Most organisations arrive at SAP S/4HANA with the same inheritance: a fragmented ERP estate, years of accumulated customisation, and a business that has learned to work around its systems rather than through them. The temptation is to rebuild that complexity on a newer platform. This session is about what happens when you refuse to.

Drawing on a four-year global transformation that consolidated 10 ERP systems onto a single SAP RISE and SAP BTP platform, it examines how a disciplined clean core strategy works in practice: standardising processes and data across markets, establishing a design authority with the mandate to challenge customisation requests, and applying a value-first rule in which every enhancement has to earn its place. It covers what that discipline delivered — a full upgrade from S/4HANA 2021 to 2025 with zero P1 or P2 incidents, materially lower testing effort, and real upgrade agility — along with the outcome that rarely makes it into the original business case: a trusted, standardised data foundation on which an AI agenda can be built quickly.

The session is candid about where the approach was tested — the pressure points, the exceptions, and the moments discipline slipped — because those are the lessons that transfer to any organisation, whatever its size or sector. Attendees will leave with practical guidance on balancing standardisation with innovation, and a clear view of why clean core is now a prerequisite for enterprise AI, not just an upgrade strategy.