Agentic ERP in Practice: S/4 Migration as a Stress Test

With „Customer Zero,“ UiPath has done something that many existing SAP customers are still only discussing in theory. The company leveraged its own migration to SAP S/4 Hana to introduce a fundamentally new ERP operating model, making it more than just an exciting isolated case: it offers a concrete glimpse into how agentic automation is transforming S/4 Hana implementation and subsequent operations.

It all started with a problem familiar to many companies. Following its initial public offering and strong international growth, UiPath’s business volume grew significantly faster than its existing ERP system.

Workday here, Salesforce there

The finance team juggled complex contracts and non-standard deals, had to handle multi-GAAP reporting simultaneously, and was bogged down by manual reconciliations. Settlements dragged on, financial closings took too long, and reports for different accounting standards tied up valuable resources. The system landscape was fragmented: Workday for HR, Salesforce for sales, and specialized applications on top.

Although everything was connected via integrations, these were, of course, overburdened with every new requirement. The ERP system in its old form was thus no longer a driver of growth but rather a limiting factor for further expansion. Against this backdrop, UiPath made a conscious decision against a traditional S/4 conversion combined with a bit of process optimization.

Customer Zero Initiative

The migration to SAP S/4 HANA was launched as a strategic "Customer Zero" initiative. UiPath became the first reference customer for its own UiPath Platform for Agent-based Automation in a business-critical SAP scenario involving actual revenue, audit requirements, and global financial statements. As a strategic partner, Deloitte contributed its SAP and transformation expertise and adapted its own methodology so that automation played a key role from the definition of the target state through project setup to the go-live. The central question was: Can a modern ERP system be set up in such a way that automation and AI agents largely replace the need for customer-specific code?

The answer lies in the architecture. At its core is SAP S/4 HANA, a near-standard transaction core that has been deliberately kept clean. Modifications and customer-specific enhancements to the core have been reduced to the absolute minimum. Instead of embedding custom logic directly in the ABAP code, process variants, exceptions, and supplementary functionalities were moved to an overlying automation and agent layer. The result is a Clean Core of 93 percent—significantly higher than the values typically found in many industries (which usually hover around 80 percent). This metric signifies an ERP environment where upgrades, enhancements, and new releases are possible without time-consuming code archaeology in the customer-specific code, and where technical debt remains permanently low.

RPA for recurring tasks

For this model to work, UiPath had to deeply integrate its own platform into the S/4 system. The company utilized Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for recurring SAP steps, particularly in finance and core processes, Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) for documents and contracts, UiPath Apps as a user-friendly interface when SAP transactions needed to be bundled or simplified, as well as test automation and AI-powered orchestration that coordinates all components.

Data migrations and integrations—such as those with Workday or Salesforce—were no longer primarily handled manually or via scripts, but were instead managed through bots and agent-based workflows. Test cycles for S/4 HANA and connected systems were largely automated, including interface validations. The true strength is evident in the results. Over the course of the program, more than 200 automations were created across core business processes that do not exist in isolation but work together in an orchestrated manner. In the finance organization, more than 85 percent of key workflows—including billing, reconciliations, and revenue recognition—are now executed by unattended automations using UiPath. Manual intermediate steps have become the exception. At the same time, approximately 60 percent of test cases have been automated, which significantly reduces the workload on the business departments while simultaneously increasing the depth of testing.

Combined with automated validation and integration scenarios, this approach resulted in the project being completed about 10 percent faster than in comparable SAP rollouts. And this was achieved while maintaining full auditability and ensuring stable transitions between SAP and non-SAP systems.

Risk, Agility, Auditability

These figures are more than just efficiency metrics. They outline a process model for SAP programs in which traditional metrics such as risk, agility, auditability, and total cost of ownership are rebalanced.

In this context, the question of how these automations function in day-to-day operations is certainly of particular relevance to SAP administrators. UiPath has deliberately avoided allowing isolated task bots to run independently in individual departments. Instead, a central Center of Excellence has been established to define standards for development, governance, security, and monitoring. All bots and AI agents are connected to an orchestration platform that controls end-to-end processes.

A look at a classic SAP scenario, such as invoicing, illustrates what this means. If a discrepancy is detected during a billing process, it’s not just a single bot that is restarted. Instead, an orchestrated process chain is triggered: data is checked against stored rules and SAP master data, predefined correction steps are initiated, the responsible departments are automatically provided with structured information, and the entire process is documented in an audit-proof manner. A collection of automations thus becomes an operational model that ensures stability, transparency, and compliance in critical processes.

Agentic ERP as the New Standard

Building on this foundation, UiPath is further developing the concept of an agentic ERP. Typical areas of application include those where many SAP Finance teams are still engaged in manual valuation today: in cases of discrepancies in invoice verification, in the creation and adjustment of provisions, in accrual logic, or in the handling of special cases in revenue recognition.

To achieve this, the agents orchestrate data from SAP S/4 Hana and connected systems, perform checks, document results, and escalate issues to humans only when there is uncertainty or a business assessment is required. Based on this, business and IT departments receive not only raw data but also pre-validated options, scenarios, and concrete proposals. New additions include the expansion of UiPath’s alliance with Deloitte and the joint development of Deloitte’s new offering, „Agentic ERP.“ The offering helps companies modernize and optimize complex ERP landscapes using Agentic Automation and end-to-end process orchestration based on UiPath Maestro.

More than just a technical formality

With Customer Zero, UiPath and Deloitte have demonstrated that an S/4 transformation can be more than just a technical formality. The combination of a largely unchanged SAP core, an orchestrated agent layer, and systematically built test and process automation offers an alternative to migration-driven projects full of custom developments. For the SAP community, this means that the key decision is not just about choosing the ERP platform for the next ten years, but about which agent and automation model will sit on top of this platform in the future and what role S/4 will play as a stable core. (Source: UiPath)