SAP puts four AI migration assistants into live cloud ERP projects

Four assistants for the most time-intensive tasks

SAP says the assistants are meant to simplify transformation activities, accelerate project execution, improve decision-making and increase readiness for cloud ERP adoption. The company argues that cloud modernization connects organizations to AI, automation and analytics capabilities that legacy on-premises infrastructure could not support at scale, but that transformation programs are complex and require thousands of business and technical decisions.

The tooling builds on what SAP presented at SAP Sapphire this year, where it introduced new agent-led transformation tooling and outlined how migration and modernization assistants can reduce ERP migration efforts.

The four assistants available today are:

• Data Management Assistant: analyzes data quality metrics, identifies and prioritizes issues based on business impact, recommends remediation actions and helps execute corrections through automated and guided approaches.
• Test Management Assistant: analyzes business processes, requirements and user stories to define test scope, identify critical business scenarios, generate test cases and determine the test data needed. Test cases are handed off to SAP Test Automation by Tricentis for automated execution.
• Custom Code Assistant: helps modernize custom developments for the transition to SAP Cloud ERP Private and supports clean core compliance beyond the initial migration.
• Business Configuration Assistant: supports business design and implementation planning for customers adopting SAP Cloud ERP.

What the assistants do in practice

The Custom Code Assistant assesses custom code, identifies migration and remediation opportunities, aligns extensions with clean core principles and SAP-recommended APIs, and adapts legacy applications for cloud-ready architectures. According to SAP, it acts autonomously: it classifies findings by complexity, applies available automated fixes, and generates AI-driven recommendations and code corrections for the remaining findings. SAP says this helps customers decide where to adopt SAP standard processes and where custom extensions provide genuine business differentiation.

The Business Configuration Assistant recommends and autonomously applies configurations tailored to the customer's industry, segment and business goals. It helps teams define scope, set up organizational structures and translate requirements into implementation-ready configurations. It also extracts source configurations, flags deviations from SAP target requirements and maintains a full audit trail.

For testing, SAP says defining scope, preparing test cases, validating processes and ensuring representative data is available often demands substantial effort from both business and IT teams. The company expects less manual effort, improved coverage of business-critical processes and greater confidence in deployment readiness.

AkzoNobel as a reference customer

SAP names AkzoNobel, a global leader in paints and coatings, as a customer using the Data Management Assistant. The company is on a RISE with SAP journey, consolidating its ERP landscape as part of a large-scale transformation, and takes part in the SAP Early Adopter Care program. It uses the assistant to define data quality scope, evaluate issues across the landscape and prioritize remediation based on business impact.

"The Data Management Assistant gave us clear visibility into our most business-critical data quality issues and helped us prioritize remediation where it matters most," said Thilak Selvam, Master Data Program Lead at AkzoNobel, in SAP's announcement. He added that it "reduced analysis effort, accelerated our planning, and provided a structured approach to maintaining data hygiene and quality controls as we prepare for future transformation initiatives."

More assistants planned

SAP plans to expand the portfolio across the transformation life cycle. Three additions are planned:

• System Analysis Assistant: creates a customer-specific understanding of existing systems, configurations and custom developments, and is meant to serve as the basis for all other assistants.
• Project Management Assistant: intended to provide real-time project insights, proactively identify risks and help orchestrate activities across teams and stakeholders.
• Rollout Assistant: intended to help organizations align global templates with regional requirements and speed up local rollouts.

SAP says that together with the four assistants available now, these would offer a fully integrated, agent-led transformation experience.

What it means for SAP customers

For now, access is limited to early adopter customers, and the source gives no details on broader availability or pricing. Organizations planning a move to SAP Cloud ERP can look at the assistants as an indication of how SAP intends to support the work: with AI help in data quality, testing, custom code and configuration, and, according to the company, in further phases of the project as the portfolio grows. SAP points interested customers to www.sap.com/MMA and to a learning session on agent-led AI assistants for migration and modernization.