Lessons from the journey to SAP Cloud ERP Private

Organizations considering a move to SAP Cloud ERP Private often have similar questions. How do you modernize without disrupting the business? How do you balance standardization with flexibility? And how do you prepare for AI while still managing today's priorities?

Those questions were at the center of a recent panel featuring leaders from Riverside Natural Foods, Jabil, and SAP. While each organization is at a different stage of its transformation journey, their experiences revealed a common theme: Successful ERP modernization is about much more than technology. It's about creating a foundation that can support continuous innovation, operational agility, and enterprise-scale AI.

The discussion offered practical insights into SAP ECC migration and cloud ERP adoption in the age of agentic AI. It also offered an inside look at how three organizations are approaching modernization through RISE with SAP and SAP Cloud ERP Private, and what they've learned along the way.

Lesson #1: Build a foundation that can keep up with growth

Businesses will have different ERP modernization playbooks depending on multiple factors, from industry to maturity. Still, certain aspects of the process are universal. Although the panelists came from very different industries, they shared a common reality: Growth and change put pressure on existing systems and processes.

For Madeleyne Vivanco, VP of Business Transformation and Technology at Canadian organic foods startup Riverside Natural Foods, modernization was closely tied to the company's rapid expansion. During the discussion, she noted that the business experienced periods of rapid growth over the past several years. As Riverside grew, leaders needed a way to support that growth while maintaining visibility across operations and keeping teams aligned around consistent processes.

The challenge looked different for two leaders from global manufacturing solutions company Jabil: Harish Manohar, Director of SAP Transformation, and Brian Silvestro, Director of Enterprise SAP Technology. Jabil has been an SAP customer since 1997 and manages a large global ERP environment. Years of growth, acquisitions, and evolving business needs had created complexity that needed to be addressed as the company continued modernizing its SAP landscape.

Meanwhile, Jörg Bruch, Head of IT Operations at SAP, shared SAP's own experience operating and modernizing business-critical ERP systems at scale. His perspective reinforced a key theme from the discussion: Modernization is about creating a foundation that can support future phases of business growth, including the adoption and implementation of agentic AI.

Create the capacity to scale

As Riverside evaluated how to scale, Vivanco said, the company looked closely at the consistency of its business processes and the quality of its data. Teams across the organization needed access to reliable information so they could plan more effectively, make decisions faster, and spend less time reconciling data from different sources.

The effort to create a foundation of high-quality data delivered measurable business results. Over an 18-month period, Riverside reported productivity improvements equivalent to 42 full-time employees, along with cost savings and cost avoidance.¹

Use SAP ECC as a chance to simplify

Manohar shared a different, but equally practical perspective.

As a long-time SAP customer, Jabil approached SAP ECC migration as an opportunity to evaluate years of accumulated processes, customizations, and technical decisions. Rather than treating migration as a lift-and-shift exercise, the team asked a broader question: Which customizations still create value, and which are making the environment harder to manage?

That review led Jabil to retire a large amount of custom code that they hadn’t been using, which helped make their ERP systems more agile and adaptable.

It also helped them maintain a clean core. According to clean core guidelines, technology teams should keep core ERP systems, such as those for finance and supply chain management, as close to vendor standards as possible. That way, those systems will be easy to govern and update quickly. Now, with RISE with SAP Methodology—the AI-enabled process by which organizations migrate from legacy systems to SAP Cloud ERP Private—Jabil has the opportunity to expand clean core as a process across departments.

Bruch shared a similar philosophy from SAP's journey. As SAP prepared for RISE with SAP, the organization focused on reducing unnecessary complexity while establishing a stronger foundation for future innovation.

SAP wants to be among the first to use new SAP processes and products, he said. Clean core best practices have helped make it simple to implement these as they emerge.

Lesson #2: Turn data into better decisions

While technology was an important part of the discussion, the panelists repeatedly returned to a more fundamental topic: decision-making.

Business leaders need accurate information to plan inventory, manage supply chains, forecast demand, and respond to changing market conditions. When information is fragmented across systems or difficult to trust, decisions become slower and less effective.

Connect data across the business

The panel highlighted the growing importance of connected data.

Organizations increasingly want to bring together information from ERP, analytics, planning, and other business systems to gain a more complete view of their operations. That broader visibility helps leaders identify trends sooner, respond faster to change, and improve coordination across functions.

