Enterprise cloud programmes have a recurring failure mode, and heise's report on SAP migrations puts a sentence to it: "SAP will take care of it." The problem is not that vendors do too little. "The vendor runs the migration" and "the vendor may make your decisions for you" are two very different contracts, and organisations routinely sign the first while expecting the second.
A cloud ERP migration is not a lift-and-shift but a re-platforming: every custom object, every interface, every identity mapping is a decision about what the business keeps. Those decisions belong to the business, not to the implementation partner — which custom code (the Z-objects) survives, which interfaces are replaced, who owns cutover testing, who signs off on data residency.
Shared responsibility is the trap itself. In a cloud model the line moves: the vendor owns the platform, you still own configuration, extensions, identities and data classification. Handing over the migration does not move that line — it only makes it invisible until something breaks.
The cost and schedule reality follows, and it is the part nobody puts in the business case: fixed-scope promises collide with grown custom code, and the bill returns later as extension work. "SAP will take care of it" is not false, it is incomplete, and the gap fills with rework.
The to-dos are boring and effective: name an internal owner per workstream, inventory custom code before signing, put who-decides in the contract, test cutover with your own data, and accept that "later" costs more.
The sentence is dangerous precisely because it feels like delegation and functions as abdication. Anyone hearing it in a project meeting should not argue — they should ask which decision, exactly, now sits with whom.
