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Natuvion explains why companies need to rethink their SAP S/4HANA transformation and outlines the five strategic questions IT leaders should have answers to right now.
WALLDORF, Germany, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The new 2026 Transformation Study by Natuvion and NTT Data Business Solutions shows that a transformation to SAP S/4HANA is far more than just a technological upgrade. It lays out the operational foundation for enterprise AI, process automation, and continuous digital innovation. However, to truly realize this potential, companies must consistently analyze, cleanse, and strategically evaluate their data assets before the migration even starts. The study underscores the urgency of this fundamental preparatory work. Among the participating companies, 71 percent adjusted their migration methodology during the course of the project. This is a clear indication that rigid migration plans are less effective than a Selective Data Transition (SDT) migration strategy.
Data quality is key to AI-driven business processes
With the increasing adoption of enterprise AI, data quality is becoming even more critical. AI models and automated processes require consistent, structured, and trustworthy data. Duplicate vendor profiles, inconsistent material master data, or fragmented customer identifiers can significantly impair the quality of analytics and AI applications.
“A successful SAP S/4HANA transformation aimed at technical innovation – such as AI – is not about transferring as much data as possible into the new system as quickly as possible,” emphasizes Patric Dahse, CEO of Natuvion. “Instead, it’s about providing the right data for future business processes. Many legacy SAP ECC environments contain redundancies that have accumulated over the years; inactive in-house developments; and outdated data that is no longer needed for day-to-day operations. If these data sets are migrated without being reviewed, companies carry their technical legacy baggage over into the new system environment. This has negative effects on storage requirements, cloud costs, and – above all – the future usefulness of AI.”
That is why data cleansing should not begin after migration. Companies can deploy automated cleansing and validation processes during migration to cleanse and consolidate data and prepare it for future AI applications. “AI-ready” therefore means not just moving data into a new system, however creating a data foundation that the company can trust even in automated and data-driven business processes.
Selective Data Migration and secure handling of historical data
A successful transformation therefore begins with the question of which data actually creates business value. Highly automated transformation platforms such as Natuvion DCS (Data Conversion Suite) Analyze provide transparency regarding system usage, table dependencies, and custom code execution. This allows companies to identify relevant data sets and make sound decisions about which data should be migrated, archived, or decommissioned.
With Natuvion Selective Data Transition (SDT), companies can selectively transfer the data that is relevant to their future business processes. By combining selective data extraction with solutions for decommissioning legacy systems – such as Natuvion DCS Retire – historical and inactive data can also be removed from the operational system landscape. However, finance, HR, legal, and audit departments still need access to historical data records, while sensitive information in development, test, or sandbox environments must not be accessible without control. Solutions such as Natuvion DCS Protect help companies transfer historical data to compliant archives and automatically anonymize personally identifiable information in non-production environments. This allows for the integration of data access, data protection, and compliance measures.
Five key questions for a future-proof SAP transformation
These requirements for an innovation-driven data transformation give rise to five key questions that IT leaders should answer:
- Which data actually creates business value?
- Which data must be migrated to S/4HANA, and which can be archived or decommissioned?
- How can historical and sensitive data be kept securely available outside of production?
- Is the company’s data not only ready for migration but also truly AI-ready?
- Is the new data and system architecture flexible enough to accommodate future changes?
The success of a modern SAP transformation is measured not only by on-time and on-budget completion, but also by the quality of the data foundation and its AI capabilities.
About the study
As part of a structured survey, Natuvion and NTT Data Business Solutions interviewed 1,115 executives and IT experts from 15 countries about their experiences with their most recent transformation. The 2026 Transformation Study specifically targeted CEOs, CIOs, and IT and transformation leaders from medium-sized to large companies who had been actively involved in an IT transformation over the past two years. Participants were selected with the help of a market research firm and surveyed anonymously. A total of 210 participants were surveyed in the DACH (German-speaking) region and 155 in the U.S. Forty-two percent of the companies employ between 1,000 and 4,999 employees, and 37 percent generate revenue of over one billion euros.
About Natuvion:
Natuvion is a digital moving company that moves business-critical data and processes from one technology platform to another. Natuvion experts are called in when medium-sized and large enterprises want to modernize, optimize, separate, merge, or restructure their IT systems. With its exclusive expertise in technical transformation, Natuvion enables its customers to run their data and processes on the most modern and innovative technologies available. To support data transformations, Natuvion leverages its proprietary software solution, Natuvion DCS. Natuvion is a founding member of the SAP Selective Data Transition Community and has been part of NTT DATA Business Solutions AG, a leading global SAP consultancy, since 2022.
For more information, visit www.natuvion.com/
