Stage 4 of 5

Client-Side SI Oversight

During implementation, Allari® gives the client side independent visibility into scope, milestones, risk, and acceptance — reporting into your governance process, not the SI's delivery chain. Allari supports the client-side governance process. We do not manage the SI's team, certify deliverables, or replace the client's contractual authority.

The build is active. ECC has its own run team. Now the question shifts from operational stability to delivery visibility: is the SI delivering what was promised, on the timeline that was promised, at the quality that was promised?

The SI's financial incentive is milestone completion — not your operational outcome. Stage 4 supports the client side with an independent read on what the SI is reporting — helping leadership ask better questions before decisions harden.

The ISG "State of SAP Migrations" study found that weak client-side governance — not technical challenges — is the primary cause of migration delays. We are not the SI. We support the client side inside the program — structurally independent, technically equipped, and oriented to outcomes rather than milestones.

Recognition Pattern

You're here if…

• You have an SI under contract for your S/4HANA migration and no independent client-side review of the progress being reported.
• Your project steering committee reviews are based entirely on the SI's own status reporting — green/yellow/red dashboards without underlying data.
• The first change orders have arrived, and you're not sure whether the scope changes are legitimate or whether you're being change-ordered to death.
• Go-live dates have already slipped once — or the SI has signaled they might — and there is no objective framework for evaluating readiness.
• You are approaching a go-live decision and your only data source for system readiness is the SI that has a financial incentive to go live.
• You have no independent client-side review of whether the data migration mock results actually reconcile with ECC production.
• Your legal, compliance, or internal audit teams are asking whether governance artifacts — RACI, risk log, milestone acceptance criteria — are in place, and the honest answer is that you don't know.
• The SI is recommending a go-live date that concerns your core team but you lack the technical language to formally object.

Risk Assessment

What's at risk

The highest-exposure point in any SAP migration is not the technical build. It is the governance gap between what the SI is delivering and what the client believes is being delivered. That gap opens at kickoff and widens throughout the project. By the time it becomes visible — usually at the first go-live slip or the first post-cutover stabilization event — it has already consumed the contingency budget, the available timeline, and the organizational trust needed to recover.

The ISG "State of SAP Migrations" study — 200+ large-company decision-makers — found that weak governance, not technical challenges, is the primary cause of migration delays. Almost 60% of SAP migrations fall behind schedule and exceed budget simultaneously. Only 8% complete on schedule.

SI financial incentives are structured around milestones, not delivery outcomes. When milestone-based contracts meet advisory teams with variable staffing quality, the result is predictable: scope inflation, timeline compression at the end, and a go-live that happens before the system is ready.

The documented patterns are consistent:

• Zimmer Biomet: a $69M contract with Deloitte that produced 51 change orders totaling $23M, five go-live slips, and a warehouse management module that ruptured the supply chain on launch day — the SI had advised the July 4 go-live without disclosing identified showstopper risks. Damages claim reached $172M; market cap impact reached $2B.
• Lidl: €500M spent over seven years on an SAP retail implementation before the project was declared unachievable and abandoned entirely.
• National Grid: $585M in post-go-live stabilization costs, 850 contractors at $30M per month for over two years.

The common factor: no independent governance function on the client side.

What We Deliver

Independent Governance

Architecture Review Gate

Client-side review of the proposed S/4HANA technical architecture against your actual business requirements and data volumes. HANA sizing reviewed against real production data — not the SI's scoping estimates. Integration design reviewed. Clean core strategy reviewed: what stays in S/4HANA core, what moves to BTP extensions, what gets retired. This review happens before the SI begins significant build investment — when changes are cheap.

Data Migration Readiness Review

A minimum of two full mock migration cycles completed with production-like data volumes — reviewed independently rather than relying on the SI's "data migration complete" checkbox. Trial balance reconciliation: 100% match between ECC and S/4HANA general ledger balances. Record count matching: extracted versus loaded counts per migration object. Open AR/AP reconciliation at ≤0.1% variance. Business Partner data at 99.5% completeness minimum. Independent client-side review of the evidence — the client retains acceptance authority.

