The Custom Code Roadblock?

Accelerate Your S/4HANA Migration Ahead of SAP ECC’s 2030 End of Extended Support

The clock is ticking. With SAP ending extended support for ECC in 2030, the transition to SAP S/4HANA is rapidly accelerating. According to recent research, 42% of respondents have fully or partially completed their migration, and another 57% are in the planning stages.

If your organization is still running legacy SAP systems, the pressure to migrate is likely building. But as many IT leaders are discovering, rushing into a modernization project without the right strategy can quickly derail timelines and budgets.

The Custom Code Roadblock

Every major technology upgrade carries tremendous potential, but it also comes with genuine risks. According to the ASUG research, the number one challenge organizations face during an S/4HANA migration is having "too many customizations within our old instance(s)," cited by 44% of respondents.

When we look at the data, it is easy to see why. The average SAP ECC system contains roughly 22,000 custom objects and 2.7 million lines of code. Relying on manual labor or traditional approaches to remediate decades of technical debt is a slow, error-prone, and expensive process. As one ASUG survey respondent noted, "The amount of work analyzing the code and then remediating it was severely underestimated. This needs hundreds or thousands of hours worth of work".

If you are trying to beat the 2030 deadline, manual code transformation is an anchor that will slow you down.

Don't Boil the Ocean: A Data-Driven Approach

To accelerate your migration, you need to change your approach to custom code. At smartShift, we advise our customers not to "boil the ocean". Instead, we use intelligent automation to drastically simplify the journey:

1. Decommission the Dead Weight You cannot plan effectively without understanding what you actually use. Our benchmarks reveal that 40% to 60% of custom code in an average SAP system is technically unused. By safely identifying and decommissioning this "dead code" before the move, you immediately reduce the scope, complexity, and testing effort of your S/4HANA migration.

2. Automate the Remediation Traditional remediation is not just slow; it introduces human error and security risks. By leveraging smartShift's Intelligent Automation Platform, organizations can address hundreds of thousands of coding issues related to S/4HANA compatibility, HANA performance, and security vulnerabilities in a fraction of the time.

Real-World Speed and Precision

The impact of automation on project timelines is transformational. Consider these real-world examples of organizations that accelerated their S/4HANA journeys:

JBS Foods: Originally, JBS planned a manual approach that would have taken up to 30 expensive ABAP developers between 6 to 9 months to complete. By partnering with smartShift, they transformed their custom code in just 8 weeks, helping them complete the overall project a full 50% faster.

Beiersdorf: Facing the consolidation of global ECC systems with 5.6 million lines of custom code, Beiersdorf knew a manual approach would consume their internal team for at least half a year. Utilizing automation, the entire code base—comprising 33,000 custom objects and 69,000 issues—was remediated and S/4HANA-ready in just 6 weeks.

Procter & Gamble (P&G): P&G transformed 77,000 custom objects automatically. More importantly, by utilizing automated Dual Maintenance, they were able to run over 1,000 business projects in parallel during their transition. They maintained full business velocity without a single code freeze.

Securing Your Future

Reaching S/4HANA before the 2030 deadline is only step one. The ultimate goal is to achieve a "Clean Core" that allows for rapid, continuous innovation without the drag of legacy technical debt. By automating your custom code transformation, you not only ensure compliance and speed up your timeline, but you also build a foundation for long-term agility.

The 2030 deadline is approaching fast, but a stressful custom code migration is not your only option. Reach out to us for a Rapid Code Analysis to gain immediate visibility into your custom code and discover how automation can guarantee your S/4HANA success.