Suits Blog: Mind the Gap: Why Waiting to Innovate Until S/4HANA Can Cost You the Future. 

By Laura Lenti, VP EMEA, Neptune Software 

Living in London, I take the Underground often. Anyone who has ever stood on a Tube platform knows the message by heart: 

“Mind the gap.” 

It is a simple reminder. The train will move. You must move with it. 
Do not freeze between where you are today and where you need to go next. 

Recently, while heading to a customer meeting, it struck me how perfectly this applies to the SAP^® world. 

Many enterprises are creating a dangerous transformation gap. Not between platform and train, but between where their SAP landscape is today and what their business will require by the time S/4HANA is fully live. 

Just like the ‘Mind the Gap’ message, I hear the same statement again and again: 

“We will wait until we are fully on S/4HANA and our clean core is done. Then we will start building extensions.” 

On paper, that sounds responsible. 
In reality, costly gaps appear. 

The Waiting Trap 

There is a natural temptation to treat modernization like a marathon with a perfect finish line. 
You complete your S/4HANA migration, the core is clean, and then you will finally have time to innovate. 

Except that moment rarely comes. 
S/4HANA transformations are multi-year journeys, and by the time the migration is complete, the business has already moved on. New needs appear, regulations evolve, and user expectations change faster than systems do. 

When you delay modernization until “after” your S/4HANA move, you risk creating a two-year innovation freeze. You are spending resources keeping ECC alive while losing opportunities to improve user experience, mobility, and data flow right now. 

According to IDC, organizations that delay modernization efforts face 20 to 30 percent higher long-term IT costs due to technical debt and inefficiency (IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2024 Predictions). 
McKinsey found that digital leaders achieve up to three times higher ROI than late adopters and that “waiting to modernize” is one of the strongest predictors of lost digital value (McKinsey Global Institute: The Case for Digital Reinvention). 

So the real question is not if you will modernize. 
It is what you are losing each week that you don’t. 

The Fear Behind the Wait 

I understand why companies wait. Many believe their only options are to create more technical debt now through custom code or to wait until they are in the new S/4HANA environment and extend from there. 

But what if there was another path? 
What if you could build what the business needs today, without creating future debt, and still ensure full compatibility once you move to S/4HANA? 

That is exactly where new approaches to low-code development and clean-core compliance change the game. They allow organizations to meet new business demands immediately while staying aligned with their long-term S/4HANA strategy. 

The Cost of Delay 

Every company that waits pays a silent price. 

Operational cost 
Outdated workflows, manual processes, and scattered Excel trackers drain productivity. 
IDC found that companies postponing modernization accumulate technical debt that can increase IT operating costs by up to 30 percent (IDCFutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2024). 

Competitive cost 
While you wait, others are already building mobile, AI-ready workflows. 
Boston Consulting Group found that digital late movers are twice as likely to lose market share to more agile competitors (BCG Digital Acceleration Index 2023). 

AI readiness cost 
Gartner predicts that 80 percent of enterprises will use generative AI APIs or models by 2026 (Gartner Forecast Analysis: Generative AI, Worldwide, 2024). 
If your processes and data structures are still locked in ECC, you will struggle to plug into that ecosystem. AI thrives on modern, harmonized systems. 

Talent cost 
Developers who spend years maintaining old custom code lose motivation quickly. Studies show that legacy-locked IT teams report 30 to 40 percent lower job satisfaction, and that exposure to modern technology is a top factor in retention (Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024). 
The best people want to build, not babysit. 

Each month of delay compounds these costs. None of that time can be recovered. 

What Successful Enterprises Do Differently 

The most successful enterprises are not waiting for S/4HANA to be finished before they innovate. They build in parallel. 

They modernize user experiences, simplify field processes, and experiment with AI-based extensions while migration is underway. They see S/4HANA not as a destination but as an evolving foundation. 

That is exactly the mindset behind Neptune’s approach to SAP modernization. It is a pragmatic way to move forward: keep your core clean, but keep your business moving. 

Clean does not mean static. 
A clean core is only valuable when it supports a business that is constantly evolving. 

How Neptune Helps You Move Now 

At Neptune, we work with many organizations that decided not to wait, and that decision sets them apart. 

With Neptune DXP, they can: 

• Build extensions directly inside SAP ECC or S/4HANA using our SAP-Native Low-Code Platform, while connecting to any external systems to create complete end-to-end experiences and processes that operationalize SAP data. 

• Run applications anywhere, on-premise or in private or public cloud, maintaining sovereignty and compliance. 

• Start AI experimentation early through Naia, our built-in AI assistant that helps both developers and business users accelerate innovation. 

 I recently listened to Saint-Gobain during our Neptune Experience Virtual Series. They are still on ECC, yet their Mobility Business Unit had a challenge that could not wait for S/4HANA. Critical planning and forecasting processes were run manually across spreadsheets and emails, which slowed collaboration, delayed decision making, and made data accuracy difficult to trust. 

With Neptune DXP, they digitized those workflows and connected them directly to SAP. Teams now have structured, real-time data and can take action immediately instead of chasing information across systems. 

The impact has been significant. Planning cycles dropped from two weeks to just two days. Manual effort was reduced, data quality increased, and visibility improved across the supply chain. Most importantly, everything they have built will seamlessly move with them to S/4HANA when the time comes, so there is no rework later and no innovation gap today. 

Move While You Transform 

The perfect moment does not exist. 
The clean core is not a finish line. 
Transformation is not something you prepare for; it is something you live through. 

The organizations that win are those that build while they move. They modernize processes, empower users, and prepare for AI long before migration is complete. 

So ask yourself: Why do you wait? 

If you are ready to start moving without losing control of your clean core, learn how Neptune’s approach to SAP modernization helps enterprises innovate safely and continuously.