From Expectations to Reality: What S/4HANA Really Changes for Maintenance

Many organizations invest heavily in their migration, but the core challenges remain the same:

• Each site has its own way of creating and handling work orders,
• Planners still rely on Excel or emails,
• Technicians have limited digital access to their tasks,
• And legacy tools remain deeply embedded in day-to-day operations.

I’ve seen several maintenance departments go live on S/4, only to realize that efficiency didn’t improve, because their processes never evolved.

One company, many ways of working

At one manufacturer, five different plants used SAP PM in five different ways. One site uses a custom-developed mobile solution in the field, while another still used printed Work Orders and handwritten findings.

When S/4HANA went live, those differences remained, just in a more modern interface. The Plant Manager’s expectation that the S/4 transformation would also standardize processes across all sites was not met.

That’s when they reached out, and we started standardizing processes across all sites. The key was to stay within SAP, but make daily execution simpler and more consistent. 

That’s exactly where Ready4 Asset Management (R4AM) made a difference — not as an external add-on, but as an SAP-embedded layer that helps unify how technicians and planners actually work.

The hidden weight of legacy systems

Another common pattern: old tools that “just work” and no one dares to touch. Planning boards, safety spreadsheets, isolated reporting tools. they all live outside SAP, but drive critical parts of maintenance.

During S/4HANA migrations, these systems often survive because replacing them seems too complex. But they quietly block progress, causing double work and disconnected data.

I’ve seen organizations that decided to bring everything back into SAP, and with a solution like R4AM, they managed to remove layers of legacy without heavy IT effort. It’s a practical step that restores visibility and simplifies governance.

When the migration ends, the real work starts

The organizations that thrive post-migration are the ones that use S/4 as a catalyst for simplification, not just as a technical upgrade.

They focus on:

• Standardizing how work orders flow across departments,
• Enabling mobile access to SAP data,
• Embedding safety and compliance into daily execution,
• And giving planners real-time visibility into operations.

In several projects, this shift happened in parallel with the migration, and not after it. With the right SAP-native tools, it’s possible to modernize processes and reduce complexity even before the new system goes live.

The lesson from the field

S/4HANA isn’t the destination, it’s the opportunity. The transition gives maintenance organizations a rare chance to rebuild their foundation: one process, one system, one way of working.

And that’s the mindset behind Ready4 Asset Management — a pragmatic extension that helps teams realize the operational improvements they expected from S/4HANA in the first place.