Accelerating & De-Risking SAP S/4HANA Migration with UiPath Automation

Migrating to SAP S/4HANA is a vital step for a modern enterprise, but it’s often viewed as a daunting, multi-year marathon filled with risk and complexity. What if this marathon could be turned into a managed sprint? The answer lies with UiPath’s designation as an SAP Solution Extension (SolEx) partner.  

As Mark Darbyshire, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at UiPath, explained during a recent webinar, the partnership is about a new approach. “We now are, in essence, an SAP application,” Darbyshire noted, highlighting the deep integration that allows automation to be woven into the fabric of digital transformation during an SAP S/4HANA migration. 

SAP’s inclusion of UiPath in its Solution Extension portfolio highlights the value it sees in automation as a catalyst for successful SAP S/4HANA migrations. Automation addresses critical pain points across planning, data handling, and delivery—areas where manual work often slows progress. 

Automating Migration—ETL and Beyond 

Traditionally, the discovery and preparation phases are manually intensive. UiPath robots can expertly handle the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of data from legacy SAP systems and third-party applications. Giving the example of how automation helped UiPath’s own SAP S/4HANA implementation, Darbyshire revealed: “If we add it all up just on our own, relatively simple, straightforward [SAP S/4HANA] journey, we saved something like 15,000 hours.” 

But automation isn’t limited to data. UiPath also addressed delivery tasks like TR verification, invoice conversions, batch job creation, and more—saving 3,000+ additional hours. “Surely not everything needs to be done by people clicking screens or people driving GUIs,” Darbyshire noted. 

UiPath also brings task mining to SAP customers, complementing SAP Signavio, to capture full picture of both system transactions and user activity. As Darbyshire pointed out, “I can’t necessarily see how the application is being used. I can’t see that someone spent half an hour cutting and pasting data from three different locations into the fields of my SAP GUI.” This granular insight enables smarter migration planning and identifies automation opportunities from the outset. 

He added that, by using automation throughout the migration “we were able to go live six months earlier than we would’ve done otherwise.” 

De-Risking the Cutover  

The moment of switching from the old system to the new, or the cutover, is the point of maximum risk during migration. The key to mitigating this risk is turning the thousands of complex steps into a predictable, automated sequence.  

Darbyshire posed the question that automation answers: “Why can’t I now start to use an automation as an orchestration layer across the [various] steps that I might have in a migration, so that I can make it as predictable, simple and cost effective as possible, and take as much risk out?” 

This automation factory approach enables parallel transaction processing across both the legacy and SAP S/4HANA systems, ensuring data integrity and allowing for real-time validation. It effectively eliminates migration-related interruptions, transforming a high-stakes cutover into a controlled and manageable event. 

Investing in a Clean Core Future 

The most compelling aspect of the UiPath SolEx partnership is that its value extends far beyond the go-live date. According to Darbyshire, every business has needs that aren’t met perfectly by out-of-the-box software. “Addressing what I call the business delta, the gap between what my business wants and what my application provides is where things like extensions and custom codes start to come in,” he said. 

Instead of building this custom code into SAP S/4HANA and compromising the core, organizations can use UiPath automation. These automations, built to facilitate migration, become permanent assets, helping to maintain a clean core.  

This strategy has enabled UiPath to achieve a remarkable 93% clean core, as noted by Darbyshire, and a faster time to value.  

What This Means for SAPinsiders 

Automate beyond data migration. Build a migration strategy beyond just moving data—automation platforms like UiPath can handle the entire migration process, including complex data from third-party systems. while also handling delivery tasks across the SAP Activate lifecycle. These automations don’t just save thousands of hours—they become reusable assets that support ongoing data quality, compliance, and operational agility long after go-live. 

De-risk your cutover with parallel processing. A cutover can be transformed from a point of high risk to a controlled, verifiable event. By using automation to process transactions concurrently across both legacy and new SAP S/4HANA systems, organizations can validate migration in real-time. This eliminates the guesswork and drastically reduces the chance of a costly post-go-live failure. 

Make business continuity a core project metric. The true cost of migration stems from its potential to disrupt business operations. Automation serves as an insurance policy against this. By automating data validation, testing, and transaction processing, you ensure that employees, customers, and suppliers experience a seamless transition, effectively eliminating migration-related interruptions and protecting revenue.