Toyota Finance Australia's 13-month SAP move: what NZ firms can use

What happened

iTnews reported on 4 November that Toyota Finance Australia has moved from a 16-year-old SAP ECC system to S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. The project, codenamed Kizuna, took 13 months and went live in early August. Moulik Doshi, the company's head of financial reporting and operations, described the work at the SAP NOW AI Tour in Sydney.

According to iTnews, a sizeable planning exercise came before the migration and covered the complexity of the old SAP environment and the systems connected to it. The team also gave priority to user experience and getting staff ready. Users can now build their own dashboards and reports, work that specialist data teams would previously have handled. Toyota Finance Australia's project cost, implementation partner and user numbers aren't in the iTnews report.

Why the edition choice matters

Public Edition supports less customisation than ECC, which fits SAP's clean core approach of keeping customers able to take cloud upgrades as they arrive. SAP's developer FAQ says its ABAP Cloud model is mandatory for new Public Edition customers and updates on a half-yearly cycle. An ERP that's been running for 16 years has usually picked up plenty of custom code, so choosing Public Edition commits the business to changing some of its processes to fit the software.

Customisation is also where other SAP users say they're stuck. A Precisely and ASUG survey reported on 5 November found 53% of respondents named ECC customisations as their main migration challenge, while 83% rated master data cleansing as important. The same coverage puts 67% of respondents fully or partly on S/4HANA. Its sample size isn't stated, and ASUG is an Americas user group, so we'd read those figures as a guide to direction only.

Thirteen months looks quick beside IAG, which spoke at the same Sydney event. IAG's S/4HANA move has been running for a few years and is still under way. The insurer mapped more than 300 finance processes and cleared 40% of its company codes to cut the data it has to migrate. We wouldn't treat Toyota Finance Australia's timeline as a benchmark for a manufacturer or distributor. A finance company has no shop floor or warehouse to cut over, and iTnews doesn't list the modules in scope.

Some Australian organisations are leaving SAP altogether. The federal Department of Infrastructure has appointed Accenture to replace ECC6 with Workday and ServiceNow in a $38.8 million deal running to mid-2029. Home Affairs is scoping a replacement by December 2030, with S/4HANA as one option among others.

The deadline arithmetic

SAP confirmed on 7 October that mainstream maintenance for Business Suite 7 runs through 31 December 2027, with optional extended maintenance through 31 December 2030. The Register has reported the extended period at a 2% premium. SAP's October post adds a less obvious constraint for systems on third-party databases: conversion tooling ends with SAP's database agreements in 2030, and only greenfield moves are supported after that. The paid transition option for 2031 to 2033 requires a move to SAP ERP, private edition, on SAP HANA before the end of 2030.

A business that started next week and matched Toyota Finance Australia's 13 months would go live in December 2027, the last month of mainstream maintenance. iTnews doesn't say whether the planning exercise sits inside those 13 months. For most ECC sites that haven't started, extended maintenance is now the realistic planning case. German-speaking SAP users are already heading there: in a DSAG survey of 198 senior leaders, 37% of members still investing in ECC wanted to switch by the end of 2027, and almost half planned to move by the end of 2030.

What it means for NZ businesses

Delivery capacity is the main NZ constraint. SAPinsider's June analysis says the ANZ SAP talent pool is smaller than Europe's or North America's, and few local integrators have deep S/4HANA capacity. Many programmes combine global delivery with ANZ-based teams. A mid-sized NZ firm is likely to be competing for the same consultants as Australian banks and government departments, and a late start will leave it with fewer choices.

The same analysis warns that NZ's Privacy Act 2020 creates its own obligations, so an Australian plan won't transfer unchanged. SAP's data centre page says cloud services may run in sites other than those shown, and secondary backup sites aren't listed. NZ buyers should therefore get primary and disaster recovery locations confirmed in the contract.

AI adds a second reason to decide soon. CIO reported in May that on-premises customers must move at least half their maintenance budget to the cloud before enabling Joule assistants. IAG's Prashant Shetty reached a conclusion that holds for any ERP: "Let's fix our process, let's fix our data."

Our view is that a mid-sized organisation with standard finance processes and a small IT team should start from the standard cloud edition and make each exception justify itself. Organisations whose custom logic carries real commercial value should price a private edition and a move off SAP side by side, as the Department of Infrastructure has done in choosing Workday and ServiceNow. Owners of older NetSuite, Dynamics or locally hosted systems can apply the same test to their own custom work, and our ERP team sees that review as the sensible start to any replacement decision.

Practical next steps

• Inventory every custom program, report and integration in your ERP, and record which ones a standard process could replace.
• Check which database your ECC system runs on. If it isn't SAP HANA, add the end of 2030 to your risk register and review the SAP Notes listed in SAP's October post.
• Ask SAP or your reseller for a written extended maintenance price, and compare three years of that cost with the cost of starting a replacement now.
• Start cleaning master data and retiring unused company codes this financial year. That work reduces migration effort whichever platform you choose.
• Ask every shortlisted vendor to state primary hosting, backup locations and release timing in writing, then test those answers against your Privacy Act obligations.
• Set your cutover date around your balance date, and budget for staff training and for regression testing after each half-yearly release if you choose Public Edition.