SAP Go-Live Statistics (2026): Timelines, Budgets, Quality and Readiness

Most SAP go-lives happen later than planned, cost more than budgeted, and bring quality problems with them. How often depends on who is asking and whom they ask. This page brings together the most recent published data on S/4HANA go-lives: how many customers are live, how long projects take, how often they overrun, and what goes wrong after cutover. Each number links to its source.

Key takeaways

How many SAP customers are live on S/4HANA

Estimates of how many customers have gone live vary widely. Most of the gap comes from who was surveyed and what counts as "live." User-group surveys draw on engaged members, who tend to be larger companies. Analyst estimates cover the whole ECC installed base.

Share of ASUG members live on S/4HANA or in the process of moving (208, 168 and 194 respondents respectively). Source: ASUG, 2024; ASUG, 2025; Diginomica, October 2026

• 39% of the ECC base had migrated by the end of 2024. Gartner puts this at about 14,000 of 35,000 SAP ECC customers (CIO.com, 2025).
• 59% fully or partially live. This is up 13 percentage points from 2024, according to a Precisely and ASUG survey published in November 2025. Precisely sponsored it, and the release does not give the number of respondents (Precisely, 2025).
• 30% fully live on S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, up from 19% a year earlier. This comes from 122 SAP professionals in SAPinsider's RISE with SAP 2025 benchmark. In the same survey, use of legacy ECC and Business Suite fell below 50% of respondents for the first time (ERP Today, January 2026).
• 56% of DSAG respondents run S/4HANA on-premises, up from 44% in 2024. On-premises S/4HANA has now overtaken ECC and the older Business Suite, which 54% still run, down from 68% (all-about-security.de reporting DSAG, 2026). The base is 198 DSAG member companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, surveyed December 2025 to January 2026 (IT-Onlinemagazin, 2026).
• 62% of ASUG's 2026 respondents are "newcomers" with less than three years on S/4HANA (Diginomica, 2026). Most organizations are therefore still in their first upgrade cycles after go-live.

DSAG Investment Report, share of respondents (DACH). DSAG compares 2026 with 2024 because SAP distributed the 2025 questionnaire, which drew a different respondent mix. Source: all-about-security.de, 2026; DSAG, February 2026

Conflicting numbers: Two older estimates for the whole installed base are much lower. Basis Technologies' adoption model (vendor data) put the share of the 35,000 ECC customers live at the end of 2023 at 28% (Basis Technologies, 2025). Houlihan Lokey's October 2024 industry overview said about 15% had completed migration (Houlihan Lokey, 2024). The likely reasons are differences in timing and in how each source defines "migrated" versus "live." The user-group figures above also count organizations that are still mid-project.

The 2027 deadline and the customers still on ECC

For a test manager, the main question about the remaining ECC base is capacity. A large number of customers will go live in the same narrow window and will be competing for the same partners, environments and specialists.

Gartner estimates and projections. Source: CIO.com reporting Gartner, June 2025

• 40% to 45% of ECC users will stay on the older ERP through 2027, according to IDC's Mickey North Rizza. That is slightly more optimistic than Gartner (CIO.com, 2025).
• 37% of DSAG companies still on ECC aim to switch by the end of 2027. Around half plan to move by the end of 2030 and accept extended-maintenance surcharges, and 4% plan to migrate only by 2033 (all-about-security.de reporting DSAG, 2026).
• 10% of DSAG respondents still plan high or medium investment in ECC in 2026 (DSAG, 2026).
• Some Gartner clients expect migrations to take three to seven years, according to Gartner VP Fabio Di Capua (CIO.com, 2025).

The share of ASUG members planning to wait more than two years has fallen steadily:

ASUG members planning to go live on S/4HANA more than two years out. Source: CIO.com reporting ASUG, 2026 (2023, 2025); ASUG, 2024 (2024)

For what the 2027, 2030 and later dates mean contractually, see our guide to ECC end of maintenance.

Go-live timing: on schedule or late?

This is where the published data disagrees most. One reason is the denominator. Horváth's 8% covers only the 37 companies in its sample that had completed their transformation. ASUG's 61% describes its members' go-lives in general. ISG reports projects that are both late and over budget. The questions, samples and regions all differ, so none of these numbers should be read as "the" on-time rate.

