The estimate covers the conversion. It rarely covers the consequences. Five things that sit outside the fixed-price bid: Master data cleansing gets scoped as "customer responsibility." It is usually the longest task in the project. Performance testing at production volume is quoted separately, if at all. You find out what the system actually does when real volumes meet it. Custom code remediation is estimated by object count, not by how hard each object is. Two thousand objects is not a number. It is a distribution. Business process re-testing after go-live sits with your team, not the partner's. The hypercare window is shorter than the time it takes to reach a first month-end close. None of this is dishonesty. It is what a fixed-price bid structurally cannot contain. @ERPClimb — the gap between conversion scope and transformation scope shows up in almost every post-mortem. What is the most common item you have seen underestimated in an S/4HANA proposal?
Five Things the Proposal Leaves Out The most expensive S/4HANA conversion surprises are often not in the proposal. A proposal can estimate the technical conversion accurately and still leave the business with months of work that was never priced properly. Before comparing two conversion bids, check whether these five areas are genuinely in scope: • Master-data cleansing — duplicates, obsolete records, missing mandatory fields and CVI readiness rarely fix themselves • Performance testing at production volume — a successful functional test does not prove that month-end will finish on time • Custom-code remediation — ATC findings are only the starting point; ownership, redesign and regression testing take effort • Business process re-testing — conversion is not complete because the system starts; critical end-to-end flows still have to work • Hypercare — defects often appear when real users, real integrations and real volumes meet the converted system The conversion estimate covers the conversion. The transformation cost is everything around it. What is the most common item you have seen underestimated in an S/4HANA proposal? #SAP #S4HANA #SAPTransformation #SAPArchitecture
