SAP RISE Migration Readiness Checklist: 12 Steps Before You Sign

Why Readiness Work Comes Before Negotiation

RISE with SAP is marketed as a streamlined path to S/4HANA in the cloud — software, infrastructure, and cloud managed services bundled into a single subscription. The pitch is compelling. The reality is that organisations that skip the pre-contract readiness phase consistently find themselves locked into timelines, scope, and pricing that do not reflect their actual technical situation.

SAP's sales teams are incentivised on Annual Contract Value and Q4 close rates. Their fiscal year ends December 31, which means significant commercial pressure builds in October through December. That pressure benefits buyers who are prepared — and penalises those who are not. Working through this checklist before entering commercial negotiations puts you in control of the conversation.

The 12 items below are not aspirational. They represent the minimum baseline assessment every organisation should complete before signing a RISE contract. Each one affects either the scope of your migration, the size of your licence commitment, or the cost structure you will live with for the next five to seven years.

Checklist Step 1: Run SAP Readiness Check

SAP Readiness Check is a free tool that analyses your current ERP installation and generates a structured assessment of what must change before migration to S/4HANA can proceed. It identifies deprecated transactions, incompatible business functions, simplification items requiring decisions, and custom code objects that reference obsolete APIs.

Do not treat the output as a formality. The Readiness Check output directly informs your migration timeline and implementation partner scoping. If your system generates a high simplification item count or a large custom code footprint, the migration will take longer and cost more than SAP's standard estimate. Get the output, review it in detail, and use it to challenge any timeline proposed by the SAP account team.

Checklist Step 2: Complete a Custom Code Inventory

Legacy SAP environments accumulate custom code over years or decades. Research consistently shows that 40 to 60 percent of legacy custom code is unused and can be eliminated immediately, reducing both migration scope and ongoing maintenance cost. The remaining code requires classification: can it be replaced by a standard S/4HANA function, rebuilt as a clean extension on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), or retired entirely?

SAP's Custom Code Migration App (available via the Readiness Check) provides an automated scan, but the output requires human review. Code that appears active may only be invoked by batch jobs running once per year. Code that appears unused may be required for regulatory reporting. Before you contract with an implementation partner, you need a human-reviewed inventory — not just an automated count — to validate scope and cost assumptions.

Checklist Step 3: Score Your Clean Core Position

RISE with SAP is architected around SAP's clean core principle: custom logic should live outside the ERP kernel, built as extensions on BTP rather than modifications to the core system. SAP's own KPIs for clean core adherence include the percentage of fit-to-standard processes, the proportion of decoupled extensions, and the volume of redundant data to be decommissioned.

Your current clean core score affects both the complexity of migration and your negotiating leverage. Organisations with highly customised systems need more implementation resource and face higher risk of timeline overrun. SAP implementation partners use this score to anchor their estimates. Understand your position before they do.

Checklist Step 4: Review Your Licence Baseline — S/4HANA Changes It

One of the most commercially significant aspects of migrating to RISE with SAP is that the move to S/4HANA changes your licence baseline. The on-premise licence categories (Professional, Limited, Employee, Basis) do not map directly to RISE subscription tiers. SAP's cloud user types — Advanced, Core, and Self-Service — are priced differently and sized using the Full Use Equivalent (FUE) metric.

Under the FUE model, an Advanced user counts as 1.0 FUE. A Core user counts as 0.2 FUE. This means the total FUE count for your organisation depends heavily on how user roles are classified. SAP account teams typically apply the classifications that maximise revenue. Your readiness work should include an independent role analysis mapping current named users to their actual transaction usage patterns, then determining the correct FUE composition. The difference between an SAP-proposed FUE mix and a buyer-optimised mix can represent 20 to 35 percent of annual subscription cost.

Annual support in the on-premise world is approximately 22 percent of net licence value. Under RISE, support is bundled into the subscription, but the total cost of ownership comparison is only meaningful if you model the correct FUE count from the start.

Checklist Step 5: Map Your Indirect Access Exposure (DDLC)

Indirect access — the use of SAP data by third-party systems without direct user login — is one of the most misunderstood and commercially dangerous elements of any RISE negotiation. SAP measures indirect access using the Document-Driven Licensing Concept (DDLC): when a non-SAP system creates, reads, updates, or deletes a document in SAP (an order, a goods movement, an invoice), SAP can assert that a licence is required for that interaction.

Under RISE, indirect access does not disappear — it is renegotiated as part of your Digital Access subscription. Before signing, you must complete a full mapping of every third-party system that interacts with your SAP environment: e-commerce platforms, WMS systems, IoT devices, robotic process automation tools, EDI hubs, and HR systems. For each integration, document the document types created and the estimated annual volume.

This mapping serves two purposes. First, it gives you visibility into what SAP would claim is in scope for additional licensing. Second, it gives you the evidence base to negotiate a Digital Access subscription that covers your known integrations at a fixed price, preventing future audit claims based on undisclosed document volumes. Organisations that enter RISE without this mapping find themselves exposed to supplemental charges within the first two years of the contract.

Checklist Step 6: Assess BTP Credit Requirements

RISE with SAP subscriptions include a BTP (Business Technology Platform) starter entitlement, typically sufficient for basic integration and extension scenarios. However, the included credits are often inadequate for organisations planning material BTP-based custom development, advanced analytics, or SAP Integration Suite workloads.

Before contracting, identify which custom code objects you plan to rebuild as BTP extensions, estimate the BTP service consumption associated with each, and model the total credit requirement. Compare this against the BTP allocation in the standard RISE bundle. Any gap represents an add-on purchase that should be negotiated as part of the initial deal rather than bought at full price post-contract, when leverage is minimal.