Different populations: ASUG (194 members, Americas), Horváth (37 completed transformations among 200 executives in six countries). Source: Diginomica reporting ASUG, 2026; CIO.com reporting Horváth, 2025

• Projects take on average 30% longer than planned, according to Horváth's survey of 200 top executives in six countries (Horváth, 2025).
• Only 37 of the 200 Horváth respondents had completed the move. 57% were still mid-transformation (CIO.com, 2025).
• 46% of Horváth respondents would now estimate a longer project duration (CIO.com, 2025).
• The average go-live takes around 1.4 years, according to ASUG's 2026 research (Diginomica, 2026). ASUG's 2025 figure was an average of one and a half years (ASUG, 2025).
• Nearly 60% of SAP migrations are behind schedule and over budget, according to ISG's State of SAP Migrations report. It draws on more than 200 senior decision-makers plus ISG's advisory engagements (ISG, February 2026).

Average planned and actual duration for Horváth respondents that had completed their S/4HANA transformation. Source: CIO.inc reporting Horváth, 2025

Cross-ERP context: Panorama Consulting's 2025 ERP Report covers all ERP vendors, not just SAP. It found the average project timeline fell from 15.5 months to nine months year over year, which Panorama links to high SaaS adoption (Panorama via EIN Presswire, March 2025). Treat this as a benchmark for SaaS-heavy, mid-market projects, not for ECC conversions.

Budgets and cost overruns

Source: Horváth, 2025; Diginomica reporting ASUG, 2026

• Nearly 40% of Horváth respondents would allocate higher budgets if they had to replan their migration (CIO.inc, 2025).
• 42% of ASUG "newcomers" said costs were in line with expectations, compared with 35% of all respondents. Only 3% said their project came in under budget (Diginomica, 2026).
• Reports of budget pressure among ASUG members rose seven points year over year. ASUG's research director attributes the pressure to S/4HANA projects themselves (CIO.com, 2026).
• SAP budgets are rising at 43% of DSAG companies (46% in 2024), flat at 26% (32%) and falling at 28% (19%) (DSAG, 2026).
• Across all ERP vendors, more than a quarter of organizations reported going over budget. The most common reason was an unexpected need for additional technology (Panorama Consulting 2026 ERP Report).

Quality after go-live and business outcomes

Going live on time is not the same as going live well. The quality data is the most relevant to anyone signing a go/no-go.

Source: Horváth, 2025 (200 executives, six countries)

• Underestimated testing and data migration phases are among the main causes of deviation from plan. Horváth respondents list them alongside scope expansion, weak project management, rework of concepts and processes, and slow decision-making (Horváth, 2025).
• By 2027, more than 70% of recently implemented ERP initiatives will fail to fully meet their original business goals, Gartner predicts. It cites technology-centric approaches that neglect stakeholder engagement (Gartner).
• ASUG members reach ROI in just under seven months after go-live, according to the 2026 research (Diginomica, 2026). In 2025, newcomers realized value in 4.4 months versus 7.2 months for customers live more than three years (ASUG, 2025).
• ISG blames delays mainly on weak governance rather than technical challenges. The most common causes are underestimated complexity, scope expansion and internal capacity limits (ISG, 2026).

Migration approaches and deployment models

The approach you choose changes the test scope. A system conversion keeps your custom code and history, which shifts effort toward regression testing and data reconciliation. Greenfield shifts it toward new-process and end-to-end testing.

ASUG members live or moving to S/4HANA, by approach (208 respondents in 2024; 168 in 2025, BearingPoint-sponsored). Source: ASUG, 2024; ASUG, 2025

• 42% of ASUG's 2026 respondents use RISE with SAP private edition. 9% use public edition and another 9% use GROW (Diginomica, 2026).
• 42% of DSAG respondents plan high or medium 2026 investment in S/4HANA on-premises. The figures are 22% for private cloud and 6% for public cloud (DSAG, 2026).

Moving to RISE does not move test accountability to SAP. See RISE with SAP: why testing is still your job.

Testing, integration and tooling

No primary source we found publishes an SAP-specific benchmark for test effort as a share of the program, defect rates at go-live, or hypercare length. Where we found such numbers, they came from vendor blogs without a cited dataset, so we left them out. The data that does exist points to the same pressure points: integration, process change and tooling adoption.

