In 2024, NTT DATA Business Solutions announced a new program called Zero Cost Move. The program was aimed at reducing or eliminating a significant portion of the cost of a move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud—consulting fees. The initiative originally was planned to run until March 31, 2025, during which NTT DATA Business Solutions was able to help more than a dozen customers successfully complete their move. Given the success of the program, NTT DATA Business Solutions has announced that they will extend the program until March 31, 2026. According to the most recent SAPinsider research on RISE with SAP, the biggest concern reported by respondents when it came to RISE with SAP was cost. Part of this is wrapped up in the packaging and licensing options offered by SAP, but the consulting services required to move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA Cloud can also be significant. This is especially true for customers with more complex ERP deployments. This cost, particularly for organizations that have limited internal resources with which to complete the transition, can be significant. In a conversation with SAPinsider, Brandon Evans, Vice President of Customer Transformation at NTT DATA Business Solutions, noted that the program helps lower the overall cost of the move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and removes an economic barrier for customers. This is helping many organizations that had been delaying a move to SAP S/4HANA to put plans in place to accelerate their transition. Evans also noted that the move underscores NTT DATA Business Solutions’ dedication to helping customers foster innovation and resilience in their ERP systems while supporting their transformation journeys. Key features of the Zero Cost Move program include:

• Zero Consulting Fees: Eligible SAP customers can move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud as part of the RISE with SAP initiative without bearing consulting costs.​
• Cloud Concierge Services: These services are designed to optimize long-term ERP performance, ensuring that businesses derive maximum value from their investment.​
• Accelerated Migration: The program aims to minimize disruptions and enhance efficiency, enabling organizations to quickly leverage the intelligent features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.​

This initiative allows organizations to allocate savings from consulting expenses toward their licenses or other innovations which enhance the return on investment. The Zero Cost Move program is available to SAP customers in North America that enter into an agreement to move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud within the program’s timeframe and designate NTT DATA Business Solutions as their partner of record. Qualifying scenarios include SAP ECC customers running either on-premise or in private or public cloud environments, SAP ECC customers using Microsoft SQL Server that are moving to Microsoft Azure, customers running SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA, or existing SAP S/4HANA customers moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Notably, despite the launch of the program a year ago, other consulting organizations have not initiated similar offerings. Whether that will change in 2025 based on the success that NTT DATA Business Solutions has achieved remains to be seen.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

The Zero Cost Move program continues to offer major cost savings for those planning on moving to RISE with SAP. In his conversation with SAPinsider Evans noted that, between license grants and discounts offered by SAP in conjunction with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud transition, there has not been a better time for organizations to move to RISE with SAP. This may also include solutions that are part of the broader SAP Business Suite such as Concur. Given the savings on consulting that can be achieved as part of the Zero Cost Move, this is a major opportunity that qualifying customers should not ignore. SAPinsiders need to be ready to leverage programs like Zero Cost Move. SAPinsider has been recommending that organizations start preparations for their ERP future for the last three years. This is because, regardless of whether an organization decides to move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud within RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP, continues onto extended and then customer specific maintenance with SAP on their existing environment, or even decides to cancel SAP maintenance and look to third-party maintenance instead, being prepared is key. Understanding what customizations are critical and which can be deprecated, harmonizing data, and starting the steps towards cleaning the core are important no matter what choice is made. In this instance, it might also allow an organization to leverage Zero Cost Move during the program’s timeframe. The partner crunch is coming for organizations moving to SAP S/4HANA and programs like this can help. There may still be as many as 35,000 customers running SAP ECC or the old SAP Business Suite that are looking to move to SAP S/4HANA over the next 2-5 years. Given the size and complexity of some of those projects, consulting resources will be at a premium and many organizations may find themselves needing to delay projects while waiting for resources. Leveraging a program like Zero Cost Move ensures that the project is completed as quickly and efficiently as possible with teams that have hands-on experience with that move. SAPinsiders need to be prepared and this is one way to ensure that happens.