Each day, businesses invest in new software tools: marketing platforms, commerce engines, service systems, and sales technology. They are told that assembling the right combination will unlock their digital transformation journey and finally deliver that personalized and seamless experience they wish to provide to their customers.

But what if more or better software is not necessarily the answer? Each solution solves a real problem for a specific team. But collectively, they create a consequence no one planned for: every new tool builds its own data world, without a common language or context across them.

In a 2026 study by Oxford Economics, only 25% of respondents described their customer experience (CX) technology environment as fully harmonized and integrated. Twenty-nine percent remain highly fragmented. Organizations with siloed CX tech are more likely to face an inability to connect customer needs to actionable data insights. Fifty-eight percent reported this challenge, compared to 47% among those with harmonized environments.

More than what tools businesses choose to add to their CX landscape, how they connect and interact with each other becomes even more important.

A unified data strategy sounds straightforward in principle. In practice, most businesses find that the obstacle is not ambition but rather execution. Every integration decision made without a clear data architecture becomes a future campaign mired in manual reconciliation, a customer journey that breaks at the handoff, or a personalization promise the disparate data sources cannot support. Implementation without a validated strategy creates new fragmentation inside the solution meant to eliminate the old. And without a structured way to pressure-test decisions before any commitment is made, even well-resourced organizations find themselves repeating the same cycle: invest, integrate, fragment, repeat.

The real barrier is not budget or technology

A Forrester study of more than 1,000 senior executives found that data quality and integration issues are cited more than any other factor as the top cause of delayed or derailed transformation projects (39%), ahead of budget, technology maturity, and talent. The same study found that 56% of respondents struggle with poor data quality; 55% face persistent data silos. This is not for lack of investment in technology, but because the connections between systems were not designed or maintained effectively.

What bridges that gap is not another platform, it is the expertise to think through data connectivity decisions before they are made and the ongoing guidance to ensure those decisions compound into measurable gains over time. The Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience solutions provides that guidance along every step of the journey.

Define what success actually looks like

The most common reason data unification projects fall short of expectations is not technical failure, it is a failure to define and measure what success looks like for the entire business before the work begins.

The value management session from the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience establishes that definition at the outset: What does a fully unified data strategy actually enable? It means running the next marketing campaign without manual data reconciliation, and presenting an AI readiness road map without caveats. Stakeholders will know, at every checkpoint, whether the investment is moving the business forward, not just moving the project forward.

Design the strategy before building the integrations

A robust data strategy starts with good design. Product guidance from the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience covers available out-of-the-box integrations, common usage scenarios, and pitfalls and how to avoid them—all delivered in a live remote session by an SAP expert who can answer questions in real time. The data strategy can be conceptualized and pressure-tested before any budget or technical commitments are made.

Validate every critical decision with expert guidance

With the technical assistance and functional assistance from the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience, businesses have continuous access to expert guidance at every critical decision point. Beyond resolving immediate questions, the ongoing access also shares insight on how SAP thinks through problems, strengthening in-house expertise with every interaction. The result is an organization that makes better decisions not just now but for the future.

Measure whether the strategy is delivering

Adoption and innovation checkpoints conducted on a quarterly or semi-annual basis bring the measurement back to where it started: the business outcomes defined at the outset. Do campaigns run without manual reconciliation? Is the AI use case performing against its stated goals? A clear throughline from the value management success KPIs to the adoption and innovation checkpoints proves the benefits of the investment.

Where cycles and silos break

The cycle of invest, integrate, fragment, repeat is not inevitable. It is the predictable result of making technical decisions without an anchoring business imperative, and integration decisions without strategic expert guidance. Organizations that break the cycle do not necessarily have better technology than their competitors—they have better judgment about how to use it.

The Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience exists for exactly that reason: to put proactive and prescriptive guidance at every decision point where that judgment matters most. When data strategy is designed before it is built, validated before it is committed, and measured against real business outcomes, the technology investment already made starts working harder.

The stack was never the problem. When the thinking behind the technology finally matches its ambition, the personalized, seamless experience becomes a reality.

Tara Tracey, global product owner for the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience.
Ella De Torres, product manager for the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience.

