SAP Brings Migration and Modernization Assistants to Customers’ Cloud ERP Transformations

To help customers accelerate their move to cloud ERP, SAP is bringing to life its migration and modernization assistants for transformation projects.

Supporting key workstreams, including data management, test management, custom code modernization, and business configuration, these assistants help organizations simplify transformation activities, accelerate project execution, improve decision-making, and increase readiness for cloud ERP adoption.

ERP transformation has become a business imperative for many organizations. Cloud modernization connects organizations to AI, automation, and analytics capabilities that legacy on-premises infrastructure could not support at scale. However, transformation programs can be complex, involving numerous stakeholders and requiring thousands of business and technical decisions.

This year at SAP Sapphire, SAP introduced new agent-led transformation tooling and outlined how migration and modernization assistants can reduce ERP migration efforts.

Today, four of these assistants are available to early adopter customers and are already supporting live cloud ERP transformation projects.

Migration and modernization assistants go live in customer transformation projects

ERP transformation projects require organizations to assess large volumes of business data, understand quality issues, evaluate migration implications, and prioritize remediation efforts across complex landscapes. The Data Management Assistant analyzes data quality metrics, identifies and prioritizes issues based on business impact, recommends remediation actions, and helps execute corrections through both automated and guided remediation approaches.

AkzoNobel, a global leader in paints and coatings, is currently on a RISE with SAP journey, consolidating its ERP landscape as part of a large-scale transformation. Participating in the SAP Early Adopter Care program, the company uses the Data Management Assistant to define data quality scope, evaluate issues across the landscape, and prioritize remediation efforts based on business impact. The assistant gives a structured, end-to-end approach to orchestrating workstreams and managing data quality throughout the company’s ongoing transformation.

“The Data Management Assistant gave us clear visibility into our most business-critical data quality issues and helped us prioritize remediation where it matters most,” said Thilak Selvam, Master Data Program Lead at AkzoNobel. “It reduced analysis effort, accelerated our planning, and provided a structured approach to maintaining data hygiene and quality controls as we prepare for future transformation initiatives.”

Defining test scope, preparing test cases, validating business processes, and ensuring representative data is available often requires substantial effort from both business and IT teams. The Test Management Assistant accelerates test preparation and improves testing effectiveness. By analyzing business processes, requirements, and user stories, it helps define test scope, identify critical business scenarios, generate test cases, and determine the test data needed to execute them.

Test cases are handed off to SAP Test Automation by Tricentis for automated execution, enabling continuous validation at scale. The result is less manual effort, improved coverage of business-critical processes, and greater confidence in deployment readiness.

The Custom Code Assistant helps organizations modernize their custom developments as part of the transition to SAP Cloud ERP Private and continues to support clean core compliance and cloud-ready transformation beyond initial migration.

It supports teams in assessing custom code, identifying migration and remediation opportunities, aligning extensions with clean core principles and SAP-recommended APIs, and adapting legacy applications for cloud-ready architectures. Acting autonomously, it classifies findings by complexity, applies available automated fixes, and generates AI-driven recommendations and code corrections for the remaining findings. The assistant helps customers determine where to adopt SAP standard processes and where custom extensions provide genuine business differentiation. This reduces technical debt, accelerates cloud adoption, and enables organizations to preserve the capabilities that set their business apart while taking full advantage of SAP innovation.

For customers adopting SAP Cloud ERP, the Business Configuration Assistant supports organizations in accelerating business design and implementation planning. It recommends and autonomously applies configurations tailored to the customer’s industry, segment, and business goals, supporting teams in defining scope, setting up organizational structures, and translating requirements into implementation-ready configurations. It also extracts source configurations, flags deviations from SAP target requirements, and maintains a full audit trail—reducing manual effort, improving consistency, and accelerating the path to a production-ready SAP Cloud ERP system.

Expanding across the full transformation life cycle

SAP plans to further expand the migration and modernization assistant portfolio across the transformation life cycle. Planned innovations include the System Analysis Assistant, which creates a customer-specific understanding of existing systems, configurations, and custom developments, providing the foundation for AI-supported guidance throughout the transformation journey and the basis for all other assistants, grounded in customer-specific system data.

In addition, the Project Management Assistant is planned to provide real-time project insights, proactively identify risks, and help orchestrate transformation activities across teams and stakeholders.

The portfolio will also be extended with the Rollout Assistant, which helps organizations align global templates with regional requirements, accelerating local rollouts while reducing effort for business and IT teams through AI-driven guidance.

Together with the Data Management, Test Management, Custom Code, and Business Configuration Assistants available today, these capabilities will offer customers a fully integrated, agent-led transformation experience that helps organizations simplify complexity, accelerate execution, and realize value from SAP Cloud ERP faster.

As SAP continues to expand its migration and modernization assistant portfolio, organizations will increasingly benefit from AI support across every phase of ERP transformation, from initial system assessment and project planning through implementation, go-live, and beyond.

Learn more at www.sap.com/MMA.

Maura Hameroff is chief marketing officer for SAP Cloud ERP Private and RISE with SAP.
Sonja Liénard is head of ABAP Platform at SAP SE.
Soeren Ruder is chief product officer and global head of Customer Experience & Solutions for SAP SE.