UK SAP users say licensing and pricing complexity is muddying the picture for Business Suite, the vendor’s new model for cloud applications.

Confusion over Business Suite’s reboot for the cloud is also creating difficulties in preparing business cases necessary to migrate from legacy systems, said Conor Riordan, chair of the UK and Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG).

In a survey of members, UKISUG found only 27 percent were familiar with the reimagined SAP Business Suite, introduced in February with the promise of a “truly modular, composable” set of business applications, including ERP, HR, CRM, supply chain, and expense management. SAP said the applications in the suite would share the same data model and user experience after years of integrating disparate software, some from acquisitions.

At the same time, UK SAP users were asked to identify aspects of Business Suite they felt uninformed about, or that they needed more information on. Licensing and pricing models was the top issue, cited by 61 percent of respondents.

Earlier this year, the German-speaking SAP user group, DSAG, called for greater transparency in licensing to enable the migration and upgrade of on-prem systems to the cloud, saying inconsistencies were making the transition more challenging than it could be.

In April, SAP scrapped its RISE package and introduced SAP Cloud ERP Private, priced under a new Full Use Equivalent (FUE) metric.

The original incarnation of Business Suite was launched in 2006 and includes the legacy ERP application ECC6. In September, DSAG said the reboot would continue to cause difficulties over licensing models.

Riordan said there was confusion over the difference between Business Suite and S/4HANA, SAP’s most up-to-date ERP offering.

“We just need to simplify the story, communicate the roadmap in the business case… [be] more clear, more transparent, so that as our members go to their boards to get the money approved to do this work, it’s just an easier story to tell about what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it, how much it’s going to cost, and what the return on investment is,” he said.

Many users remain on legacy ERP platform ECC and are struggling to make the case to move to S/4HANA, which requires a complete business transformation. Analyst Gartner has said that approximately 39 percent of worldwide ECC customers – from a total of 35,000 – had bought or subscribed to licenses to start their transition to S/4HANA, a platform first launched in 2015. Separate research from Freeform Dynamics found that 95 percent of legacy users say building a positive case to migrate requires a big effort or is genuinely challenging.

Mainstream support for ECC ends in 2027, while extended support is available until the end of 2030 at a 2 percent premium. Typically, an ERP transformation in a large international organisation might take three years.

“The feedback we’re getting from members is that there’s still a big struggle on the business case. Users are asking us ‘How do you tell the story? What’s the value of doing what we’re doing?'” Riordan said.

“When you’re going from ECC to public cloud or private cloud, or whatever you’re going to do, it’s typically a multi-step process, and the value often comes at the end run, or in the middle, and a lot of the cost is at the beginning, because you’re doing the migration and the upgrade. It’s being able to tell that complete story and put an investment package together. Members are still saying that it’s a difficult story to tell.”

SAP has said it is committed to guiding and supporting customers at every step of their move to “integrated, cloud-powered operational excellence.”

“The SAP Cloud ERP Private Edition package is not just a solution; it is a gateway to a future of limitless potential and unprecedented business agility,” the company said.

It also said licensing changes do “not mean a direct increase or decrease in cost.”