A new study by SAP and Oxford Economics has revealed businesses around the world are increasingly driving positive return on investment (ROI) from AI, even as challenges continue to accrue.

While the amount the average global business spends on AI increased slightly to US$28 million this year, the level of ROI from that investment has spiked. Globally, companies expect to drive ROI of 21% this year (US$6.3 million), up from 16% last year. That ROI is expected to grow to 38% in two years’ time (US$15.9 million).

Agentic AI is central to those ROI expectations. In the next two years, average ROI from agentic AI is expected to reach US$17.6 million, more than quadrupling from last year’s estimates (US$4.3 million).

These insights have been revealed in new global research, Value of AI Report 2026, which surveyed 2,600 business leaders across 13 countries.*

Commenting on the research, SAP Chief AI Strategy Officer Sean Kask noted, “AI has moved from experiment to execution, and that’s beginning to show real returns. But there’s still a long way to go. Because AI that lacks context—whether that’s processes, data, or governance—at best creates activity without outcomes and at worst creates risk.”

AI inching closer to enterprise maturity

While global investment in AI increased slightly from US$26.7 milion in 2025, there were significant changes in key markets. Investment increased significantly in Brazil, UK, Australia, and Germany, while leading markets like China and India saw funding decreases.

Today, almost a third of all tasks (30%) in the average business are supported by AI, a figure expected to increase to 48% in two years. Yet, while strategic investment in AI has almost doubled year-on-year to 17%, piecemeal approaches remain by far the most prevalent (41%).

Some of this may be a leadership problem. Under a half of companies have a dedicated AI leader responsible for AI adoption (46%), clear frameworks about AI development (52%), or even training on AI capabilities and risks (41%).

Yet, despite those challenges, 69% of businesses are satisfied with their current AI ROI, even though more than two-thirds are not convinced AI is achieving its full potential.

Some of this optimism is due to agentic AI, since over eight in 10 (83%) businesses say agentic AI has moderate to very high potential to transform their organization. Yet, it is still early days for the technology, with only three percent of businesses saying they are fully prepared for agentic AI, while the majority say they are either partially prepared or not prepared at all.

Global businesses meeting key AI challenges

Organizations are facing a range of challenges achieving ROI from AI, including data, workforce, and governance issues.

Data quality remains the biggest challenge for global organizations. The number of businesses that say they are data ready for AI dropped from last year, with 73% of companies revealing challenges with incomplete data. And that is impacting day-to-day work, with 79% of businesses experiencing rework, delays, or backlogs due to low quality AI outputs.

Similarly, businesses are managing the workforce impacts of AI. Almost eight in 10 businesses (78%) are either unsure or agree their company upskilling is not keeping up with the evolution of AI tools. And just one percent of respondents said AI will have no impact on their workforce planning. Meanwhile shadow AI use is increasing year-on-year, with 69% saying it happens at least occasionally.

“The next step in achieving value will be to integrate AI deeply with contextual data and processes,” Kask said. “But businesses across the world must understand AI often provides value that is harder to measure than expected, and risk that moves faster than most governance can keep up with. Businesses are quickly discovering that AI governance plays a foundational role in unlocking the value from AI.”

Governance is a critical obstacle in the way of enterprise AI value. Just 12% of businesses say either their skills or their processes and frameworks are fully ready to govern AI effectively.

These issues may be exacerbated in an agentic future. Today, 38% of companies do not have a human-in-the-loop process for agentic workflows, 37% don’t have permission and access controls for agents, and only 44% have a registry of the agents in their business. This is critical, given more than two-thirds of businesses (69%) either agree or are unconvinced if they are deploying agents quicker than they can govern them.

Future of value from AI is the Autonomous Enterprise

“Realizing real value from AI is not going to be easy because it demands a new approach,” Kask concluded. “Businesses large and small will need to connect AI to the data and processes that run their organizations, and make sure it has the context and governance to drive trusted results. That’s what we call the Autonomous Enterprise. This isn’t a technical change; it’s a human one. Because you can only achieve real value if agents, processes, and people work as one.”

*Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, and United States.

In an environment shaped by constant change, workforce planning is no longer defined by predictable hiring cycles or seasonal demand. Shifting market conditions, evolving customer expectations, and persistent skills shortages mean that the line between permanent and temporary labor has all but broken down.