Top barriers to S/4HANA migration. Vendor-sponsored survey. Source: Precisely and ASUG, November 2025

• SAP process automation adoption has plateaued at 57% after strong growth in earlier years, as migration work pulls resources away (Precisely, 2025, vendor data).
• 44% of ASUG members named integration between SAP and non-SAP systems as a focus, up from 36% in 2024. 37% named integration within SAP systems (ASUG Pulse, March 2025).
• Moving to S/4HANA remains ASUG members' top focus area. It was named by 47% in 2025 (ASUG, 2025), compared with 48% in 2024 and 42% in 2023 (ASUG Pulse 2024).

SAP integrated toolchain (Cloud ALM, Signavio, LeanIX, WalkMe), 198 DSAG respondents. A further 16% didn't know the toolchain or considered it not relevant. Source: inuit.at reporting DSAG, February 2026

People, capacity and experience

• Three-quarters of Horváth respondents said staffing gets too little attention up front. Selecting and securing project managers and staff is not given the attention it needs in advance (Horváth, 2025).
• Internal capacity constraints are one of ISG's three most common causes of late, over-budget SAP migrations (ISG, 2026).
• Only 13% of 2025 ASUG respondents had been live on S/4HANA for more than five years (ASUG, 2025). Few internal teams have run more than one go-live and a full upgrade cycle on S/4HANA.

To build that capability before the next program, see how to build an SAP Testing Center of Excellence.

AI in SAP programs

AI is now part of most SAP roadmaps, but few organizations have deployed it at scale in their SAP estates.

ASUG AI survey of 142 members, February 2026 (with Microsoft and Intel). Source: CIO.com, 2026

• 72% of respondents in the same ASUG survey use Microsoft Copilot (CIO.com, 2026).
• 43% of DSAG companies have AI use cases in production. Of those scenarios, 77% run on non-SAP solutions and 3% on SAP (IT-Onlinemagazin reporting DSAG, 2026).
• Generative AI is influencing SAP decisions for 43% of SAPinsider respondents (ERP Today, 2026).

If your program uses AI to generate or run tests, the review controls in our template library (AI-Generated Test Review Checklist & Log) give an auditable trail.

SAP's own numbers: the cloud ERP shift

SAP no longer reports S/4HANA customer counts in its quarterly statements. Its revenue lines still show the installed base moving from on-premises maintenance to cloud ERP subscriptions, and each of those moves ends in a go-live.

Source: SAP Quarterly Statement Q2 2026, July 2026

• SAP's current cloud backlog was €22.9 billion at the end of Q2 2026, up 27% (26% at constant currencies). Cloud ERP Suite revenue rose 25% and software support revenue fell 8% (SAP, Q2 2026).
• In Q1 2026, current cloud backlog was €21.9 billion, up 20% (25% at constant currencies). Cloud ERP Suite revenue rose 23% (SAP Q1 2026 statement, Form 6-K).
• RISE with SAP had been adopted by more than 6,000 customers as of Houlihan Lokey's October 2024 overview. This is a third-party figure and historical as of this update (Houlihan Lokey, 2024).

What this means for your sign-off

1. Plan testing and data migration as the phases most likely to slip. Horváth respondents named underestimated testing and data migration among the main causes of overruns, and completed projects took 19.5 months against 14.9 planned (CIO.inc, 2025). Build contingency into the test cycles themselves, not just the overall plan. Our phase-by-phase ECC to S/4HANA testing plan shows where that contingency belongs.
2. Make data quality a go/no-go criterion, not a hypercare item. With 65% reporting strong or very strong quality deficits (Horváth, 2025), mock-load reconciliation results should be written down as exit criteria. See test data for S/4HANA.
3. Weight end-to-end and interface testing toward integration. 44% of ASUG members now name SAP-to-non-SAP integration as a focus (ASUG, 2025). Interfaces are where conversion projects break, so your regression scope should reflect that.
4. Book scarce people and environments now. Gartner projects 17,000 customers still on ECC at the 2027 deadline (CIO.com, 2025). Programs going live in 2027 will compete for the same partners and specialists. Commit test leads, key users and mock-cutover windows early.
5. Decide on test tooling before Realize, not during it. Only 24% of DSAG companies already use SAP's integrated toolchain, though 39% plan to (DSAG, 2026). If Cloud ALM is your test repository, set it up before build starts. Our Cloud ALM guide covers the setup.
6. Back up the go/no-go decision with evidence. The Go/No-Go Readiness Checklist, Mock Cutover Rehearsal Tracker and UAT Sign-Off Form in our template library turn these risks into explicit gate criteria.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of SAP S/4HANA projects go live on time?

