For example, in SAP RISE transformations - most commonly from SAP ECC to S/4HANA Private Cloud - consistently expose the same pressure points: high effort, unpredictable timelines, and concentrated risk. Structured customer research across live engagements identified where that effort actually sits and which parts are amenable to AI.
The six complexity drivers represent the highest-impact areas. AI does not remove complexity wholesale - but it eliminates substantial portions of the most labour-intensive work, improves predictability, and compresses individual phases meaningfully:
The key complexity drivers and the AI Impact:
- Data Quality
- Efforts Saved: 25%
- Role: AI automates data cleansing, migration, and validation, reducing manual workload and speeding up data-related tasks.
- Code Transformation
- Efforts Saved: 20%
- Role: AI helps analyze, optimize, and migrate custom code, ensuring compatibility and efficiency.
- Configuration
- Efforts Saved: 20%
- Role: AI assists in system configuration, ensuring optimal settings and reducing errors.
- Testing
- Efforts Saved: 35%
- Role: AI automates test creation, execution, and reporting, leading to faster and more reliable testing cycles.
- Roll-out
- Efforts Saved: 35%
- Role: AI streamlines deployment processes, automates roll-out tasks, and minimizes risks.
- Project Management
- Efforts Saved: 25%
- Role: AI automates routine tasks, provides data-driven insights, and enhances decision-making to improve project planning, tracking, and risk management.
- Migration & Modernization Assistants
- The blue banner emphasizes the role of 7 Migration & Modernization Assistants. These are AI-powered tools or solutions designed to support and accelerate each phase of the migration process, helping organizations achieve significant efficiency gains.
Summary
Testing illustrates the scale of opportunity: it routinely accounts for a third to half of total transformation effort. In a multi-million euro program, a 35% effort reduction here alone represents significant savings - and the same capability pays dividends in every subsequent upgrade cycle.
All six complexity drivers sit on a shared foundation - transition guidance, data infrastructure - ensuring AI support is coherent across the full project lifecycle, not applied in isolation.