External talent, including contractors, consultants, and project-based specialists, is becoming a core component of how work gets done rather than a stopgap solution.

Leading organizations are responding by treating external talent less as a short-term fix and more as a standing part of workforce strategy. With 74% of employers worldwide reporting difficulty finding the skilled talent they need in 2025, workforce planning has become less about filling roles in sequence and more about maintaining access to critical capabilities. This shift moves organizations to a workforce model that can respond quickly, scale efficiently, and align with long-term business priorities.

End of “temporary” talent

External workers have historically been brought in to meet short-term needs, helping fill gaps during peak periods or support one-off projects. While that approach still exists, ongoing volatility has proven that this is no longer sufficient.

Demand signals change quickly, transformation is continuous, and new skill requirements emerge faster than internal teams can adapt.

In this context, external talent provides a clear advantage. It gives companies access to specialized expertise on demand, helps accelerate innovation, and supports operations without overextending internal resources. It also allows leaders to rethink workforce composition to better balance stability with adaptability.

This shift mirrors the recent shifts seen in procurement and supply chain functions, where visibility and cross-functional integration have become drivers of long-term success. Workforce strategy is moving in a similar direction.

You can’t manage what you can’t see

As organizations expand their use of external talent, visibility remains essential. Many companies still manage contingent labor in disconnected ways, which makes it harder to understand where talent is deployed, what it costs, and how effectively it is being used. Without that visibility, workforce decisions remain reactive.

When organizations can see how external talent is deployed across business units, geographies, and projects, they can plan with greater confidence. This level of insight also supports stronger governance by improving compliance, supplier performance, and consistency from sourcing to offboarding.

In practice, organizations that invest in visibility often see measurable improvements in efficiency, productivity, and decision-making speed. More importantly, they begin to treat external labor as a strategic lever rather than a cost center.

From reactive hiring to predictive planning

Visibility is essential, but the real opportunity lies in turning workforce data into actionable insight.

AI is playing an increasingly important role in this transformation. By analyzing hiring patterns, project pipelines, and market signals, AI can help organizations anticipate future talent needs instead of reacting to them. This is especially valuable in environments where workforce decisions need to balance cost, speed, and quality. For example, organizations can use AI to:

• Anticipate external talent needs tied to major initiatives, such as ERP rollouts or expansion projects, before staffing gaps affect delivery
• Identify where external specialists can help address immediate skill gaps while longer-term hiring continues
• Analyze market signals and workforce composition to help guide insourcing vs outsourcing strategies
• Flag bottlenecks and make corrections in onboarding, approvals, or assignment start times that delay productivity and increase costs

As organizations look to make external talent a more strategic part of workforce planning, technology becomes increasingly important. SAP Fieldglass helps organizations gain greater visibility into their external workforce, connect talent data across the enterprise, and use AI-driven insights to make more informed staffing decisions.

By bringing together workforce planning, services procurement, and external talent management, organizations can better anticipate skill needs, improve agility, and align workforce investments with business priorities.

More connected approach to talent

One of the most important shifts underway is how organizations think about workforce composition. Rather than treating external and internal talent as separate categories, forward-looking companies are managing both as part of a single ecosystem.

This integrated approach offers several advantages. First, it more closely aligns with business goals. Leaders can allocate resources based on outcomes rather than employment type, ensuring the right skills are applied where they create the most value. Second, it improves agility. When workforce models are designed to flex continuously, organizations can quickly respond to changing conditions without disrupting operations. Third, it enhances the employee experience for both internal teams and external contributors by streamlining processes and making them more efficient.

Technology plays a key role in enabling this shift and provides organizations with the tools to manage external talent alongside internal workforce data, improving visibility and supporting more data-driven decision-making. Solutions such as SAP Fieldglass help organizations bring greater transparency, consistency, and insight to how external talent is sourced, managed, and aligned to business needs. While no single solution defines success, the ability to connect data, processes, and insights is increasingly important.

Building resilience in an always-on economy

Business no longer moves in predictable cycles. Demand shifts quickly, priorities evolve in real time, and skills gaps can emerge faster than traditional hiring models can address. In that environment, resilience depends on staying adaptable while keeping work moving.