It depends on the source. ASUG's 2026 research found 61% of members' go-lives ran on time, up from 56% in 2025 (Diginomica, 2026). Horváth found only 8% of the companies that had completed their move did so on schedule, from a base of 37 completed projects (CIO.com, 2025). ISG reports nearly 60% of SAP migrations are behind schedule and over budget (ISG, 2026).

How long does an S/4HANA migration take from kickoff to go-live?

Horváth respondents that had completed their transformation planned for an average of 14.9 months and took 19.5 (CIO.inc, 2025). ASUG's 2026 research puts the average go-live at around 1.4 years (Diginomica, 2026).

How many SAP ECC customers have not yet moved to S/4HANA?

Gartner estimates that about 14,000 of 35,000 ECC customers (39%) had migrated by the end of 2024. It projects 17,000 will still be on ECC in 2027 and 13,000 in 2030 (CIO.com, 2025).

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

In Horváth's survey, budgets were heavily exceeded in a quarter of transformed organizations and strongly exceeded in another 40% (Horváth, 2025). In ASUG's 2026 research, only 3% of members came in under budget (Diginomica, 2026).

What are the main barriers to an S/4HANA go-live?

In the Precisely and ASUG survey, respondents named business process change (49%), customizations (44%) and organizational resistance (37%) as the top barriers (Precisely, 2025, vendor data).

Is AI changing how SAP programs deliver?

Not yet at scale. In ASUG's February 2026 survey of 142 members, 24% had moved to active AI deployment and 10% had reached enterprise-scale rollout (CIO.com, 2026). Among DSAG companies with AI in production, 3% of use cases run on SAP (IT-Onlinemagazin, 2026).

Sources

1. Study shows: SAP S/4HANA transformations rarely go as planned, Horváth, 2025
2. SAP customers struggle with S/4HANA migration, CIO.com, March 2025
3. The Slow March to SAP S/4HANA, CIO.inc (ISMG), 2025
4. Firms Moving to SAP S/4HANA Prioritize Short-Term Stability Over Long-Term Transformation, ISG, February 2, 2026
5. ASUG research reveals that S/4HANA migrations are accelerating, with AI in the crosshairs, Diginomica, October 2026
6. ASUG Research: SAP S/4HANA Adoption Trends, Insights, and Advice, ASUG (sponsored by BearingPoint), 2025
7. The State of SAP S/4HANA Adoption: Trends, Successes, and Challenges, ASUG, 2024
8. ASUG Pulse of the SAP Customer Research 2025, ASUG, March 9, 2025
9. 2024 Pulse of the SAP Customer Research, ASUG, 2024
10. SAP customers say migration is eating their budgets, and AI is next in line, CIO.com, May 2026
11. New Research Reveals SAP S/4HANA Migration Momentum, Despite Ongoing Automation Challenges, Precisely (vendor), November 2025
12. DSAG Investment Report 2026, DSAG, February 2026
13. DSAG-Investitionsreport 2026 (German press release), DSAG, February 2026
14. DSAG-Investitionsreport 2026: KI wird zur strategischen Bewährungsprobe für SAP, IT-Onlinemagazin, February 2026
15. DSAG-Investitionsreport 2026: SAP bleibt gefragt, all-about-security.de, 2026
16. DSAG-Investitionsreport: KI etabliert sich, Cloud auf dem Prüfstand, inuit.at, February 2026
17. Nearly half of SAP ECC customers may stick with legacy ERP beyond 2027, CIO.com (Gartner and IDC data), June 2025
18. What IT Leaders Must Do to Avoid Disappointing ERP Initiatives, Gartner
19. Panorama Consulting Group Releases Latest Study of ERP Implementation Outcomes (2025 ERP Report), Panorama Consulting via EIN Presswire, March 25, 2025
20. The 2026 ERP Report, Panorama Consulting Group, 2026
21. Quarterly Statement Q2 2026, SAP SE, July 2026
22. Quarterly Statement Q1 2026 (Form 6-K), SAP SE, April 2026
23. RISE with SAP: Cloud ERP Adoption Accelerates Ahead of 2027 Deadline (SAPinsider benchmark), ERP Today, January 2026
24. The True State of S/4HANA 2025, Basis Technologies (vendor), 2025
25. SAP Industry Overview and Insights, Houlihan Lokey, October 2024

Last updated: October 20, 2026. Statistics are refreshed as new research is published.