TL;DR
- The S/4HANA talent shortage isn't the root problem, it's a symptom of misaligned leadership strategy and workforce planning failures.
- Skill gaps (47%) and integration challenges (49%) outrank cost and security concerns as the real barriers to migration success.
- Organizations plan technical roadmaps without corresponding talent strategies, budgeting for developers while forgetting testers, data migration teams, and post-go-live support.
- The fix isn't hiring more people, it's having the right people at the right time, structured around project milestones.
- Leadership must treat skills readiness as a core transformation workstream, not an afterthought.
The $100M Reality Check
Your organization has committed nine figures to an S/4HANA transformation. The business case is sound. The technology is proven. SAP's roadmap is clear.
And yet, your migration is at risk. Not because of infrastructure limitations. Not because of integration complexity. Not even because of budget constraints.
It's at risk because of people.
More specifically, it's at risk because leadership hasn't treated the talent dimension of this transformation with the same strategic rigor applied to technology selection and vendor negotiations.
This is the uncomfortable truth Fortune 2000 executives must confront: the S/4HANA talent gap isn't a resource problem. It's a leadership problem. And until organizations address it as such, even the most well-funded migrations will continue to stall, overrun, and underdeliver.
The Talent Gap Myth
Let's dispel a persistent myth: the talent shortage isn't about a lack of available SAP professionals in the market. It's about a fundamental mismatch between how organizations plan transformations and how they plan for the people who execute them.
Consider what we see repeatedly in enterprise migrations:
- Planning for FICO specialists while missing data migration teams entirely
- Budgeting for SAP developers but forgetting testers and integration leads
- Focusing obsessively on the build phase while underestimating post-go-live support requirements
These aren't technology problems. These are planning and prioritization failures, and they sit squarely within leadership's control.
The reality is that most organizations approach S/4HANA migrations with detailed technical roadmaps and virtually no corresponding talent strategy scaled to the program's complexity. They treat workforce planning as a procurement exercise rather than a strategic workstream.
Leadership implication: If your transformation office has a 50-page technical architecture document and a 2-page staffing plan, you've already identified your biggest risk factor.
What the Data Actually Tells Us
When we examine the real barriers to S/4HANA migration success, the numbers are revealing, and they don't point where most executives expect.
Research consistently shows that skill gaps (47%) and integration challenges (49%) substantially exceed concerns about security (38%) and cost (38%) as actual barriers to transformation success.
Yet organizations continue investing primarily in infrastructure, security, and system architecture while treating talent acquisition as a secondary concern to be solved through staff augmentation and contractor procurement.
This is a strategic blind spot. Organizations are over-indexing on the problems they're comfortable solving, technology problems, while under-investing in the problems that actually determine outcomes.
The Generational Knowledge Crisis
Compounding this challenge is a demographic reality that many transformation leaders are only beginning to acknowledge: experienced SAP professionals are approaching retirement while insufficient junior and mid-level consultants are entering the field to absorb institutional knowledge.
Rather than building structured knowledge transfer programs, organizations remain dependent on the same overextended experts, consultants who are juggling multiple engagements and lack the bandwidth to properly document their expertise or mentor successors.
When leadership neglects this reality, the consequences compound:
- Teams wait for expert guidance instead of moving forward confidently
- Quality suffers from assumptions made in knowledge vacuums
- Organizations become locked into expensive external resource dependencies
- Timelines slip as critical-path activities bottleneck around a handful of overburdened specialists
This directly impacts both timeline and cost, often by millions of dollars and months of delay.
Reframing the Problem: From Hiring to Leadership
The solution isn't hiring more people. The solution is having the right people at the right time, structured around project milestones and transformation phases.
This requires a fundamentally different approach, one that treats workforce planning as a strategic leadership responsibility rather than a tactical procurement exercise.
Phase-Aligned Talent Strategy
Effective S/4HANA transformations align talent acquisition and deployment to specific transformation phases:
- Blueprinting phase: Functional consultants who understand business process design and gap analysis
- Migration phase: Data engineers and specialists who can execute complex data transformations
- Pre-go-live: Testing teams and integration specialists who ensure quality before launch
- Post-go-live: Support resources and knowledge transfer specialists who ensure adoption sticks
This flexibility requires sophisticated workforce management. It demands that leadership invest time in understanding not just what needs to be built, but who needs to build it, and when.
Leadership implication: Your transformation roadmap should have a talent track that's as detailed as your technical track. If it doesn't, you're planning to fail.
The Knowledge Transfer Imperative
Perhaps the most overlooked element of transformation talent strategy is knowledge preservation. Leadership must treat skills readiness as a core transformation workstream, comparable in importance to roadmap planning, testing strategy, and change management.
This requires deliberate, structured action:
- Specialists must document knowledge in playbooks and reference guides
- Internal teams must be positioned to gradually take ownership
- Knowledge transfer milestones must be tracked with the same rigor as technical deliverables
- Dependency on external resources must be consciously reduced over time
Organizations that fail to institutionalize knowledge during transformation remain perpetually dependent on expensive external consultants. They pay premium rates indefinitely for expertise that should have been transferred to internal teams during the project.
This isn't just a cost issue, it's a capability issue. Organizations that don't own their SAP expertise can't optimize, can't innovate, and can't respond to business changes with agility.
What Leadership-Driven Success Looks Like
When organizations approach the talent dimension of S/4HANA transformation with strategic intent, the results speak for themselves.
Lampkin Brown clients who have reframed their migrations as leadership challenges, not just technology projects, have achieved remarkable outcomes.
These aren't incremental improvements. They're transformational differences that separate successful migrations from troubled ones.
The common thread? Leadership treated talent strategy as a first-class priority, not an afterthought to be solved through last-minute contractor procurement.
The Leadership Checklist
Executives overseeing S/4HANA transformations should be asking themselves:
- Do we have a talent strategy that's as detailed as our technical roadmap?
- Have we mapped resource requirements to specific transformation phases and milestones?
- Are we building knowledge transfer into the program from day one, not scrambling for it at go-live?
- Do we have visibility into skill gaps before they become critical-path blockers?
- Are we measuring talent readiness with the same rigor we apply to technical readiness?
If the answer to any of these questions is "no" or "I'm not sure," your $100M migration is carrying unnecessary risk.
The Path Forward
The S/4HANA talent gap is real: but it's not insurmountable. It requires leadership to recognize that transformation success depends as much on people strategy as technology strategy.
Organizations that continue treating talent as a procurement problem will continue experiencing the same frustrating outcomes: delays, cost overruns, quality issues, and transformations that fail to deliver promised value.
Organizations that elevate talent strategy to a leadership priority will move faster, spend smarter, and build lasting internal capabilities that extend far beyond the initial migration.
The choice is yours.
Ready to De-Risk Your S/4HANA Migration?
If your organization is navigating an S/4HANA transformation: or preparing for one: we've developed a resource specifically for leaders facing these challenges.
Download: S/4HANA Change Leadership Playbook (Free Resource)
The S/4HANA Change Leadership Playbook is a downloadable guide designed for executive leaders and transformation owners who need change to stick—covering strategic talent planning, knowledge transfer, and adoption execution.
Get the playbook here: S/4HANA Change Leadership Playbook
Connect with us to discuss how Lampkin Brown can help your organization drive significant cost reduction, measurable efficiency gains, and accelerated delivery timelines by treating transformation as the leadership challenge it truly is.