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Retiring SAP experts could put migration knowledge at risk, but available evidence does not establish how many SAP specialists are retiring or prove retirement is causing today’s skills constraint. What is documented is a demanding, knowledge-intensive migration process and substantial reliance on specialists: in SAPinsider’s 2025 survey, 68% of respondents planned to use specialists or consultants on their S/4HANA project.
What is known—and what is not—about SAP expert retirement
There is a credible knowledge-continuity concern: S/4HANA migrations require teams to understand source systems, data relationships, business processes and project-specific decisions. If experienced employees leave, undocumented knowledge can leave with them. But the evidence cited here does not quantify SAP expert retirements, identify a retirement rate by age or region, or establish retirement as the cause of the skills constraint.
SAP described SAP skills as scarce in an August 2026 article. That is current reporting about a skills challenge, not proof that retirements created it. Stuart Browne, founder and CEO of Resulting IT, told SAP News: “What AI produces shouldn’t be fully trusted without review.” The remark underscores the continuing need for knowledgeable review, but it is not evidence about retirement rates. Read SAP News Center’s article.
Why S/4HANA migration depends on project-specific knowledge
Migration is not simply a matter of copying records into a new system. SAP’s documented workflow for a specific SAP ERP-to-S/4HANA scenario includes creating a migration project, selecting migration objects, running test transfers, refining results and creating a production project when ready. The selected objects define which source tables and relationships are involved, so teams need to understand how the source system represents the organization’s data.
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For that documented scenario, SAP says the migration cockpit uses an RFC connection and lists ERP 6.0 on NetWeaver 7.0 as the lowest supported ERP release. These conditions are specific to the scenario and documentation version; they should not be treated as universal prerequisites for every migration path. Check the exact source system and target release against SAP’s migration process documentation and prerequisites.
Knowledge worth preserving therefore includes more than technical procedures. It can include why a customization exists, how data was mapped, which exceptions are intentional, and how teams determined that test results were acceptable. SAP’s guidance for its covered 2025 private-cloud conversion context strongly recommends expertise from a qualified migration partner or SAP-offered expertise; that is vendor guidance for the specified context, not a rule that every customer must use a particular provider. See SAP’s 2025 conversion guide.
How organizations are staffing S/4HANA projects
SAPinsider’s 2025 benchmark reports how 170 SAPinsider community members responded about S/4HANA migration. Among respondents, 68% planned to leverage specialists or consultants, 20% planned to outsource the entire project to a systems integrator, and 12% planned to use internal teams only. These are survey results, not a census of SAP customers or a prescription for an individual organization.
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| Staffing approach | Share of SAPinsider respondents | What it means for ownership |
|---|---|---|
| Use specialists or consultants | 68% planned this approach | The organization can retain project ownership while bringing in specialist skills; the survey does not specify how responsibilities were divided. |
| Outsource the entire project to a systems integrator | 20% planned this approach | The integrator takes on broader delivery scope, while the customer still needs to supply business context and make decisions. |
| Use internal teams only | 12% planned this approach | Delivery relies on in-house capacity and skills; the survey does not show whether each team had all required expertise. |
SAPinsider’s detailed findings also report that 32% of respondents had transitioned, 27% were implementing and 21% were evaluating S/4HANA. Those figures describe this survey sample, not global market shares. The same report says 57% cited the end of maintenance and support for core SAP Business Suite applications as an ERP strategy driver for 2025. That respondent-reported driver does not mean every customer has the same deadline or support path.
How to reduce the risk of losing migration knowledge
Knowledge transfer is most useful when it produces material the next person can apply to real project work—not just a collection of meeting notes. Use the migration workflow to identify where undocumented decisions could cause rework or errors.
- Map critical processes and customizations. Record which business processes depend on custom code, configuration choices or workarounds, and identify who can explain their purpose.
- Document decisions and data mappings. Capture source-to-target mappings, assumptions, exceptions, owners and reasons for significant choices. Tie notes to the migration objects and affected data relationships.
- Pair experienced staff with incoming team members. Schedule practical handovers around actual tasks, such as reviewing a test transfer or tracing a data issue, rather than relying only on general briefings.
- Build runbooks and reusable test cases. Record the steps for recurring work, expected outcomes, known exceptions and escalation paths. Keep test cases connected to business requirements so future teams can tell what a passing result means.
- Reserve handover time before a role changes. Make transfer time part of the project plan, assign a recipient for each critical area and check that the recipient can perform the work without the departing specialist.
These measures address the practical risk of concentrated, undocumented knowledge. They do not depend on assuming that a particular number of experts will retire.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to choose a staffing and migration approach
Survey preferences cannot determine the right delivery model for a particular company. Compare approaches against internal ownership, the specialist skills available, responsibilities the customer must retain and the scope delegated to an integrator. A specialist-led or integrator-supported project still needs customer-side process knowledge and timely decisions; an internal-only approach makes it especially important to verify that the team has capacity for both migration work and ongoing operations.
Assess the migration itself along four dimensions before deciding what expertise to bring in:
- Compatibility: Confirm the source system, target release, deployment and applicable migration path against the relevant SAP documentation.
- Scope: Define which migration objects and data relationships are in scope, and identify who can validate them.
- Data quality and testing: Estimate the cleanup, test-transfer and correction work the project needs; do not assume that a successful transfer alone proves the business data is fit for use.
- Process change: Distinguish technical conversion from planned process redesign, which may require different business and technical expertise.
For additional context on the business dimension, SAP Africa director of customer evolution Gerhard Alberts described migration as “a business transformation process that requires organisations to rethink processes, data structures, and integrations.” Read the SAP Africa article. Project cost and duration cannot be reliably compared from the survey and documentation figures above; they depend on the customer’s system, scope and delivery plan.
What the evidence says about the skills challenge
The available figures support two careful conclusions: S/4HANA projects often involve specialist support, and SAP has described skills as scarce. They do not establish how many SAP experts are retiring or show that retirements caused the reported scarcity. Treat retirement as a workforce-planning risk to assess within your own organization—not as a quantified, industry-wide explanation. Map where essential knowledge sits, plan for its transfer, and verify migration requirements against the exact system and release in scope.
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