The root cause, according to the same research, is not technical failure. The leading reasons are scope expansion during transformation, a poorly managed data transition, a blueprint that gets revised rather than fixed, and a lack of clear governance. These are not technology problems. They are decision problems — and almost all of them are traceable to choices that were made too quickly, too late, or with insufficient clarity about what was actually being decided.
A separate 2026 survey by Precisely and ASUG found that 30% of SAP migration projects are either delayed or over budget — and that is among organizations actively in motion. The ones still in evaluation are facing something more significant: a narrowing window in which the quality of their decision-making is about to matter most.