That is why external talent is becoming a more strategic part of workforce planning. With finding skilled talent becoming increasing more difficult, many organizations are looking for ways to maintain access to specialized capabilities as business needs shift. External talent can help teams move faster, bring in targeted expertise, and sustain progress on critical initiatives without overextending the core workforce.

For many organizations, this reflects a broader change in mindset. External talent has moved closer to the center of workforce strategy, especially in areas where speed, specialization, and adaptability matter most. How well organizations plan for and manage that talent will shape their ability to execute, compete, and grow.

Amber Roth is vice president of GTM for SAP Fieldglass.

Swarovski has followed its cloud transformation from 2023 with a global go-live of SAP Cloud ERP Private after choosing an exciting brownfield approach for the rollout. With its migration, the luxury brand is laying the foundation for using AI and for reaching its strategic targets by 2030.

Anyone who is looking for a prime example of how migration to the cloud can do far more than just simplification and standardization should take a closer look at Swarovski. The legendary manufacturer of precision-cut crystals, jewelry, and watches—with its origins in Wattens, in the Austrian region of Tyrol—has transformed its IT landscape from a cost factor into a strategic tool for a digital future.

The transformation was guided by Lea Sonderegger, serving in a dual role as CDO and CIO at Swarovski, with such great success that she was awarded the special “Cloud Excellence” prize in the large enterprise category at the CIO of the Year ceremony held by CIO Magazine last October.

The judging panel found her brownfield approach to be especially praiseworthy: Swarovski employees use SAP Cloud ERP Private but continue to use the familiar processes and databases. A complete redesign of these processes in parallel to the migration would have been too risky and cost-intensive. It would have also resulted in a much longer project duration, Sonderegger is convinced.

25,000 tests with 600 participants

The brownfield implementation was carefully executed. Preparations took two years and involved more than 600 participants performing around 25,000 tests. Two dress rehearsals with strict governance ensured that every function and every data point was ready for the migration.

Sonderegger and her colleagues reserved a 66-hour conversion window for the go-live on April 20, 2026. During this period, all global IT processes at Swarovski were paused. During the subsequent sensitive hypercare phase, 24×7 support ensured that any issues that arose could be dealt with quickly. Thanks to these measures, the transition was seamless. After the conversion window closed, all processes resumed without problems. 

Simplification and standardization ensure consistent data

Despite the large effort involved, this migration was merely the first step. While the switch to SAP Cloud ERP Private created the technical foundation, it’s the subsequent investments that deliver additional added value. These investments concentrate on the incremental reduction of complexity through consolidation of fragmented solutions, the reassessment of user-specific code, and the harmonization of data—all with the overall goal of creating a more coherent, easier-to-handle ERP landscape.

To achieve this, Sonderegger and her team are replacing user-specific applications with SAP standard solutions step by step and only leaving custom developments in place where they offer clear advantages. “The combination of simplification and a return-to-standard solutions improves data consistency, provides for robust, reliable processes, and, ultimately, makes our entire organization more agile,” Sonderegger says.

Cloud technology is not an end in itself

By integrating key functions such as finance, supply chain management, retail, and e-commerce—and enabling their combined use in the cloud—SAP Cloud ERP Private provides for reliable processes and consistent data quality all while enabling customer experiences on a wide variety of front-end solutions on this side of the ERP system.

SAP Cloud ERP Private manages a diverse product range at Swarovski across different regions and price points and integrates with the planning results provided by other SAP and non-SAP systems.

“In all of these activities, cloud technology is never an end in itself, but rather a lever for improving efficiency, resilience, and innovative capabilities,” Sonderegger says. This determination is especially important to her.

It’s not an IT project, it’s a business transformation

Ultimately, Sonderegger and her team succeeded in executing the project on time and on budget because its scope was clearly defined, and strict discipline in change management prevented mission creep. In addition, the company benefited from the experience of its implementation partner, SAP Consulting, and its unrestricted access to SAP expertise.

The example of Swarovski proves that even an essential, unavoidable migration can and should do much more than just avoid risks and cut maintenance costs. The implementation of SAP Cloud ERP Private was imperative here, because SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) had reached the end of its lifecycle.

