Exploring the RISE with SAP Methodology

RISE with SAP helps customers transform their on‑premises landscapes to become an Autonomous Enterprise. In the era of AI, ERP is more critical than ever as the trusted foundation for scaling AI that is relevant, reliable, and business‑ready.

RISE with SAP provides a structured, AI‑enabled journey for on-prem ERP customers to modernize their ERP so they unlock AI value faster:

• Agent‑led transformation — use AI to transform; accelerate ERP modernization by removing complexity and automating time‑intensive activities while supporting required process and technical change
• Fast path to agentic AI value — use AI to run your business; get faster agentic value by enabling AI that works with Cloud ERP Private and services that help activate and adopt AI faster

RISE with SAP creates a clear, end‑to‑end path from traditional ERP environments to the Autonomous Enterprise—one built on trust, governance, and continuous improvement.

RISE with SAP’s agent-led transformation journey, including new migration and modernization assistants, helps customers modernize with a faster, more predictable path that can reduce migration efforts by up to 35%. RISE with SAP provides AI-supported tools and standardized delivery model anchored in clean-core principles to provide a faster and more predictable approach to ERP modernization.

A Proven Transformation Foundation with Clean Core. RISE with SAP is grounded in SAP’s proven transformation methodology—refined across thousands of transformations—to guide technical, process, and operating-model change.

The RISE with SAP Methodology uniquely combines three components to support the journey toward the Autonomous Enterprise, further enhanced by Joule and AI:

• Standardized Framework with best practice project roadmap templates, helping customers craft a project roadmap tailored to their specific needs aligned with clean core principles to build a system landscape that is ready to adopt the latest innovations and supports simplified upgrades.
• Expert guidance based on best practices transformation project experience empowered by AI and enhanced by SAP and certified partner experts, guiding throughout each phase of journey.
• Agent-led toolchain to support value-driven end-to-end business modernization across the dimensions of people, process, applications and data and fast-track migration efforts with assistants and agents.

Instead of working with separate guidelines and tools, SAP provides a unified approach helping to manage change holistically. As a result, you can transition more smoothly and handle complex transformation processes with greater clarity, improving operational efficiency, and achieving your business goals. You also gain the flexibility to adapt and innovate continuously, in line with SAP’s clean core principles.

While each migration is built to the specific organization’s needs, the standardized framework means that all projects will follow the same basic phases:

1. Discover: Define business vision and goals
2. Prepare: Prepare for the project and set up
3. Explore: Define current capabilities and project requirements
4. Realize: Demonstrate value through solution adoption
5. Deploy: Execute testing and eventual system deployment
6. Run: Continue to drive operational excellence and continuous improvement

Each phase follows a clean core approach with quality gates. This guides and supports adherence to the clean core success plan and project KPIs.

The recommended tools within the agent-led toolchain includes:

• Digital discovery assessment toolkit: Identify key processes by industry scope, based on best practices
• SAP Signavio solutions: Analyze, manage, and optimize business processes
• SAP LeanIX solutions: Enhance transparency by visualizing, assessing, and managing transitions to target the IT architecture
• SAP Cloud ALM: Craft and execute your project roadmap with quality gates and checkpoints between each phase of the journey. Deploy and run your system landscape while identifying opportunities for continuous innovation.
• SAP Build, Integration Suite and SAP Business AI platform: Provide a business technology platform built for enterprise mission-critical processes
• WalkMe solutions: Help teams navigate technology changes and adopt processes with integrated learning and contextual guidance
• SAP partner solutions: Data management, test automation, document management
• SAP Joule as the engagement layer

AI assistants support complex and time-intensive migration activities. Operating within the RISE with SAP Methodology and clean core principles, the assistants help turn ERP transformation into a more guided, data-driven journey with fewer unknowns.

The seven migration and modernization assistants include:

1. System Analysis: Establish a starting point by continuously assembles customer-specific, trusted system knowledge backbone and power all other transformation activities.
2. Custom Code: Discovers, classifies, and modernizes custom code to reduce technical debt and accelerate clean core adoption without losing business differentiation.
3. Data Management: Identifies data inconsistencies, performs root cause analysis, proposes solutions, and corrects data issues.
4. Configuration: Recommends best-practice target configurations of Private Cloud ERP based on customer requirements, ensuring optimized and compliant system settings.
5. Test Management: Automates test scope definition, data generation, execution, and upgrades to ensure continuous quality across transformation and regression testing.
6. Rollout: Manages multi-geography system rollouts by comparing templates, handling localization requirements, and automating consistent deployments at scale.
7. Project Management: Acts as an always-on, SAP-guided transformation companion, delivering end-to-end insights, contextual decision support, and personalized guidance to accelerate adoption.

Agent-led capabilities do not stop once systems are live. In the cloud, these same agents continue to support the ERP lifecycle through:

• Continuous custom code optimization
• Automated testing and regression management
• Proactive data quality monitoring
• Intelligent change and release management

This shifts ERP management from periodic, disruptive efforts to continuous optimization, informed by real operational patterns.

• RISE with SAP Methodology provides a structured, AI-enabled path to transform on-premises ERP toward the Autonomous Enterprise.
• Agent-led toolchain with the new migration and modernization assistants and agents can reduce migration effort by up to 35%.
• The seven AI assistants support complex migration activities, from system analysis to project management all the way to rollout.