The CCoE paradox

ERP provider management and the SLA promise

The need for a Customer Center of Expertise, or CCoE for short, for existing SAP customers stems from the old ERP truth: a Rise contract is not an all-round carefree package, but a redefinition of responsibilities in which the most complex tasks remain with the customer.

While SAP takes care of the technical infrastructure and the installation of patches, the logical support of the applications, user management, testing of business processes and, above all, the orchestration of the hybrid landscapes remain entirely in the hands of the company.

The new SAP Rise ticket system

Reports from the field show that companies do not have to reduce their SAP Basis teams after signing a Rise contract, but often even have to increase them. The reason for this is the bureaucratization of operations: where an admin used to quickly change a parameter, today a ticket has to be opened with SAP, monitored and its fulfillment checked. The CCoE becomes the interface for this provider management and must ensure that the Group's service level agreements (SLAs) are adhered to.

In terms of business management and licensing law, the CCoE is becoming the guardian of the cost explosion. In the old on-prem world, licenses were a capital good (asset) that you owned. In the cloud world of Rise and the Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), the rental model rules with complex metrics such as the Full Use Equivalent (FUE) or expiring cloud credits.

The indispensability of CCoE with Rise is primarily due to the radical shift in responsibilities. While SAP takes over the technical infrastructure and basic operation (Technical Managed Services) as part of Rise, the entire logical support of the applications remains with the customer. This means that SAP ensures that the servers run, but is not responsible for whether the business processes on them function efficiently.

This creates a massive vacuum. Although the traditional SAP Basis department dies in its manual function (screwing the server, installing patches), it must be resurrected as CCoE in a new role as „orchestrator“. Instead of doing the work itself, the CCoE now has to manage the provider SAP. Direct interventions become tickets, administrators become managers of service level agreements. Without a CCoE that speaks SAP's language and monitors the quality of the services delivered, the company is at the mercy of the service provider and risks tickets disappearing into support nirvana instead of solving business-critical problems.

Today, the CCoE must act as a controller, meticulously monitoring whether the expensive cloud resources are being used efficiently and preventing unused shelfware from impacting the budget. It is up to this unit to decipher the opaque price and conditions lists and ensure that the transformation does not end in a financial trap, especially as a genuine exit strategy from the SAP cloud often remains contractually nebulous.

Bipolar tension between innovation and stability

Organizationally, the CCoE faces the daunting task of managing the bipolar tension between innovation and stability. On the one hand, specialist departments and SAP with ERP tools such as Signavio and LeanIX are pushing for constant process optimization and the restructuring of the enterprise architecture.

On the other hand, operations must be ensured in a fragmented landscape of Hana, S/4, BTP and non-SAP applications. The CCoE must act as a governance body that defends the clean core. It must prevent specialist departments from creating new „spaghetti code“ on the BTP through wild side-by-side developments that jeopardize maintainability. The role of employees is changing radically: the classic basic administrator is becoming a cloud architect and automation expert who no longer turns screws but orchestrates complex workflows.

Clean core strategy

Last but not least, the CCoE is the guarantor for the clean core strategy. To ensure upgradeability in the Rise Cloud, SAP requires the ERP core to be kept clean and extensions to be outsourced to the BTP. However, developers and specialist departments tend to take the path of least resistance and revive old Z programs or build quick-and-dirty solutions. The CCoE must act as an internal „police force“ (governance body) that enforces compliance with the clean core rules and decides which extensions are legitimate and which violate the standard. Without this authority, the system becomes dirty very quickly, even in the cloud, which blocks future innovations and destroys the actual advantage of Rise.

One critical aspect is therefore the governance of hybrid system landscapes. Rise with SAP rarely covers 100 percent of the IT landscape. The reality for most existing customers is hybrid: an S/4 Hana in the private cloud communicates with on-prem legacy systems, SaaS solutions such as SuccessFactors and non-SAP applications. SAP assumes no responsibility for this end-to-end integration in the standard Rise contract.

The CCoE is the only entity that can maintain an overview of this fragmented architecture. It must ensure that data flows function across system boundaries and that interfaces remain stable, even if SAP dictates a maintenance window in the cloud. Without this bracketing function, the IT landscape disintegrates into isolated silos and the promised „seamless process“ remains an illusion.

Digital window: SAP for Me

The SAP for Me portal acts as a digital window to SAP. It is intended to serve as a „single source of truth“ in which the CCoE can centrally view licenses, support tickets, system availability and maintenance plans. The theoretical added value lies in the transparency and bundling of information that was previously scattered across various dashboards.

Critical voices from the community, however, criticize the technical instability and the sometimes poor performance of this portal. If the central control instrument of the CCoE itself is unreliable, „flying blind“ becomes a risk. Nevertheless, there is no way around SAP for Me, as it is the primary communication medium to the SAP support organization.

The design of a future CCoE must therefore radically break away from the past. It must no longer be seen purely as a technical helpdesk, but must act as a strategic competence center that interlinks business and IT. The core tasks include managing security in a zero-trust environment, ensuring compliance in the public cloud and actively steering the roadmap towards S/4 Hana.

The CCoE is the only instance in the company that bundles the necessary knowledge to meet the overpowering vendor SAP at eye level and prevent sovereignty over data and processes from disappearing completely into the cloud. Anyone who believes that they can hand over responsibility at the gate with Rise with SAP is making a fatal mistake. The CCoE is not dead, it is more important than ever - as an advocate for its own interests in a standardized cloud world.

Not only the Competence Center Summit 2026 of the SAP community is dedicated to the topic of CCoE, including the E3 Roundtable (LinkedIn and YouTube livestream) on March 4 at 11 a.m. with Uwe Grigoleit (SAP), Sebastian Westphal (Deutsche Bahn) and Walter Schinnerer (DSAG Austria) will focus on the Customer Center of Expertise and SAP for Me.