And the implementation is showing the luxury goods manufacturer the way to the future because everyone involved in the process didn’t just consider it to be an IT project but, above all, a business transformation from day one. One that involved hundreds of experts from different fields and that enjoyed full management support from the beginning.

AI-driven demand forecasts optimize warehouse stocks

Artificial intelligence is also playing a key role in this implementation, with SAP Cloud ERP Private as the operational backbone of an AI ecosystem that can deliver reliable, real-time data and robust, standardized transaction processes.

Swarovski doesn’t use artificial intelligence as a standalone technology, but instead as an integrated capability that complements business processes across all functions. The company is already using AI for demand forecasting, for example, and then uses the results to optimize warehouse stock levels across regions, with the aim of improving the customer experience.

And the AI agent factory initiative enables the development of AI agents that link SAP Cloud ERP Private data with data from non-SAP systems, always with the objective of “automating repetitive tasks, supporting decision-making, and boosting productivity along the entire value chain,” Sonderegger emphasizes.

Top image courtesy of Swarovski

With a record-breaking heatwave gripping the UK in late June, the “action” in London Climate Action Week 2026 needed no explanation. Much like the temperatures outside, the conversations inside intensified, and the soaring mercury served as a live stress test for the very subjects under discussion: infrastructure, public health, business continuity, and the resilience of the systems everyone depends on.

Under the official banner of Climate Cooperation in a Fractured World, delegates spread across the city and the tone was noticeably different from previous years. Fewer pledges, more blueprints. Less “what should we aim for,” more “who is going to finance and build it.”

Sustainability is a driver of growth

If there was a single reframing that ran through the week, it was this: sustainability is not a cost of growth, it is a driver of it.

That shift was visible in how decarbonization was discussed. Conversations that once centered on targets now centered on operations: Scope 3 emissions, value-chain engagement, procurement and logistics decisions, energy demand reduction. Practitioners repeatedly pointed to an “execution gap”—the distance between climate strategies on paper and projects that are actually permitted, financed, and built—and to the unglamorous work of unblocking infrastructure and untangling supply-chain bottlenecks as the real frontier.

Electrification gave the growth argument its clearest expression. The launch of the Electrify Now initiative, which aims to lift electricity’s share of final energy demand from roughly 20% today to 35% by 2035, was framed as an industrial strategy. Nearly doubling electricity’s share of energy demand in under a decade is an acceleration, and the week’s energy-transition summits were clear about what it demands: scaling renewables at pace, doubling down on energy efficiency, and, above all, building out the grid infrastructure to carry it. Speeding up permitting and resolving supply-chain constraints were named repeatedly as the bottlenecks that will decide whether the target is met. 

The heatwave outside made that case tangible. As cooling demand surges and extreme weather stresses networks, a clean, resilient electricity system is fast becoming a precondition for business continuity and not just decarbonization. UK-focused sessions highlighted the substantial clean energy investment flowing into the country since 2024 as evidence that the low-carbon economy is now a growth story in its own right. 

The same logic ran through the finance agenda. Sessions on moving from risk to resilience and from risk to opportunity focused on mobilizing capital for adaptation and climate-resilient infrastructure, and on the practical challenge of connecting available capital with investable projects through better data, governance, and pipeline development.

Nature is now on the agenda

Perhaps the most striking development of the week was where nature sat on the agenda, and where it is headed. Speakers were blunt about the underlying problem: our economic system is very good at valuing what we take from nature and very poor at valuing nature itself. Worse, we actively pay to destroy it. Figures cited during the week put global investment flows that harm nature at around US$7.5 trillion a year, against roughly $250 billion flowing into activities that help it. As one speaker put it, the task is not to lament that imbalance, but to get the economics right and to start treating nature as something that can be measured, managed, and steered with the same discipline as carbon or financial risk.

That “getting the economics right” is fast becoming a data challenge for business. Work such as the LSE’s research on the economics of landscape restoration suggests that investing in nature can generate returns comparable to investing in factories, railways, or other conventional infrastructure. As nature-related risks and opportunities are codified into emerging frameworks and regulation, companies will have to treat nature as a set of measurable data points: impacts and dependencies per site, per supplier, and per product line, rather than a one‑off narrative in a sustainability report.

