RISE with SAP was announced by SAP during a special event in January 2021. Within a few months the company was reporting hundreds of licenses sold, and they made a point of discussing the growing license numbers during each quarterly earnings call. This culminated in the announcement that they had won more than 1,300 customers since launch during the Q4 2021 earnings call. However, while RISE with SAP was mentioned as a driving factor behind SAP’s cloud growth during their Q1 2022 earnings call, and it was stated that it was driving upsell opportunities at organizations that had adopted the offering, no license numbers were mentioned either in the earnings call or in the quarterly statement. What does this mean? Is it gaining traction in the market?

Adoption of RISE with SAP

In our recent 2022 SAP S/4HANA Migration Benchmark Report, we asked respondents what impact RISE with SAP was having on their plans for SAP S/4HANA. Slightly less than half the respondents to the research who had not yet deployed SAP S/4HANA said that either the announcement of RISE with SAP had no impact on their plans (24%) or that they had evaluated but were not making any changes (20%). Approximately another quarter of the respondents (22%) said that their project was on hold while they performed an evaluation, while 19% said that they were either switching to RISE with SAP (11%) or were restarting their project using the offering (8%). However, there was regionality to this data. Only around 40% of respondents from North America said that they were in the category of RISE with SAP having no impact (21%) or that they had evaluated but were not making any changes (19%). This was considerably different to respondents from EMEA where 38% said that RISE with SAP had not impacted their plans, and 23% said that they had looked at the offering but were not making any changes. In addition, 15% of respondents from EMEA said that they were unfamiliar with the offering compared to just 8% from North America. Even larger numbers of respondents from other regions said that they were unfamiliar with the solution (25% from APJ and 60% from Latin America). These numbers are not as pronounced as those reported in the recent DSAG Investment Report where the vast majority of respondents said that they had either never heard of RISE with SAP (11%), or had heard of the offering but were not familiar with it (60%). There is an obvious correlation between the results in that in both instances respondents from EMEA are less interested or knowledgeable about RISE with SAP. Our own research, published in November 2021 and planned to be renewed later this year, showed that there were still considerable opportunities for SAP to educate customers on the offering, particularly the components beyond SAP S/4HANA Cloud and business process intelligence (now SAP Signavio). RISE with SAP has also presented a somewhat complex landscape for SAP partners. While some partners have produced offerings that work with or enhance the offering, for customers there has been some confusion around who plays what role during a project. For example, some of the areas identified in that research as gaps in the RISE with SAP offering included project transparency (30%), deployment models for SAP S/4HANA (29%), and implementation roles (26%). Some partners also initially struggled to understand their own roles, with some unclear what being a RISE with SAP partner meant for them. Despite these challenges, adoption of the offering is growing. SAP has placed considerable emphasis on cloud ERP and RISE with SAP, and will continue to do so as part of their transition to being a cloud business. Recent significant announcements by Microsoft and IBM do set the stage for large enterprises engaging with RISE with SAP, but questions do remain about whether other SAP ERP customers will follow suit. This is something we plan on investigating more in the second half of 2022.

What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders?

RISE with SAP has been a significant focus for SAP since it was first announced. SAP wants organizations to move their ERP solutions using SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and RISE with SAP is the gateway to completing that move and leveraging capabilities like SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Business Network, and SAP Signavio. But if you are still determining your own plans for SAP S/4HANA, the best thing you can do is to educate your teams on RISE with SAP to determine what impact it may have on your plans. If you haven’t already moved to SAP S/4HANA, the window is now starting to close on determining that path. In 2027 mainstream maintenance will end for core SAP Business Suite solutions, and if there is a decision to move then that will take time regardless of whether it is to SAP S/4HANA or something else. Even if you do decide not to move, making sure you understand the offerings that SAP has will help you make the most informed decision possible.