Despite decades of ERP innovation, the success rate of large-scale implementations remains low. Gartner reports that 70% of recent ERP initiatives fail to meet their original business objectives, and 25% fail outright. LeapGreat, a platform focused exclusively on SAP S/4HANA migrations, has built its solution around addressing the fundamental challenges behind these outcomes: late-stage surprises, unmanaged complexity, and underappreciated change management.
The Inherent Challenge of Traditional ERP Projects
ERP methodologies such as SAP Activate provide structured phases: Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy, and Run. While conceptually sound, these frameworks often fall short when it comes to early detection of critical issues. Most project risks emerge during the Realize phase, when the system starts taking shape and the business sees how well, or poorly, the design aligns with expectations.
Three root causes consistently lead to failure:
- Design Before Discovery: Organizations design systems before fully understanding their data and process dependencies.
- Complex Project Silos: Functional leads, technical teams, and end users work in isolation using disconnected tools and documentation.
- Late-stage Change Management: Real engagement with users often occurs too late, typically during testing, which limits the ability to adapt.
LeapGreat’s approach inverts this sequence: FrontLoad™ brings system visibility and stakeholder engagement forward, establishing clarity and control from day one.
FrontLoad™ the Transformation Effort
LeapGreat presents FrontLoad™, a more modern approach that accelerates access to the working S/4HANA system, transformation tools and stakeholder workflows. Unlike traditional demos or static documentation, LeapGreat delivers early entry to the fully configured system environment.
This is not a mockup. Project teams engage with their future transactional environment at the outset. Early visibility enables validation of key design decisions and prevents costly late-stage changes.
FrontLoad™ extends to tool integration: SAP Enable Now, WalkMe, Cloud ALM and partners such as Tricentis or UiPath become available at project launch. This integration reduces tool sprawl and improves transparency across teams.
The Power of the Interactive Refinement Workshop
At the center of the LeapGreat process is the Fit-to-Standard workshop, a key component of the SAP Activate methodology. While most projects rely on a generic sandbox system during these sessions, LeapGreat takes a different approach: we jump straight into the actual development system. Using the LeapGreat cockpit, participants walk through real SAP S/4HANA processes step by step—no simulations, no placeholders. It’s hands-on, live, and fully connected to the system that will ultimately run the business.
Each process step includes data inputs and system transactions. Stakeholders collaboratively decide whether to adopt the standard, pursue a brownfield variant, or request new developments. All decisions, deltas, risks, and integration requirements are logged in real time.
This iterative approach ensures that requirements are not only discussed but also executed and verified in the system before the project advances. It also provides a continuous loop for refinement, encouraging rapid re-validation of business process adjustments.
Change Management That Starts on Day One
Unlike conventional models that postpone change enablement to the testing phase, LeapGreat initiates change management from the first workshop. Stakeholders experience their future roles, system access, reports, and analytics from the outset. This eliminates surprises and accelerates adoption.
The platform provides job-role transparency by mapping business positions to SAP roles and assigned processes. A general accountant, for example, can see precisely what processes, transactions, and reports are part of their future day-to-day job.
This clarity supports practical training, onboarding, and acceptance, reducing downstream resistance and ramp-up times.
Centralizing Governance with the LeapGreat Cockpit
Let’s face it—most big ERP projects are held together with digital duct tape. Key decisions live in email threads, documents are buried in SharePoint folders, and everyone has a different version of the truth in some spreadsheet. It’s chaotic—and expensive.
LeapGreat changes that with its central cockpit.
This cockpit isn’t just a dashboard—it’s where your entire project comes together, clearly and cleanly. It gives your team one spot to manage:
- The project charter, structure, and methodology
- Scope definitions and calibration tools
- Live links to documentation (including SharePoint)
- Backlog items, issue tracking, and decision logs
- Testing across tools like SAP Cloud ALM and Tricentis
Turning Plans Into Reality
What makes this cockpit different? It doesn’t just store documents—it ties them to actual business processes. When someone makes a design choice or raises a concern, it’s captured in real time, right next to the workflow it affects.
The decision log becomes a goldmine. It keeps track of who said what, why something changed, and what the team agreed to do—all without relying on someone’s memory. That means when you’re doing a global rollout, an upgrade, or onboarding a new team member, they’re not starting from scratch.
Why It Matters (Especially Later)
Most teams don’t think about traceability until something breaks. But by that point, the original context is gone, and so is the person who made the call. LeapGreat’s cockpit preserves that history, reducing risk and cutting future costs.
Bottom line? If you’re tired of losing time and money to project sprawl, it’s time to bring everything—and everyone—into one cockpit.
Outcome: Reducing Risk, Increasing Value
The result of this structured, frontloaded, and transparent approach is a significant reduction in project risk and cost, along with accelerated delivery and improved solution quality.
Instead of reacting to late-stage surprises, LeapGreat customers proactively shape their future ERP system, seeing it, configuring it, and adapting it from the start.
LeapGreat redefines ERP transformation not as a linear path through predefined phases but as a living system built in active collaboration with the business. For SAP-centric organizations undertaking the transition to S/4HANA, it provides a strategic answer to a decades-old problem: how to migrate with confidence, control, and clarity.
