migration spend crowd out regression automation. Automation use has stalled at 57% while budgets go to the migration. You will need a regression suite after go-live, so choose what to automate first now.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of ERP projects fail?

It depends on the definition. Gartner predicts that by 2027 more than 70% of recently implemented ERP initiatives will fail to fully meet their original business case goals, and up to 25% of these will fail catastrophically. On budget alone, 30% of projects in Panorama's 2026 survey exceeded budget. Outright failure is rarer. The historical CHAOS 2020 report rated 19% of IT projects as failed.

How often do S/4HANA migrations go over budget?

Horváth found that budgets were heavily exceeded at a quarter of transformed organizations and strongly exceeded at another 40%. ASUG's 2026 research found that 38% met or came in under budget.

How long does an S/4HANA migration take?

ASUG members reported an average of 15.8 months for brownfield and 20.2 months for greenfield in 2026. Horváth found that projects take on average 30% longer than originally planned.

Is the "73% of ERP projects fail" statistic real?

We could not verify it. It is widely credited to Panorama, but Panorama's latest study does not contain it. Panorama's 2026 report instead says more than a quarter of organizations exceeded their budgets.

What is the most common cause of ERP budget overruns?

Unplanned technology purchases. Among over-budget organizations in Panorama's 2026 study, 54.9% cited the need to buy additional technology. That usually points to fit problems that were missed during selection.

Are S/4HANA project outcomes improving?

In ASUG's data, yes. On-time go-lives rose from 56% in 2025 to 61% in 2026. Respondents reporting costs above expectations fell to 31% in 2025, an 18-point improvement on 2024. Each year's sample is different, so read these as directional.

Sources

1. The 2026 ERP Report, Panorama Consulting Group, 2026
2. Panorama Consulting Group Releases Latest Study of ERP Implementation Outcomes, Panorama Consulting Group, 2026
3. Panorama Consulting Group Releases Latest Study of ERP Implementation Outcomes (2025 ERP Report), EIN Presswire, March 25, 2025
4. The 2024 ERP Report, Panorama Consulting Group, 2024
5. Why ERP Implementations Cost More Than Anyone Budgeted, MSDynamicsWorld (TEKenable), 2026
6. ERP Implementation Statistics 2026, XoroSoft, 2026
7. ERP Implementation Cost 2026, ERPImplementationCost.com, 2026
8. Enterprise Resource Planning to Optimize Operations, Gartner, date not stated
9. What IT Leaders Must Do to Avoid Disappointing ERP Initiatives, Gartner, date not stated
10. Study shows: SAP S/4HANA transformations rarely go as planned, Horváth, April 10, 2025
11. Why S/4HANA Programmes Go Live but Fail to Deliver, AmaliTech, 2026
12. The State of SAP S/4HANA Adoption: Trends, Successes, and Challenges, ASUG, 2024
13. ASUG Research: SAP S/4HANA Adoption Trends, Insights, and Advice, ASUG, 2025
14. What ASUG's Latest Survey Reveals About Real-World Migrations, Orpington, 2026
15. How are ERP customers faring with AI readiness? ASUG research, diginomica, October 2026
16. 38% of SAP users kept S/4HANA on budget, ASUG found. 61% hit the date., ERP Leaders, October 2026
17. SAP customers say migration is eating their budgets—and AI is next in line, CIO.com, 2026
18. New Research Reveals SAP S/4HANA Migration Momentum, Despite Ongoing Automation Challenges, Precisely (vendor) via PR Newswire, November 4, 2025
19. Precisely and ASUG see S/4HANA migrations surge as automation stalls, Enterprise Times, November 6, 2025
20. Most Large-Scale Tech Programs Fail—Here's How to Succeed, BCG, November 13, 2024
21. Why 70% of Transformations Miss the Mark and How to Fix Them, BCG Platinion, 2025
22. Flipping the Odds of Digital Transformation Success, BCG, 2020 (historical)
23. Do 70% of Digital Transformations Fail? Tracing the Number, ReliaMag, 2026
24. Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value, McKinsey & Company with the University of Oxford, 2012 (historical)
25. The Standish CHAOS Report by Year, BudgetOverrun, 2026 (summarizing Standish Group data through 2020)
26. CHAOS Report on IT Project Outcomes, OpenCommons, 2025
27. Investitionsbereitschaft in zukunftsweisende Technologien wächst (DSAG-Investitionsreport 2025), DSAG, March 20, 2025
28. SAP users focus more on economic efficiency, heise online, 2026
29. DSAG-Investitionsreport: KI etabliert sich, Cloud auf dem Prüfstand, inuit, 2026
30. The ERP "Failure Rate" Myth: What Panorama's 2026 Data Actually Shows, Nawaone, 2026
31. ERP Implementation Failure Statistics: 2026 Research, Godlan, 2026 (cited only as an example of unverified figures)
32. Why SAP S/4HANA Upgrades Cost More Than Planned, Hyperbots, date not stated (cited only as an example of a conflicting figure)

Last updated: October 19, 2026. Statistics are refreshed as new research is published.

Editor's notes, not for publication:

• Some figures come from secondary write-ups, not the primary report. My search tool hit its usage limit partway through the research. The full Panorama 2026 breakdowns (22.9/7.1/50.6/19.4, 58.8/18.8/22.3, 54.9/57.9, 29.4/36.8, 73.5) and the ASUG 2025 and 2026 figures come from named outlets reporting on those studies, and the article labels them that way. Check them against the full Panorama PDF and ASUG member reports before publishing.
• One figure was left out on purpose. MSDynamicsWorld reports scope expansion at 55.3% of late projects. That is exactly the same as Panorama's business-intelligence deployment figure, which suggests a transcription error, so I didn't use it.
• No testing-specific benchmarks. The article has no figures from the Capgemini World Quality Report or DORA because I couldn't search for them. If you want a stronger testing section, add those once they are sourced.
• Possible overlap with an existing page. The site already has a page at /blog/it-project-failure-statistics. I didn't link it because it isn't on the approved internal list. Check whether the two articles overlap.