Ready or not, here I come

You can’t hide

Gonna find you

And keep you happy

Are you for the autonomous enterprise? For SAP, the answer is simple: yes, you are 🔗. Not only are customers ready, partners are ready, SAP is ready, technology is ready. And not just aiming to be ready, they are ready today. With everything ready, today, why are you not using the autonomous enterprise?

That the autonomous enterprise, with agents, AI usage, AI solutions are not ready today, and with it, SAP and the technology might be a reason why customers are not using it. In the keynote you can see that the customer was eager to make it clear that their S/4HANA public cloud usage is still for evaluating the solution. The foundation for the autonomous enterprise has been available for quite some time, like Cloud ERP, BTP, SaaS and AI on top. Yet, having the foundation is no more than providing a foundation. Content is needed too. SAP is still in the process of releasing their first agents. Everyone is still trying to figure out how this will work and where to position themselves.

Perhaps SAP should ask itself a few questions: how many of their customers are ready? How many could use cloud ERP, or are using S/4HANA public cloud and the integrated satellite services like SuccessFactors? How many are on BTP and use it to run business critical processes? How many have settled on an AI strategy and usage and can use it as an integral part of a mission-critical business process? The smaller the number, the fewer are ready. And of course: How many cannot be ready as there are legal obligations that forbid them using the solutions? For how many SAP isn’t the most important ERP solution, and therefore they won’t benefit as much from it? Sure, SAP can state that their offering works for 97% and blame the 3% for not being ready. If in the 97% share most are Business ByDesign or Business One customers, and in the 3% most are ECC/S4 customers, is then the customer to blame, or is the SAP solution maybe not ready?

SAP should not only ask this question, but also answer it honestly. How many are ready? How many did their homework? What would be the minimum number to give such a statement? 80%? 90%? And if they are ready, what are they waiting for? Yes, this implies that customers have to ask themselves a few questions. Why aren’t they ready? Why didn’t they do their homework? Is the foundation ready? Could they start using the autonomous enterprise today? Or in the next 1 or 2 years? And if not, why? What is missing? And what is done to solve it and to be ready? How big is the legacy problem?

Regarding the legacy problem: this won’t go away. The longer a company uses SAP, the bigger the company, the more international, the harder it will be to become ready. Most companies go to S/4HANA using a brownfield approach. Some try Greenfield, but rarely for their “big” ERP system, or it is Avocadofield, labeled as Greenfield. Instead of claiming everything is ready, how about helping those companies reach that state? For instance, business partner. Everyone needs to go through this. And every time it is a risk, work and questionable outcome. Like an SAP service to just hand the business partner task over to SAP (or a partner) and say: here, solve it. In a standard way. It’s 2026 and SAP offers a markdown file to assist customers in their custom code migration. That’s a start. Not more. Way more help is needed.

Same questions for partners. How many can support customers on their journey to the autonomous enterprise? How many have the skill set in their consultant lineup to do more than just go through tickets or slides? Do they have the needed business knowledge or just the manpower? To get a glimpse into the harsh partner reality, watch the keynote. You’ll see that partners are not ready as they are busy figuring out how to find their sweet spot in the AI age. When customers now do most of the tasks previously done by T&M consultants, what now? What is their future role in projects? Assisting key users with writing their prompts? Creating skills? Be the quality gate? Position themselves as a business expert that defines the strategy for the changes to come? Or is the future to focus on delivering add-ons?

Most answers depend on how SAP products work and what they offer. And how much SAP is willing to allow. Regarding the autonomous enterprise, we are still at the “idea of a vision” phase. SAP will (future, not present) deliver agents. Customers will still need to find out what those agents can do, and what is marketing. Whether cloud ERP works, especially the public cloud flavor of S/4HANA, is still to be determined. Slightly larger companies, when adopting S/4HANA public cloud - if at all - rather follow the 2-tier ERP 🔗 approach. Which means: S/4HANA public cloud is used, but only for the not-so-critical areas. As soon as it comes to supporting business critical processes, it is (still) ECC or S/4HANA on premise or private cloud. And it is not like everyone is then going full in on the SaaS solutions, or BTP and AI.

As you can see: technology is not ready. Not yet, same goes for customers, partners and SAP.

Ready needs to be interpreted differently. It’s neither SAP, customers nor partners. It is the employees. These are ready. No matter if the other four are ready. Employees are important, yet, overseen in the counting. Employees are the one tasked to get their work done, and they cannot wait for everything to be ready. If they don’t get the tools needed, they will find a way. They will come, you can’t hide. And if none of these three are ready, they are gonna find an alternative, to keep them happy.