Gartner estimates that between 55% and 75% of ERP projects fail to meet their original objectives. The businesses that beat those odds share one thing: they invested in rigorous upfront planning before a single line of code was written.
If your business is running SAP Business ByDesign, that statistic matters right now. Because SAP has made its direction clear.
In April 2026, SAP removed Business ByDesign from its price list for net new customers. Existing customers continue to receive support, compliance, and maintenance updates. But the strategic signal is unambiguous: ByDesign is no longer the platform SAP is building towards for growing businesses. SAP Cloud ERP, the platform SAP previously marketed as S/4HANA Public Cloud, is.
A note on terminology: SAP officially renamed this product SAP Cloud ERP in 2024. The industry, including most customers, analysts, and partners, continues to use S/4HANA. Both terms refer to the same platform and both appear in this article.
The organisations responding most effectively to this are not the ones moving fastest. They are the ones thinking most carefully before they commit.
Which businesses are having this conversation?
Typically, organisations in the £20m to £250m turnover range, operating in manufacturing, wholesale and distribution, or professional and financial services. What they share is a structural moment that has exposed ByDesign’s ceiling: a private equity investment, an acquisition, international expansion, or a push for consolidated group reporting the platform cannot deliver cleanly.
ByDesign was built as an operational ERP for a specific stage of business growth. The problem is that the businesses it served have moved on. ERP is no longer a transactional back-office system. It is a strategic platform. Real-time visibility, multi-entity reporting, and the ability to scale without workarounds are now baseline expectations, not premium features.
What is actually stopping businesses from moving?
Not the technology. Not the commercial model in isolation.
The primary barrier is perceived business risk: fear of disrupting core operations, concern about internal capacity to support a programme, and a genuine lack of clarity about what the journey involves. These are legitimate concerns, and they do not resolve themselves through a confident sales pitch.
Cost is rarely the actual obstacle. According to SAPinsider’s 2025 S/4HANA Migration Benchmark Report, 49% of organisations that went live on SAP Cloud ERP exceeded their original budgets. The primary driver was not the software. It was scope uncertainty and poor data readiness, discovered too late in the programme. That is a planning problem, not a technology problem.
“Cost becomes an issue when scope is unclear and early estimates lack context or transparency.”
The insight most businesses miss: this is a data improvement project, not a migration
Here is where the conventional framing of a ByDesign to SAP Cloud ERP move tends to mislead organisations.
Most assume this is a data migration: extract what you have, load it into the new system, go live. That framing creates a significant proportion of the problems that slow programmes down and inflate costs.
SAP’s own guidance on preparing for data migration from ByDesign to SAP Cloud ERP makes this explicit: the process involves cleansing and rationalising customer and supplier records, material master data, and finance structures, then deciding what should move, what should be archived, and how everything maps to SAP Cloud ERP’s standardised processes and structures.
SAP Cloud ERP is an opinionated system. It expects standardised processes, not custom workarounds accumulated over a decade of ByDesign use. Organisations that go in expecting to replicate their current setup will hit friction at every stage. The ones that treat the transition as an opportunity to simplify and improve their data, rather than preserve every existing quirk, consistently run smoother programmes and arrive at a better outcome post go-live.
The reality: this is less about migrating data and more about improving it.
A typical journey
The following is based on a real engagement. The business has not been named.
The business
A UK-based mid-market manufacturer, operating across multiple entities, with turnover in the range where ByDesign begins to show its limits.
The moment
A new growth strategy backed by private equity investment. Leadership had been working around ByDesign’s reporting gaps with spreadsheets for two years. When consolidation across entities became a board-level requirement, the platform’s ceiling became impossible to ignore.
The approach
A structured discovery phase was run before any implementation commitment was made. The programme was deliberately finance-first, with data simplification and process standardisation built in as objectives from day one, not retrofitted.
The outcome
SAP Cloud ERP deployed alongside an analytics layer. Financial close cycles shortened. Real-time reporting replaced manual consolidation across entities. System adoption increased across the business because people trusted the data they were working with.
The shift
The business is now operating differently, not just using different software. That distinction matters more than any individual metric.
Where programmes go wrong
Gartner’s research on ERP programme failure consistently identifies the same root causes, and they match what experienced practitioners see in the field.
People issues are the most common failure point. Lack of clear ownership on the business side, limited availability of subject matter experts who still have operational day jobs, and slow internal decision-making that stalls momentum at critical stages. These are not technology problems.
Scope is the second failure mode. Programmes that try to redesign everything at once, or overcomplicate the target state, generate their own problems and exhaust the organisation before go-live. Poor data quality is a close third: the state of master data is almost always underestimated going in.
The most damaging assumption of all is treating SAP Cloud ERP as a system upgrade rather than a business transformation. The organisations that struggle most are those that went in expecting to replicate what they already had. SAP Cloud ERP requires a willingness to standardise ways of working, including some that have never been formally documented.