Governments have levers too, from requiring companies to stress test for nature-related risk, to shaping incentives so that capital flows toward restoration rather than degradation. For corporate leaders, that translates directly into new categories of information that need to be captured and governed: nature‑related financial exposure, land use and biodiversity metrics, and nature‑positive investment pipelines. What was once an externality is quickly becoming a set of operational KPIs.

Sir Andrew Steer, professor at the London School of Economics, noted that this was the first year nature was represented at the event, but also how far it still has to travel: “Today here in the outdoor tent, next year in the big room.” The implication for businesses is that the organizations that move nature into their core data models and decision frameworks now are better positioned when this topic inevitably moves from the tent to the board agenda.

The AI warning: get sustainability data in now

Underpinning nearly every theme was data. Location-specific climate analytics were described as “the new lens” for understanding financial risk, and AI featured in almost every discussion of how organizations can gain visibility and control over complex energy, water, and supply chain systems.

But the sharpest point made during the week was a warning. As Stephen Jamieson, chief marketing officer of SAP Sustainability, put it: “If we don’t get sustainability data into AI right now, AI will optimize around it. AI works within the systems, the data, and the constraints you give it. If your sustainability priorities live only in documents and presentations rather than in your data and processes, AI will optimize confidently in entirely the wrong direction.”

The logic is uncomfortable, but hard to argue with. Sustainability now plays out at the transaction level—such as carbon cost per shipment, Scope 3 exposure per supplier, packaging compliance per SKU—and the volume, granularity, and pace of those requirements exceed what manual processes and fragmented tools can manage. An organization whose carbon tool cannot see its financial constraints, or whose supply chain system cannot see supplier regulations, hands its AI a broken map.

SAP’s answer to this is the Autonomous Enterprise: a maturity journey that starts with intelligence based on trusted, transparent data; moves to optimization where AI is weighing trade-offs across cost, risk, and sustainability impact in real time; and progresses toward autonomy, where sustainability rules are embedded directly into enterprise workflows and executed within defined guardrails. Sustainability stops being a reporting activity and becomes a governing factor in how decisions are made. The architecture choices organizations make now will determine whether that automation can scale safely later.

From the tent to the big room

London Climate Action Week 2026 closed with an uncomfortable message delivered in 35-degree heat: the climate is not waiting for business strategies to mature. But a hopeful signal surfaced, too: the growth case, the nature case, and the technology case for climate action are converging, and each is being made in the language of returns, resilience, and competitive advantage.

The task for business leaders is to bring those cases inside capital allocation, procurement, and the data and systems where decisions are actually made. The organizations that thrive will be the ones that move the sustainability agenda into the big room, before the next heatwave makes the argument for them.

For more information on scaling sustainability for your business, visit SAP Sustainability.

Monica Molesag is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.

At SAP, our mission has always been to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Thousands of organizations worldwide rely on SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other software to manage their most critical business operations—from corporate finance and human resources to supply chain management and project delivery.

Equally important to our customers are the on-premise maintenance and support practices that help safeguard the software’s ongoing performance and resilience, with regular updates and technical assistance that support business continuity.

As we continue to innovate across our portfolio, we also continue our efforts to let our commercial practices reflect the flexibility and transparency our customers need, and on engaging constructively with regulators around the world.

In a constructive dialogue with the European Commission, SAP has now agreed to a set of adaptations to these practices that will further improve this flexibility, transparency, and predictability. These measures reflect our broad commitment to continuously evolving our practices to serve customers better as their businesses and technology landscapes change.

Our updated policies will apply to all current and future SAP customers worldwide for all of SAP’s on-premise products. Taken together, they represent one of the most customer-friendly maintenance and support approaches in the business software industry, and they set a leading example of what customers can expect from SAP. This further flexibility will not come at cost of business continuity, reliability, and scale, of course.

Specifically, SAP is committed to the following adaptations:

Greater choice in maintenance and support

SAP understands that customers that run SAP on-premise software want the choice and flexibility to tailor their maintenance arrangements to match the way their business operates. In response, SAP is further enhancing how customers can organize their SAP system landscape by providing a clear, streamlined framework for splitting it into separate parts, known as commercial installations, for which customers can select different levels of SAP support, elect no support at all ,or make other choices outside of SAP Support for that particular installation. This gives organizations even greater ability to tailor their on-premise support arrangements across different parts of their SAP environment in a way that best fits their operational and commercial priorities, allowing them to scope their maintenance and support strategy to match their strategic positioning and unique business outlook.