Integration Testing Review

All interface connections tested under realistic production load conditions — not unit tests against stubbed endpoints. RFC call volumes reviewed against actual ECC production traffic patterns: 600 RFC calls per minute has been documented as a threshold that creates lock entry errors; this must be known and tested before go-live.

Change Order Scrutiny

Every change order logged with: description of scope change, schedule impact in days, budget impact in dollars, business justification, and the client's approval signatures. We maintain that log on the client side and surface change orders that lack documented scope justification traceable to a specific gap in the original statement of work — so leadership can ask better questions before signing. Approval authority remains with the client.

Defect Density Tracking

Open defects by severity (S1/S2/S3/S4) per workstream, with trend lines over time and age tracking for open items. Not a green/yellow/red dashboard — underlying data. We track open items at the workstream level, identify when defect aging is inconsistent with go-live confidence, and surface the discrepancy to the steering committee before the go-live decision is made.

Go/No-Go Decision Framework

A structured, evidence-based go/no-go framework that supports the client's decision — not an SI recommendation. Trial balance reconciliation at zero variance. Zero Severity-1 technical issues open. System performance meeting established benchmarks under production-representative load. Business users confirming operational readiness. CFO or finance director sign-off on data acceptance criteria. Explicit risk acknowledgment surfaced for any go-live scheduled on a holiday weekend. The decision belongs to the client; we provide the evidence base.

Engagement Structure

How it works

Phase 1 — Embedded from SI Kickoff

We are present from program initiation — architecture review, RACI review, contract review, governance artifact establishment on the client side. The earlier client-side review is in place, the lower the cost of surfacing problems.

Phase 2 — Active Through Build and Test Phases

Quality reviews at each phase transition. Change-order visibility as scope changes emerge. Defect density tracking established from the first UAT cycle. Data migration mock results reviewed independently of SI reporting.

Phase 3 — Cutover and Go-Live

Cutover readiness reviewed before the go-live recommendation is accepted. Go/No-Go framework applied. Independent assessment delivered to the steering committee and executive sponsor to inform the client's final decision.

Phase 4 — Hypercare Overlap

We remain embedded through the hypercare period — providing a second opinion on SI stabilization progress and an independent view of post-go-live defect patterns before the SI exits. Typical SI governance engagement: 6–24 months from kickoff through hypercare exit.

AUDIT TRAIL

What an OpenBook® invoice looks like

142

service requests

67.0h

measured work

$6,030

submitted as a cost

One real customer’s April 2026 invoice. 16-row line-item matrix, $22.50 per 15-minute unit, methodology footnote alongside. 47% of work finished by automation; human verified.

Stage 4 — What happens without independent governance

Evidence

Third-party research

Market Context

Publicly reported SAP implementation failures — none of these are Allari clients; all are documented in court filings, regulatory disclosures, or public statements:

Zimmer Biomet retained Deloitte — a 25-year sole-source partner — without competitive oversight or independent governance. The result: 51 change orders totaling $23M on a $69M contract, five go-live slips, a warehouse management module that halted supply chain operations at launch, and a $172M lawsuit.

National Grid deployed SAP without independent program governance. Post-go-live stabilization cost $585M. Financial close extended from 4 days to 43 days. 15,000+ vendor invoices unpaid. Lidl spent €500M over seven years before concluding the project was unachievable. The root cause was not technology — it was the absence of governance maturity. These are not edge cases: 55–75% of SAP migrations exceed budget (ISG), and only a small share complete on their original schedule (Horváth Partners, S/4HANA study).

55–75%

Migrations That Exceed Budget

Only 8%

Complete on Schedule

$172M

Zimmer Biomet Claimed Damages

€500M

Lidl Abandoned Project Cost

Deep Dive

Related resources

Stage 4 → Stage 5 · SAP ECC Lifecycle

Where this goes next

Once SI governance is in place, the next risk is hypercare exit. Move to S/4HANA Post-Go-Live Operations before the SI leaves.

SAP ECC - STAGE 4 SI OVERSIGHT

Before the next milestone review, get an independent client-side read.

We read between the lines: deliverable quality, defect aging, integration test coverage, cutover readiness. From your side of the table.

Need independent SI oversight on your S/4 program?

Working session to review your current SI cadence, deliverable quality, and slip risk - from a buyer-side perspective.

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