Research from Precisely and the Americas SAP Users Group (ASUG) finds SAP S/4HANA migration gathering pace as the 2027 end of maintenance for SAP ECC approaches. In the report, Advancing Automation, AI, and Process Transformation in SAP: 2027 Trends and Challenges, 67% of respondents are fully or partially migrated, up from 59% in 2025 and 50% in 2024, and another 23% expect to finish within 24 months.
Legacy complexity is the main drag. Some 53% name handling SAP ECC customisations as the leading migration challenge and 83% consider master data cleansing important to the migration. On automation, 33% have adopted a best-of-breed approach, up from 19% in 2025, and 84% consider no-code or low-code capability important when choosing a platform.
The study asks about AI and AI agents for the first time. Microsoft Copilot (60%) is the most used AI interface alongside SAP ERP processes, ahead of ChatGPT (27%) and SAP Joule (26%). While 46% use AI across automated and human-assisted tasks, only 3% report fully automated, AI-driven processes, and 51% are still in the early stages of exploring AI-assisted development.
SAP Fiori is used in some form by 81% and SAP Business Technology Platform services by 55%, although 67% still run hybrid Fiori and SAP GUI environments.
"AI offers significant opportunities to accelerate SAP automation, but realising its full potential requires well-defined business processes and a unified, trusted data foundation, supported by strong governance and human oversight," said Ashwin Ramachandran, senior vice president, product management at Precisely.
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