Providing more flexibility on unused licenses

SAP already offers attractive programs to leverage unused licenses by reallocating on-premise licenses to cloud subscriptions, to other on-premise licenses, or simply to terminate them.

With additional commitments, SAP is offering even more flexibility to help customers terminate licenses, in objectively justified cases. This concerns severe workforce reductions, software products in customer specific maintenance, bankruptcy, divestiture, and implementation failure cases.

SAP is also expanding access to single-metric contracts, which provide an alternative and often simpler way of calculating license fees on which maintenance and support fees are based. Broader availability of these contracts will give customers an even more transparent and predictable basis for managing their ongoing costs. The maintenance and support fees for the single metric contract are scaling with the single metric, which allows better adjustment to changing business conditions.

Simpler contract terms and policies

Clarity in contractual terms and policies is essential for customers making long-term technology decisions. As part of these commitments, SAP will further clarify some of its key contractual provisions and applicable policies. This provides even greater predictability, ensuring that customers can plan their support obligations with full confidence as they expand their SAP deployments.

Easier terms for returning customers

When a customer returns to SAP maintenance and support, it benefits from the innovation and corrections that were deployed during that time. Our commitments introduce meaningful improvements to the terms for customers that resume SAP maintenance and support after a period of absence.

SAP will not charge any administrative fees for customers coming back and limit the back-maintenance fee to the minimum of six months or 50% of the fees for the time off. In addition, a defined set of outdated products will not trigger any back-maintenance at all. These improvements provide further confidence that returning to SAP maintenance and support will be straightforward and cost-effective.

All these commitments were developed in a close and constructive discussion with the European Commission, but also with SAP’s customer representatives, like the German-Speaking User Group (DSAG).

“From the perspective of DSAG member companies, this is an important step in the right direction. The provided flexibility will help more customers to make the right decisions regarding their SAP system architecture. Even with SAP’s cloud-based strategy, it is important to decide on your own how to proceed with systems that still have a positive impact on the company and there’s no need to shut them down,” said Jens Hungershausen, Chairman of the Executive Board of DSAG. “We see this development as the result of our effort to drive an ongoing dialogue and partnership between SAP and the customer community on such improvements. These commitments will deliver tangible benefits for customers and strengthen trust while keeping customer choice and flexibility at the center.”

Our teams are ready to help

To support a seamless experience for every customer, SAP account executives and customer-facing teams will be fully briefed on all the changes outlined above. They are equipped to walk customers through the details, answer questions, and apply these commitments in a fair, transparent, and predictable way. Whether a customer is looking to restructure their system landscape, explore single-metric contracts, terminate unused licences, or understand the improved terms for returning to SAP support, SAP teams stand ready to guide them through every step of the process. There will be a clearing structure set up by SAP in case a customer may contend the application of these new rules.

Looking ahead

At SAP, we are committed to empowering organizations with the enterprise software and services they need to thrive as they modernize toward an AI-enabled autonomous enterprise at their own pace. We champion customer choice and continuously work to maintain an open, vibrant ecosystem for our partners and customers alike. These commitments are the product of constructive and collaborative engagement with the European Commission, and they are designed to deliver real, meaningful benefits to our global customer base.

As noted above, these commitments relate to our on-premises maintenance and support services. Our cloud offerings continue to evolve through ongoing innovation in areas like SAP S/4HANA Cloud, RISE with SAP, and our broader cloud portfolio and are unaffected by these changes. However, the added clarity and flexibility support customers as they modernize toward an AI-enabled autonomous enterprise at their own pace

We believe these commitments establish a new benchmark for customer-friendly practices in the enterprise software industry.

For full details on the commitments, including the conditions for their application, please visit here.

The full text of the commitments as adopted by the European Commission is also available on the Commission’s competition website under case number AT.40823.

We look forward to continuing to support the success of our customers’ businesses in the future!

Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Global Customer Support at SAP.