“What if each well you drill—or asset you manage—could adapt automatically to shifting market demands and sustainability goals, powered by cloud-native agility and AI?”
In 2025, energy leaders face a crossroads. Legacy ERP systems—remember those on-premises SAP ECC or custom-built S/4HANA landscapes—are creaking under the weight of regulatory pressure, decarbonization goals, and evolving business models. Upstream firms balancing production with CCUS pilots, midstream operators wrestling with supply-chain bottlenecks, and utilities integrating distributed energy resources—all find themselves on a collision course with digital transformation.
Take Spirit Energy: in just four months, they migrated from an on-prem S/4HANA to RISE with SAP, laying the groundwork for their strategic pivot toward carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) while unlocking operational savings and AI-enabled agility. Their story underscores what’s possible when a modern, cloud-native ERP empowers energy organizations to act, not just react.
By 2025, oil, gas, and energy companies will be wrestling with ERP systems from yesterday. Outdated platforms like SAP ECC and heavily customized on-prem S/4HANA landscapes now fuel “technical debt,” manifesting as fragmented data stores, ballooning maintenance spend, and rigid systems incapable of real-time agility. According to Arvato Systems, these burdens lead to “inefficient business processes, increased IT operating and maintenance costs, and limited data usage,” creating a genuine competitive disadvantage in today’s volatile energy market.
Complexity compounds when firms operate across multiple sites, including refineries, pipelines, and renewable installations. Uneven data quality hinders clarity, training new users becomes a drain, and innovation stalls under layers of bespoke code and integrations. A study on digital transformation found that migrating legacy systems often fails due to insufficient expertise, preparedness, and misjudged complexity, leading to delays, cost overruns, or outright stalled initiatives.
The consequences stretch beyond technology. As energy demand evolves and ESG scrutiny intensifies, the inability to pivot fast opens strategic cracks. Regulatory frameworks demand carbon insights; energy markets demand speed and clarity; operational teams demand visibility. Yet, legacy ERPs clog all lanes.
Brazilian enterprises, for example, are acutely feeling the pressure as support for SAP ECC is set to end in 2027. According to the 2025 ISG Provider Lens report, this looming deadline is a “central challenge” as companies grapple with continuity, cost, and compliance. Some are turning to RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP, but decision paralysis remains a genuine concern.
On the ground, energy firms are facing tangible challenges. TEAG, a German utility, calls the shift irreversible: “Decarbonization requires decentralization, which in turn is only possible with maximum digitalization.” Without unified, modern systems, their strategy stalls—and the energy transition falters.
This isn’t theoretical risk—it’s business in danger. Fragmented ERPs fuel data blind spots, slow regulatory reporting, and drain budgets and morale. Without strategic transformation, energy companies risk being outpaced by more agile competitors and left behind by evolving market demands.
When the stakes are so high, energy leaders are turning to RISE with SAP as a strategic lever—especially in upstream, midstream, and utility segments—because it reframes transformation as not just a migration, but a platform for agility, innovation, and resilience. Enterprise firms can bundle cloud-native ERP, strategic services, and BTP (Business Technology Platform) capabilities into a single, outcome-driven subscription.
At our firm, we conducted a hands-on pilot with a midstream energy client, which was navigating stagnant growth under a heavily customized on-premises S/4HANA system. Through a Selective Data Transition approach, we migrated only their active asset records and finance ledger to a clean-core RISE environment.
“By focusing on what truly drives the bottom line, this project got the right people on board—finance, ops, IT—and delivered more than modernization. It created a strategic runway,” said our internal digital transformation lead.
According to the 2025 ISG Provider Lens report, RISE with SAP is gaining momentum—but only when paired with providers who grasp vertical-specific nuances. Companies value partners who deliver tailored migration roadmaps, clean-core design, and strategic ramps to innovation.ISG also highlights that managing FinOps and licensing transparency is critical to avoid hidden costs and scope bloat.
A leading oil and gas enterprise collaborated with Applexus to migrate from on-premises S/4HANA to RISE. The firm moved core environments—including Dev, QA, and Production—and analytics systems (BOBJ, BODS) to Azure. Integrations with Salesforce, OpenText, and Adobe were refined, and the user experience was improved with Single Sign-On and enhanced security. The result? A seamless migration completed in five months, with zero business disruption, lower hosting and maintenance costs, and cloud-ready infrastructure for AI and analytics.
| Metric | Value & Insight |
| Licensing Cost Savings | $2 million saved by Energy Transfer through eliminating 5,805 unused licenses and optimizing contractual elements. |
| Migration Adoption Growth | Among organizations using SAP S/4HANA, 45% plan to shift to RISE with SAP—a 150% increase from last year’s 30%. |
| AI Adoption Effect | 54% of respondents to a 2025 SAPinsider survey intend to incorporate AI or generative AI in their SAP S/4HANA implementation via RISE. |
| Ecosystem Leadership | Energy-sector clients value partners who deliver vertical-specific roadmaps. ISG identifies Accenture, Deloitte, Wipro, IBM, Infosys, and Capgemini as leaders across the RISE, BTP, and FinOps domains. |
This quantification brings perspective: very real dollars saved, significant shifts in adoption trends, and the rapid embedding of AI in ERP workflows—together, validating the strategic ROI of RISE with SAP for energy firms.
To execute a high-impact RISE with SAP migration, energy leaders are following a phased, precision-guided roadmap. Here’s how:
| Term | Meaning |
| Selective Data Transition (SDT) | A tailored migration strategy that balances reuse and redesign—moving only relevant data (e.g., recent financials, active assets) into a clean-core SAP S/4HANA system. |
| Clean-core | Refers to minimal custom code—standardizing processes to reduce complexity, ease upgrades, and unlock innovation. |
| SAP BTP & Joule | SAP’s Business Technology Platform plus generative AI assistant—enabling analytics, predictive modeling, and embedded intelligence. |
Splisys uses the data submitted through this form to send you relevant marketing insights, blog updates, and learning resources. To learn more, read our Privacy Policy.