Checklist Step 7: Evaluate Your Infrastructure Readiness

RISE with SAP runs on hyperscaler infrastructure — AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud depending on the contract. Your on-premise systems will need to connect to this environment via secure, high-performance network links. Network architecture planning is a non-trivial activity: connectivity between on-premise systems and the RISE environment must be secured and optimised, typically through VPN tunnels or private cloud interconnects with defined bandwidth and latency SLAs.

Additionally, RISE includes an allocated number of development, quality, and production environments. Additional environments are charged separately. Before committing to the standard RISE environment count, map your landscape requirements: do you need a dedicated performance test environment? A long-running parallel run environment during cutover? Sandbox environments for integration testing? Each additional environment adds cost, and the cost is easier to negotiate pre-contract than post-contract.

Checklist Step 8: Review Signavio and SAP LeanIX Utilisation Plans

Current RISE with SAP packages include access to SAP Signavio (business process analysis and redesign) and SAP LeanIX (enterprise architecture management). These are genuine tools with genuine value — but only if your organisation has a plan to use them. Many organisations sign RISE contracts, pay for Signavio and LeanIX as part of the bundle price, and never deploy them.

Before treating these as included value, assess whether your organisation has the internal capability and bandwidth to adopt them during the migration. If not, they become shelfware that inflates the bundle price without delivering ROI. This matters commercially: if you genuinely do not intend to use Signavio or LeanIX, you have grounds to negotiate a reduced RISE package price or substitute other value.

Checklist Step 9: Establish Your TCO Baseline

RISE is a subscription. Your current environment has a total cost of ownership comprising on-premise hardware, data centre costs, infrastructure maintenance, SAP annual support (approximately 22 percent of net licence value), basis team labour, and application management. Before any commercial negotiation, you need a credible TCO baseline for your current environment projected over five and seven years.

This baseline serves as the benchmark against which the RISE total cost is measured. SAP's ROI modelling will project significant TCO savings; your independent model should challenge every assumption in that projection. Particular scrutiny should go to the assumed reduction in basis team headcount (often overstated), the assumed elimination of hardware refresh costs (only valid if you are exiting all on-premise infrastructure), and the assumed elimination of third-party maintenance costs (only valid if you are moving entirely off third-party support).

Checklist Step 10: Model Your RISE Subscription Cost Independently

SAP's commercial teams will present a RISE subscription price. Do not accept this as a market reference point without independent benchmarking. Benchmark data consistently shows that large enterprises achieve 30 to 50 percent discounts on RISE list pricing, with strategic deals sometimes exceeding that range. The list price for an S/4HANA Cloud Advanced user is approximately $150 to $180 per user per month. The price actually paid by a well-prepared enterprise is substantially lower.

Build your own model using a defensible FUE composition, BTP credit requirements, infrastructure requirements, and environment counts. Run the model at different discount levels to understand the range of economically rational outcomes. This model becomes your anchor in commercial negotiations and prevents you from accepting the first offer as the market price.

Checklist Step 11: Define Exit and Flexibility Requirements

RISE with SAP is a long-term subscription — typically five to seven years at initial signature. The commercial logic of the deal depends on your continued use of the platform for the full term. Before signing, document what would need to be true for you to exit the contract early (acquisition, divestiture, technology strategy change) and assess the practical and contractual barriers to exit.

Data portability is a particularly important consideration: in what format can you extract your data if you choose to move to a different platform? What notice period does SAP require? Are there financial penalties for early termination? RISE contracts contain clauses addressing these questions, but the defaults are rarely buyer-friendly. Negotiate specific data export rights, defined notice periods, and capped termination fees before signature.

Checklist Step 12: Align Internally Before Entering Negotiation

The most common reason RISE negotiations produce poor outcomes for buyers is internal misalignment. IT teams have technical requirements. Procurement teams have budget targets. Finance teams have capitalisation preferences. Legal teams have risk tolerance constraints. When these functions are not aligned before SAP comes to the table, SAP's account team exploits the gaps — moving between stakeholders to find the path of least resistance.

Before entering commercial negotiations, complete a structured internal alignment exercise: document technical requirements, budget parameters, minimum acceptable contract terms, and walk-away positions. Designate a single negotiation lead who has visibility across all functions. SAP's account team will be experienced, well-prepared, and well-resourced. The buyer team needs to match that preparation level.

What Happens If You Skip These Steps

The consequences of incomplete readiness work are consistent and predictable. Custom code that was not inventoried becomes a renegotiation point mid-project, with implementation partners seeking change orders. Indirect access exposure that was not mapped becomes a contract amendment request from SAP, typically six to eighteen months post-go-live when the account team conducts a consumption review. FUE counts that were not independently modelled result in over-subscription that persists through renewal cycles.

None of these outcomes are inevitable. They are the predictable result of a well-resourced vendor team operating against a buyer team that was not adequately prepared. The readiness checklist above is the preparation toolkit. Working through it systematically, with independent advisors where needed, is the most commercially effective investment an organisation can make in the period before RISE contract signature.

Next Steps

If you are preparing for a RISE with SAP negotiation and need independent support on any element of the readiness assessment — FUE modelling, indirect access mapping, DDLC exposure analysis, BTP credit sizing, or commercial benchmarking — Redress Compliance's SAP advisory practice has supported over 80 RISE engagements across industries including manufacturing, retail, financial services, and public sector. We work exclusively on the buyer side.

You can also download our SAP Audit Defence Framework which includes structured templates for indirect access mapping and FUE role analysis that can be used directly in your readiness process.