Silvestro illustrated the scale of that challenge. Jabil is evaluating how to modernize and manage approximately 10 terabytes of SAP BW data as part of its broader transformation roadmap. If this data remains siloed, its value for generation insights falls significantly. For example, analytics tools require accurate financial data to be able to create forecasts. The more integrated that data is, the more real-time and valuable the insights will be.

Create the architecture for AI

AI generated significant interest throughout the discussion, but the panelists shared a consistent message: AI readiness starts with data readiness. Without the right ERP foundation, AI agents may struggle to deliver value on the business’s technology investments.

Data quality and hygiene are key here. Before organizations can trust AI-generated insights, they need confidence in the underlying business information. Establishing trusted, integrated, and governed data helps ensure that agentic AI delivers meaningful business outcomes. In contrast, integrating AI systems with siloed internal resources will probably result in an output that’s less reflective of the organization’s actual data landscape.

Lesson #3: Make transformation a team sport

One message came through consistently across all three organizations: ERP modernization is a cross-functional business transformation.

It requires participation from leaders, process owners, functional experts, and technology teams. Success depends on aligning teams around shared business objectives rather than focusing exclusively on technical milestones.

Help people adapt to change

Bruch shared lessons from SAP in achieving consensus when modernizing ERP. Moving to a cloud operating model often changes how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how responsibilities are shared. As a result, he said, organizations must prepare employees for new ways of working, in addition to new technology.

Create shared ownership

At Riverside Natural Foods, Vivanco explained, modernization efforts involve close collaboration among business stakeholders, SAP specialists, and implementation partners. She also underlined the importance of change management throughout the journey.

Shared ownership helps ensure that transformation initiatives remain connected to business priorities. It also creates greater accountability for delivering outcomes that matter to the organization.

The panelists consistently emphasized that transformations move faster when business and IT teams work together from the beginning. That way, once new systems are functional, business teams have a sense of buy-in and a greater sense of how—and why—to use them effectively.

Lesson #4: Treat migration as a starting point, not a finish line

Many organizations spend years preparing for an SAP ECC migration. It's natural to focus heavily on reaching go-live. However, the panelists encouraged organizations to take a longer view.

According to Vivanco, for Riverside Natural Foods, completing the RISE with SAP journey in 2023 wasn’t the culmination of its transformation. Instead, it marked a watershed: the beginning of a new phase focused on AI readiness, analytics, and future innovation opportunities.

Continue improving after migration

As agentic AI continues to evolve, cloud ERP needs to be able to support rapid transformation. In that sense, technology leaders can proactively ensure their ERP landscape reflects the latest capabilities.

In the interest of maintaining flexibility, Jabil continuously refines its approach to enterprise data, business processes, and clean core.

Bruch described a similar mindset. SAP also views modernization as an ongoing effort rather than a project with a fixed endpoint.

Build for what’s next

What connects all three organizations is their recognition that technology and business requirements will continue to evolve.

New capabilities will emerge. Customer expectations and the competitive landscape will change. Agentic AI will create new opportunities. In this environment, organizations need both flexibility and strategic insight. And a successful SAP ECC migration into the cloud helps create the architecture for a more flexible, strategic business.

The companies that gain the most value from modernization—like the three on this panel—are often those that think of SAP Cloud ERP Private as the springboard of future innovation and growth, not as a project to complete.

Looking ahead

The experiences shared by leaders from Riverside Natural Foods, Jabil, and SAP demonstrate that there’s no single formula for ERP modernization. Each organization began from a different place, faced different challenges, and defined success differently.

Yet several themes emerged consistently throughout the discussion. The most successful transformations start with a strategic business objective, not a technology objective. They focus on simplifying complexity before it slows growth. They prioritize trusted data because better information leads to better decisions. And they recognize that modernization requires people, processes, and technology to evolve together.

Key takeaways from the panel

1. Use ERP modernization to support business goals, not just technology goals.
2. Treat SAP ECC migration as an opportunity to simplify and reduce complexity while preparing a foundation for AI-enabled innovation.
3. Invest in trusted, connected data to improve decision-making and support future AI initiatives.
4. Build strong partnerships between business and IT teams.
5. View modernization as a continuous journey rather than a one-time project.

For organizations evaluating SAP Cloud ERP Private, those lessons provide a practical roadmap for turning modernization into long-term business value through RISE with SAP.