SAP has extended their maintenance timeframes to 2027 (ECC) and 2040 (S/4HANA). There is some fine-print to that, of course, but the bottom line is that customers have gained 2 to 10 years of life for their current on-premise SAP HR/Payroll systems. So how does this change the SAP Payroll roadmap that I wrote about a while ago?
Well, now you have more time to wait until you have to move, and that can relieve a lot of pressure for some companies who aren’t ready to make that investment. Some companies aren’t excited about EC Payroll, so this gives them time to wait for a true cloud, multi-tenant payroll system to emerge from SAP. Others don’t want to outsource, but didn’t see an acceptable alternative on the horizon. So the options are the same, but the timing gives customers more flexibility – and I like that.
However, SAP didn’t say anything about increasing the investment and innovation in the on-premise SAP HR/Payroll code base. I think you can count on compliance updates and bug fixes but not much in the way of new features. Maybe that’s OK for you, maybe not.