SAP Trends in 2025
- May 16, 2025
As we move into 2025, SAP continues to evolve in response to shifting business models, rising expectations for a superior user experience, an accelerated push toward AI-driven innovation, and a need to keep up with an increasingly complex and digital landscape. Clients are expecting SAP to not just act as a software provider, but also a strategic partner capable of delivering agility, compliance, resilience, and insight through its solutions.
With all that is going on in the world today, SAP is responding with some bold changes – reimagining its business model, embedding AI across its portfolio, and enhancing its suite of tools to meet the growing demand for smarter, more connected enterprises.
In the report below, our team of SAP experts highlights five trends in the SAP world that reflect that larger transformation. From advancements in Business AI to improvements in user adoption and experience, SAP is doubling down on solutions that help businesses future-proof their operations and enable long-term success.
Here are five key SAP trends in 2025:
SAP Trends in 2025
1. Transitioning from ECC to S/4HANA: The Time is Now
SAP will continue to put focus on shifting customers to the cloud and incentivizing mid-market customers to transition from ECC to S/4HANA. The SAP Private Cloud ERP Package (new RISE offering) and GROW offerings are becoming the primary path to the cloud and S/4HANA for those still maintaining on-premise ECC solutions. The GROW path allows a clean start for companies that can move to a complete SaaS ERP solution with a “Clean Core” option that significantly reduces customizations and code maintenance
We saw in 2024 that SAP is pushing a shift toward a clean core, whether it’s Public (GROW with SAP) or Private Cloud (RISE with SAP). This helps reduce costs and speeds up companies’ ability to innovate and adapt. Perhaps the largest drivers for moving to S/4 and the Cloud is the upcoming support cliff, when SAP Business Suite 7.0 mainstream maintenance ends in 2027. 2025 is the year to understand and plan for maintenance changes or migration options for an older SAP solution. If you haven’t already started your upgrade, please reach out to our team sooner rather than later, so that we can help evaluate your options and prepare you for the transition.
2. Enabling Intelligent Workflows with Business AI
In 2025, SAP is taking a more practical approach to SAP Business AI: delivering tangible value across business functions. SAP is embedding intelligence directly into the tools and workflows that customers already use. There’s a greater emphasis on domain-specific AI that supports real business tasks and distinct business needs instead of general-purpose models.
At the center of SAP’s AI strategy is Joule, an AI assistant integrated across SAP applications that continues to expand in functionality and reach. Joule enables natural language interaction, allowing users to ask questions and pull insights from data without switching tools. Its capabilities are being extended to work across a broader range of industries and roles in 2025, leveraging Joule agents that can be embedded within different platforms and solutions to help users get more done with less effort.
SAP is also integrating acquired technologies like LeanIX and Signavio to strengthen its AI-driven transformation capabilities. LeanIX strengthens enterprise architecture management, helping organizations manage complex IT landscapes and aligning decisions with their business goals. Similarly, Signavio delivers powerful process intelligence that helps identify and act on areas for improvement. Both LeanIX and Signavio represent a more connected, insight-driven approach to AI-enabled enterprise transformation.
Another key enabler is SAP Business Data Cloud, which provides Joule with a consistent, trusted data foundation across both SAP and non-SAP systems. This unified data layer allows AI agents to access more complete and contextual information to improve the relevancy and accuracy of any recommendations provided. SAP shifting toward more autonomous, “agentic AI” is enabling more intelligent workflows that proactively identify and solve business challenges. While agentic AI is in early stages, it has potential to revolutionize business process automation in finance (automated AP and AR processing), supply chain (forecasting, inventory planning, and route optimization), lead-to-cash (customer-specific sales and pricing strategies and automated customer support), and more.
SAP Business AI is transforming how companies access and act on data by delivering real-time insights in a more consumable manner, making it faster and easier to move from information gathering to decision making. For business leaders tired of “waiting for data,” this shift unlocks a new level of agility and clarity.