Rescuing an At-Risk SAP S/4HANA Program and Delivering a Successful Go-Live

When Axiums was engaged, the program had been in trouble for over a year. The original go-live date had passed without delivery, the budget had been revised upward twice, and the relationship between the organisation and their system integrator had deteriorated to the point where formal dispute resolution was being considered.

The Challenge

The root causes were multiple and interconnected: scope had been poorly defined at the outset, the governance structure did not provide meaningful oversight, and the change management workstream had been deprioritized in favour of technical delivery. User readiness was critically low.

The board needed to make a decision: continue with significant additional investment, or cut losses. They needed an independent view before they could make that call.

Our Approach

The engagement began with a four-week program health assessment — reviewing documentation, interviewing key stakeholders, and assessing the technical delivery against the original scope. Our assessment identified a viable path to go-live, but it required significant changes to the program structure.

We restructured the governance model to give the steering committee genuine visibility and decision-making authority. We reset the SI relationship with a revised accountability framework, clear deliverable definitions, and a formal escalation path. And we rebuilt the change management workstream from the ground up, prioritizing the business units with the highest adoption risk.

The go-live approach was redesigned to reduce risk — phasing the deployment by business unit rather than attempting a single cutover, and building in a structured hypercare period with clear exit criteria.

The Result

The program went live successfully six months after Axiums' engagement began. User adoption at 90 days post go-live was 91% — significantly above the industry benchmark. The board's confidence in the program was restored, and the SI relationship, while challenging, was managed to a successful conclusion.