SAP is the industry standard. That still does not make it a good choice.

If you make, move or sell anything at scale, your chain touches SAP somewhere. Over forty years it has become the norm for large industry, from the factory floor to the accounts. That norm is no accident, and it is also no proof. Norm and best choice are two different things, and the difference costs businesses money year after year.

There are good reasons why an executive team chooses SAP. There are also reasons, less visible, why that same system ties you down. Both belong in the same story, because the qualities that made SAP big are exactly the qualities that cost you dearly later on.

Why SAP became the norm

SAP does not sell a tool but a system of truth. Purchasing, production, stock, sales and accounting sit in one data model, so an order runs through the same system from purchase order to invoice. For a group with twenty sites in ten countries, that is not a luxury but a requirement. Four reasons keep the choice standing.

• One system of truth. All core processes in one data model, so the figures come from the same source.
• Depth per sector. Decades of built-in functionality for production, logistics, retail and finance, right down to local tax and reporting rules.
• An ecosystem. Tens of thousands of consultants, integrators and ready-made connectors, so there is always someone who knows it.
• Safety at board level. Nobody gets fired for choosing SAP. The choice is defensible, even when it turns out expensive.

That is real value, not marketing. The problem does not start with what SAP can do. It starts with what that choice drags along the moment the signature is on the page.

What the norm hides

Beneath the safe choice sit three costs that rarely appear on the quote: a bill that keeps running, an implementation that is the real risk, and a lock-in that you build yourself.

The bill keeps running after the signature

The licence you sign is not the bill you get. SAP charges per named user, but under certain conditions it also counts indirect access. In SAP v Diageo the High Court in London ruled in 2017 that two applications using SAP data through an interface were liable for licensing. The extra bill ran to more than 54 million pounds (SAP UK v Diageo, 2017). Anyone who thinks they are paying for the number of SAP users sometimes pays for every system running alongside it as well.

And the licence is the smallest part. The implementation, the customisation and the years of maintenance make up the largest slice of the bill, and that slice is rarely fixed in advance.

The implementation is the real risk

Large software projects structurally overrun. In 2012 McKinsey and the University of Oxford studied large IT projects and found that they run on average 45% over budget, 7% over time, and deliver 56% less value than promised (McKinsey and Oxford, 2012). An ERP migration is exactly the kind of project that lands in those figures.

Sometimes it grinds to a complete halt. Around 2011 Lidl started eLWIS, a new stock system on SAP, and abandoned it in 2018 after roughly seven years and a reported 500 million euros. The company returned to its old system (Consultancy.uk, 2018). One of the causes was banal and telling: Lidl values its stock at purchase price, while SAP works on sales price by default. Adjusting that difference grew ever more expensive, with hundreds of consultants at once at one point. Lidl is not a small player that got something wrong. It is one of the largest retailers in Europe, with budget and people. And still.

You build the lock-in yourself

Every customisation that makes SAP fit your process makes the next step more expensive. The more custom work, the heavier every upgrade, because that custom work has to come along each time. So the paradox appears: you adapt the system to make it usable, and it is precisely that custom work that ties you down.

Meanwhile the clock ticks. SAP ends standard maintenance of Business Suite 7 at the close of 2027, including SAP ERP 6.0, with optional extended maintenance until the end of 2030 (SAP). Anyone still running on that generation faces a fresh, expensive migration to S/4HANA, not because the business wants it, but because the vendor closes the door on a date. That is not a choice. That is a deadline someone else sets.

The question nobody asks

In every SAP discussion it is about versions, modules and migration paths. Rarely is it about ownership, and that is exactly the question that counts. Whoever does not own the code cannot leave without permission, cannot negotiate the price from a position of strength, and cannot set the schedule themselves.

An alternative is therefore not a cheaper ERP. Another large package brings the same dependency, only with a different logo and a different migration deadline. The real alternative is a platform you own yourself, in open source, that you build up module by module and that keeps running, even when the vendor changes.

What we do differently

We build the software your business runs on as one open-source platform in your ownership, with the code in your own repository from day one. We start with an IT FinOps audit that measures what the current landscape really costs, we build in waves with a go or a no-go at each step, and we replace module by module, so the old system keeps running until the new one proves itself.

SAP once chose you because it was safe. Ownership is the next safe choice: no per-user licences, no indirect access that catches you out, no forced migration on someone else's calendar. A system that stays, even when we leave.