For CIOs and IT leaders, the stakes have never been higher. Systems Applications and Products (SAP) systems power mission-critical business operations for enterprises worldwide. Yet, decades of customization and legacy architecture have resulted in silos, technical debt, and inflexible processes that hinder transformation. Combine this with the urgency of defining an S/4HANA migration strategy, adopting and operationalizing emerging technologies like AI, and rising customer expectations, and the challenges can become overwhelming.
Process orchestration: the foundation for innovation and flexibility
Process orchestration transforms complexity into opportunity. By simplifying and creating a foundation for flexibility, process orchestration empowers organizations to:
- Innovate strategically with faster, agile processes
- Modernize at their own pace, including an iterative migration to S/4HANA
- Seamlessly integrate emerging technologies while reducing risk and driving long-term resilience
With a strategic approach to process orchestration, SAP customers can unlock flexibility and innovation to drive meaningful transformation.
Obstacles that SAP customers must navigate
For many customers, SAP’s flexibility is both its greatest strength and its most significant challenge. SAP systems are designed to run critical business functions and manage many industry-standard processes, which are typically highly customized to allow customers to meet specific business requirements.
While this customization enables organizations to tailor processes to their unique needs, they are often implemented in isolated ways—tied to specific departments or legacy needs—and not applied with a cohesive, end-to-end strategy in mind. This often results in fragmented processes that are difficult to align, scale, or rapidly adapt to changing needs and an agile operating strategy.
Soaring customer expectations
Customers expect seamless, personalized experiences, putting pressure on companies to meet these demands while staying within budget and maintaining efficiency. These challenges are intensified by the ecosystem’s complexity, higher resource needs, and integration difficulties for SAP users.
Complexity and customization
SAP systems are highly complex and need extensive customization and integration to meet specific business needs. Yet this customization often leads to inefficiencies, errors, and operational silos. For instance:
- A manufacturing company may struggle to update the discrete components of fragmented workflows when managing new vendors or changes in vendor contracts, leading to supply chain delays and higher costs.
- A healthcare organization may face difficulties managing patient data when customizations cause integration challenges between legacy systems and new technologies, resulting in compliance risks and potential fines.
Legacy tooling and technology debt
Tech debt is a major barrier for SAP customers, consuming about 70% of IT budgets on outdated systems. This limits resources for innovation, making it hard to stay competitive. Ongoing maintenance costs divert attention from strategic initiatives like integrating AI or enhancing agility.
Proprietary ABAP processes
Proprietary ABAP processes add another layer of complexity. While SAP customizations in ABAP meet initial needs, they become rigid over time, making updates slow, costly, and disruptive. Customizations created by different developers over the years add fragility to a highly fragmented system, making maintenance and updates challenging, and increasing risks and inefficiencies.
Lack of alignment between business and IT teams
Misalignment between business and IT can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Collaboration between these critical areas becomes difficult without a common framework and language.
The S/4HANA migration deadline
With the 2027 ECC end-of-support deadline approaching, many IT executives are reassessing decades of customizations to comply with SAP Clean Core principles. Multiple extensions—from 2023 to 2025 and now to 2027—have allowed businesses to delay decisions, shifting resources away from other strategic initiatives.
Now, with increasing pressure, many are rethinking their approach, questioning whether they should proceed with migration at all or explore alternative ERP solutions, like those on the edge, as 59% of organizations are currently considering.
Rigid, code-based business processes
Traditionally, SAP customizations are implemented in code, are difficult to modify, and are not agile enough for specific use cases. This rigidity makes it difficult for organizations to quickly adapt their processes to changing business needs.
Tight budgets, rising expectations, and the growing urgency to adapt and operationalize new technologies like AI amplify these challenges. IT leads need solutions that reduce complexity, improve collaboration, and enable long-term success.
Reducing risks and building a flexible and scalable future with Camunda
Process orchestration coordinates people, systems, and technologies to optimize workflows and ensure reliable outcomes. For SAP customers, it means breaking down silos, connecting SAP and non-SAP systems, and creating adaptable end-to-end processes.
Camunda specializes in intelligent automation, enabling SAP customers to:
- Connect SAP and non-SAP systems seamlessly across their landscape
- Standardize workflows for consistency, reduced risk, and visibility
- Modernize and innovate with a composable architecture and scale with confidence
Integrating Camunda with SAP systems helps companies tackle challenges and opens new opportunities by modernizing ERP setups. This makes IT more scalable and competitive with an open, flexible architecture that works smoothly with both SAP and non-SAP systems. It provides complete, end-to-end visibility into processes, ensuring smooth operations and preparing for future growth.
How Camunda puts IT executives and SAP managers back in control
Camunda leverages BPMN and DMN standards to provide a unified approach for designing and executing processes. This single model approach fosters seamless collaboration between IT and business teams, minimizing friction and accelerating delivery.
Streamlined migration
Camunda offers a flexible solution for the SAP Clean Core strategy, which requires removing customizations before migrating to S/4HANA. Because SAP systems are highly customized, this is a monumental effort. Tackling it at once can be risky and expensive.
Camunda’s integration solution enables organizations to execute standardized processes on Camunda while connecting back to ECC through SAP’s Business Technology Platform, leveraging its intuitive and familiar Fiori user interface. This means organizations can migrate iteratively, on their schedule, and without disruption. And it enables business users to modify and manage business logic in processes, driving efficiency and reducing their reliance on IT teams. In addition to minimizing risk, this optimizes IT resources to work on more strategic initiatives.
This approach:
- Cuts development efforts, allowing non-SAP developers to create extensions efficiently while reducing technical debt.
- Delivers SAP customizations 50% faster, bringing changes to production in days instead of months.
- Facilitates a gradual transition to S/4HANA, lowering risks and boosting agility.
Intelligent business processes with Camunda AI-powered Copilot
Many organizations struggle to integrate AI into their operations. Camunda bridges this gap by embedding AI tools into processes, enabling intelligent automation and predictive decision-making. Camunda’s AI-powered Copilot tool accelerates process design and optimization, fostering collaboration across IT and business teams.
Real results for SAP customers
Camunda’s integration with SAP delivers measurable results that help IT leadership address complexity and achieve tangible business outcomes:
- 50% faster process changes: Business teams can adapt workflows in days, not months.
- Reduced migration risks: Flexible approaches minimize disruptions during S/4HANA transitions.
- Improved collaboration: BPMN standardization aligns IT and business teams, reducing process development cycles.
- Increased agility: Composable, scalable workflows ensure businesses remain competitive and responsive to market shifts.
Unlocking the untapped potential of SAP and process orchestration
IT executives and SAP managers no longer need to choose between managing legacy systems and enabling innovation. Camunda enables them to streamline SAP processes while preparing for the future, creating a composable, open, and extensible architecture that ensures agility and competitiveness.
Standardizing processes on BPMN and DMN helps businesses stay efficient and ready for technological innovation.
Camunda’s intelligent, end-to-end process orchestration uncovers hidden value by pinpointing areas for automation and optimization. This continuous improvement drives innovation and positions businesses to exceed customer expectations.
For SAP customers, integrating with Camunda’s platform:
- Simplifies SAP complexity
- Enhances operational efficiency
- Opens new opportunities for growth.
This integration ensures businesses are not just surviving but thriving, ready to tackle challenges and seize opportunities. Learn more about how Camunda helps SAP organizations drive agility by building a foundation on process orchestration.