What a well-prepared business looks like
Consistently, the businesses that run these programmes well share a set of characteristics that have nothing to do with the technology.
Objectives are business-led, not IT-driven. Executive sponsorship is genuine, not nominal. Scope and priorities are defined before work begins, and there is a real willingness to challenge legacy ways of working rather than preserve every existing workaround. Most importantly, leadership understands that this is a transformation. The ERP is the mechanism. The outcome they are buying is faster decisions, cleaner data, and a business that can scale without building workarounds into its foundations.
The single most important step before you start
Run a structured discovery phase. The discovery phase is the cornerstone of SAP’s own Activate methodology, and for good reason. Skipping it, or compressing it to keep a project timeline moving, is one of the most reliable predictors of a programme that runs over budget and over time.
Independent analysis confirms that a well-run discovery phase provides clarity on scope and assumptions, defines the data and process approach, identifies risks and the specific steps to mitigate them, and produces a realistic cost and timeline before any commitment is made.
A partner that rushes to implementation without a thorough discovery phase is optimising for their timeline, not yours.
What success looks like six months after go-live
The tangible outcomes from a well-run transition are consistent. SAP Cloud ERP’s embedded real-time analytics and advanced financial closing capabilities translate into faster month-end close cycles, reduced spreadsheet reliance, and leadership visibility across the business that was previously assembled manually from multiple sources.
But the most telling indicator is not a metric. It is whether the business is operating differently. The ERP has become a decision-making platform rather than a record-keeping system. Reporting that used to take days now takes hours. The organisation is running differently, not just using different software.
On timeline: six to twelve months is typical for businesses of this size and complexity, depending on data readiness and scope. The two phases that place the greatest demand on the business are User Acceptance Testing and the cutover window. The real impact is not system downtime. It is the time, focus, and change management effort required from people who still have operational responsibilities.
For businesses still sitting on the fence
The question is no longer whether to move. SAP’s direction is confirmed. Business requirements for growing mid-market organisations push consistently towards capabilities ByDesign was not designed to deliver at scale. The decision is whether to move on your own terms, with the time and structure to do it well, or to react later when the constraints are tighter and the options fewer.
Staying on ByDesign carries a cost that compounds over time. Increasing operational workarounds, growing reliance on spreadsheets to fill reporting gaps, and reduced ability to scale efficiently are not hypothetical risks. They are what happens when a platform is held past its natural ceiling.
For most organisations, success in this transition is determined not by the move itself, but by the quality of upfront thinking, the realism of the plan, and the experience of the team shaping the journey.
How Codestone approaches this
Codestone is the #1 SAP Cloud ERP partner in EMEA North and the UK, with 27 years of SAP implementation experience and a track record of SAP Business One, Business ByDesign, and SAP Cloud ERP transformations across hundreds of mid-market businesses.
Our approach to ByDesign to SAP Cloud ERP transitions starts with a structured discovery phase, not a sales process. That phase produces a clear, commercially transparent view of scope, data approach, timeline, and cost before any commitment is made. Find out more about our SAP Cloud ERP practice.
If you are evaluating your options and want an honest conversation about what this involves for your specific business, get in touch with our SAP team.
Frequently asked questions
Is SAP Business ByDesign being discontinued?
SAP has not announced an end-of-maintenance date for ByDesign. However, it removed the product from its price list for new customers in April 2026, signalling a clear strategic shift towards SAP Cloud ERP. Existing customers continue to receive support, compliance, and maintenance updates.
What is SAP Cloud ERP and how does it relate to S/4HANA?
SAP Cloud ERP is the official name SAP now uses for the platform previously known as SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. The underlying technology is the same. The industry, including most partners, analysts, and customers, continues to use S/4HANA widely. Both terms refer to the same product.
How long does it take to migrate from SAP Business ByDesign to SAP Cloud ERP?
For mid-market businesses in the £20m to £250m range, six to twelve months is typical. The timeline depends on organisational complexity, the scope of the programme, and how ready the data is going in.
What is the biggest risk in a ByDesign to SAP Cloud ERP migration?
Poor data quality and scope uncertainty discovered too late in the programme. Both are best addressed by running a thorough discovery phase before any implementation begins.
Can we replicate our current ByDesign setup in SAP Cloud ERP?
SAP Cloud ERP expects standardised processes and will not accommodate every custom workaround from a ByDesign environment. Organisations that go in expecting a like-for-like replication consistently encounter problems. The transition works best when it is treated as a process improvement exercise, not a technical lift-and-shift.
What does a structured discovery phase involve?
A discovery phase typically runs four to eight weeks. It produces clarity on scope and assumptions, a defined data and process approach, and a realistic cost and timeline view before any implementation commitment is made. For ByDesign customers, it also includes a data assessment covering what should move, what should be archived, and how master data aligns to SAP Cloud ERP’s standard structures.
