How we evaluate alternatives to SAP

Contents

1. The ranking frame
2. The criteria
3. Evidence we accept
4. Use of SAP's name
5. Keeping it current

An ERP ranking is only meaningful for a stated situation. This page sets out ours, the criteria and the rules we follow.

The ranking frame

Our ranking answers one situation: a company leaving SAP ECC that wants an owned, AI-native operations layer. That is a company replacing ECC with another ERP, which also wants the daily operational work (orders, purchasing, supplier and customer correspondence and production records) run by AI on a system it controls.

Within that frame, OpenLazarus ranks first, because it is built for that layer and runs on the company's own instance. It ranks first for this situation only. It is not an ERP and does not replace ECC's ledger, costing or planning, so every company in this situation also needs one of the ERPs in this guide. Those ERPs are ordered by how closely they can replace an ECC estate for a mid-sized to large company: scale, supply chain depth, finance and costing, then AI agents, migration path, hosting choice and price transparency.

The criteria

1. Enterprise scale. Runs multi-site, multi-entity operations from one system, as many SAP ECC estates do.
2. Supply chain depth. Production, inventory, warehousing and planning comparable to what ECC users run today.
3. Finance and costing. General ledger, cost accounting and inventory valuation methods in the same system.
4. AI agents. AI agents that are generally available, act on records within limits and log what they do.
5. Migration path. A published programme, timeline or fixed fee for moving onto the system.
6. Hosting choice. Where the system can run (vendor cloud, own cloud, on-premise) and how a company can leave.
7. Published pricing. Publishes licence or subscription prices before a sales call.

Evidence we accept

1. SAP's own pages for SAP's maintenance dates, options and prerequisites.
2. Each vendor's own pages and documentation: product pages, help documentation, pricing pages and press releases.
3. Reputable third-party reporting: user-group surveys, analyst notes and trade press, with the publisher named.

Anonymous testimonials, paid review sites and any claim we could not open and read are excluded. Where a vendor does not publish something, we say "not published"; where we could not open a vendor's pages, we mark the cell "not verified".

Use of SAP's name

SAP and its product names are used only to identify the products discussed. We use no SAP logos, and nothing on this site implies affiliation with SAP.

Keeping it current

We re-check SAP's dates and every alternative at least once a quarter. Each source shows the date we accessed it.

Further reading

• Guide · DeadlinesSAP ECC end of support in 2027: the dates and the optionsMainstream maintenance for SAP ERP 6.0 ends in 2027, but that is the first of several dates. What SAP's own pages say about each, and how customers are responding.
• Guide · ComparisonSAP S/4HANA vs the alternatives: how to compare them fairlyS/4HANA is the default path for ECC customers, and for some the right one. A structured way to compare it with leaving SAP, on evidence rather than vendor positioning.
• Guide · CostWhat it costs to migrate off SAP ECCThere is no reliable public average for an SAP migration. There are published prices, documented premiums and consistent survey findings, and together they make a usable budget.