Q&A – Two Roads to SAP Cloud ERP: A Conversation with SEIDOR’s Christopher Hesch

When SEIDOR took the stage at SAP Sapphire, it brought two customers who could not have looked more different. One was Amyris, a biomanufacturing company carrying 16 years of SAP ECC customization, that moved to SAP Cloud ERP Private in six months. The other was Surman, a Mexican automotive group that built a greenfield on SAP Cloud ERP Public while navigating the country’s mandatory electronic invoicing. We sat down with Christopher Hesch, CTO and Head of SAP Presales at SEIDOR, to understand why he paired them and what SAP professionals should take from each.

SAPinsider: You put a brownfield migration and a greenfield build on the same stage. What’s the through line?

Christopher Hesch (CH): Both systems were running in a fragmented data setup. They had trouble keeping pace with the decisions they needed to make: fragmented apps, no single source of truth, manual workarounds. The deployment model was different, but their pain was identical. What both had in common was this need to innovate.

SAPi: The Amyris migration ran ECC to SAP Cloud ERP Private in six months. How did you compress it?

CH: The real true answer is that it was not a heroic feat of compression. The compatibility mode available in SAP ERP Private Cloud gives customers moving on the RISE journey a unique opportunity to migrate now and transform at their own pace. For Amyris, it was possible to land on SAP S/4HANA while still using the ECC processes they had in their system. Thus, they transformed from a technical perspective and eliminated that technical debt by migrating from ECC to SAP S/4HANA.

That compatibility mode was introduced by SAP back in 2015, if I’m not mistaken. It provides a bridge to SAP customers, allowing them to continue running specific classic SAP ERP functions directly on their S/4HANA system for a defined transition period. As described in SAP Note 2269324, compatibility pack usage rights for on-premises systems expired on May 31, 2026. For RISE and private cloud customers, that runway now extends to 2033, giving them seven years to remediate their processes.

SAPi: Did AI play a role in the migration itself?

CH: Yes, we were able to compress the timeline with the help of AI, especially during the custom code remediation. We had an AI toolset in place that helped remediate code very quickly. It’s not yet clean core, but it aligns with the migrate now and transform at your own pace strategy. The clean core project for Amyris will now come in phase two once they land on SAP S/4HANA. We took all the complexity out of the project to make sure they land securely, softly, and in the shortest time possible in the cloud.

SAPi: Surman was the opposite, a greenfield public cloud build. What design decisions did you have to get right in the first 90 days?

CH: The first one was Surman’s dealership network. Each dealership runs its own dealer management system. A natural temptation in a project of that size is to build custom integration. Still, we took a different approach. From the very beginning, we focused on standard APIs where SAP releases and upgrades all new tool capabilities, and the integration layer does not break. That gave Surman the chance to consume innovations very quickly.

The second decision was financial architecture. The standard chart of accounts is the foundation for the Mexican localization. In Mexico, getting the CFDI right is not simply a tax configuration task. It requires the financial structures of the ERP to be correct from the start. A non-standard chart of accounts would have broken the entire tax compliance chain.

The third was treating compliance as a design requirement rather than a bolt-on. The decision to treat CFDI and SAT compliance from day one, built into the design requirements and not as a localization fix at a later point in time. This kept the whole compliance stack working correctly until go-live.

SAPi: What would you do differently in the Surman project?

CH: When I talked to the project lead at Surman, he said that probably the next time we would put even more focus on master data cleansing and harmonization. The customers, vendors, materials, GL accounts, and company codes all need to be aligned before the project moves too far down the road. It reduces the rework, helps with the testing, and supports a smoother go-live.

SAPi: How do you counsel a client choosing between RISE, GROW, and a private cloud landing zone?

CH: The honest answer is that we don’t make the decision ourselves. SAP has a very structured approach called Digital Discovery Assessment, DDA. This tool is designed to remove subjectivity from the choice. When the customer asks us, public or private, we say, “Let’s run a DDA together.” That methodology is exactly what redirected Amyris. They were on a public cloud path but hit a wall at a certain point because the public cloud did not cover specific requirements for Brazilian localizations. They said these limitations are core for us, so what’s the alternative? And then we presented the way from ECC to the private cloud.

SAPi: Where does AI deliver measurable value, and where do you hold clients back?

CH: For Amyris, AI played a major role in remediating custom code. For Surman, the automation value landed on tax and integration automation, especially with the API integrations and the dealership management system. The discipline is in the sequencing. We apply very cautiously, measuring KPIs and the process before and after, so as not to over-rotate on AI. We do this not only to implement AI but also to ensure a KPI-driven implementation.

SAPi: Over the next 12 to 18 months, what separates the customers who get real value from those who simply finish a migration?

CH: Customers who treat migration as the beginning of a capability journey, not just the end of a project, will get real value. The differentiator is whether they build a clean data foundation they can act on and systematically turn that data into decisions, instead of only reporting unthinkingly on a database, making use of that solid data foundation, and then outpacing the competition. In the end, it’s people, human beings, sitting in front of these systems. You need to take them along on the journey.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Use the private cloud’s compatibility mode as a deliberate strategy. SEIDOR’s six-month Amyris migration succeeded because compatibility mode enabled the biomanufacturer to migrate to SAP S/4HANA while keeping ECC processes intact. This separated technical debt cleanup from process re-engineering. For an ECC shop facing end-of-maintenance pressure, read SAP Note 2269324, confirm RISE or private cloud runway to 2033, and sequence the project as migrate now, transform later. Additionally, resist the Christmas wish list. The leadership discipline to defer wanted features, held by Amyris’s Kavitha Sankar and team, is what kept that project on schedule.

Treat localization and compliance as foundational design. In the Surman greenfield build, CFDI, SAT, UUID, and PAC integration succeeded because the standard chart of accounts and compliance flows were designed in from day one. For any architect facing country-specific regulations, build tax traceability and electronic invoicing into the financial structure before go-live, and commit to standard APIs so SAP’s twice-yearly upgrades never break your integration layer. Master data cleansing is the under-invested step. Align customers, vendors, materials and GL accounts early- the one thing Surman’s CTO, Uriel Lara, said he would push even harder next time.

Let the DDA decide, then sequence AI behind a clean data foundation. SEIDOR runs SAP’s Digital Discovery Assessment to take subjectivity out of the public-versus-private choice, exactly what surfaced the Brazilian localization gaps that moved Amyris to a private cloud. Run a DDA before committing to RISE, GROW, or a hybrid landing zone. Then resist over-rotating on AI. SEIDOR landed measurable value in code remediation and tax automation first and is introducing agentic scenarios (including SAP’s Joule and the coming autonomous suite) only on top of a working core, governed by before-and-after KPIs.