- Sector
- Technology consulting / professional services
- Region
- United States, South Africa
- Company size
- 6 legal entities
- Currencies
- USD, ZAR, GBP
- Accounting standards
- IFRS and US GAAP
- Platform
- NetSuite → SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
- Duration
- January – April 2026
- Team
- 2 FTE, internal
Before we migrated anyone else to SAP Cloud ERP, we migrated VMG Labs. Multiple legal entities, three currencies, two accounting standards, a professional-services business that bills by project — the same shape as most of the companies that ask us about leaving NetSuite.
01Challenge
VMG Labs ran its global financial management on NetSuite. It handled an international, multi-entity business adequately and was a reasonable choice when it was made. Two things changed.
The company grew into a specialist SAP implementation partner, which meant advising clients on a platform it did not run itself. A consultancy that runs its own finance on a competitor’s product has a gap in its story, and our consultants were learning the platform in training systems rather than in a live business.
At the same time, NetSuite’s annual subscription kept rising, and SAP Cloud ERP at our size costs materially less to run.
The project had a third purpose from the start. Every template, data-migration framework and process blueprint built for our own migration would become an accelerator for client projects. It was scoped to produce at least three.
02Our approach
Target system. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, implemented fit-to-standard — configuration over custom code, with SAP’s clean-core principles applied so the system stays upgradeable on SAP’s release cycle.
Enterprise structure
Six legal entities across the United States and South Africa, transacting in USD, ZAR and GBP, with intercompany processes configured end to end. The SAP chart of accounts was extended and mapped account-for-account to the legacy NetSuite chart, with a reporting crosswalk maintained so historical comparisons survive the move.
Data migration
Master data, chart of accounts, opening balances and selected transactional history, loaded through the SAP Migration Cockpit. Account mapping and segment design were done before the first load cycle, not during it.
Integrations
The existing landscape was assessed before anything was built, with the aim of retiring point solutions rather than integrating them. Clockify was replaced by a time-capture app VMG built in-house on Azure, kept outside the SAP core and connected through SAP’s standard APIs. Hours post straight to project billing and revenue recognition, with no separate system to reconcile.
Method
SAP Activate — Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy, Run — with project governance and change management layered over it. The project was run in SAP Cloud ALM, with scope defined there and aligned in Central Business Configuration for deployment. Fit-to-standard workshops in the Explore phase set the requirements backlog. The workshops delivered a 100% fit to standard: every requirement was met with delivered SAP functionality, so the change control process, though in place, was never needed.
Team
Two people from VMG’s own consulting team — a technical lead, and a single project manager who also served as finance lead — delivered the implementation alongside their existing client commitments.
03Results
Live on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition since April 2026 — six legal entities, three currencies, two accounting standards on one system.
100% fit to standard. Every requirement was met with delivered SAP functionality. No custom code, no change requests raised.
Lower annual ERP subscription cost than the NetSuite contract it replaced.
Four reusable delivery accelerators captured: chart-of-accounts mapping template, NetSuite-to-SAP data migration framework, professional-services process blueprint, and the in-house time-capture app.
Revenue recognized as time and milestones are confirmed, rather than reconciled after close.
NetSuite decommission: November 2026.
04Why it worked
Fit-to-standard meant saying no to ourselves. The hardest requirement to decline is your own. Scope was locked after the Explore phase, and requests to recreate NetSuite-style saved searches and custom reports were met with SAP’s standard Fiori analytical apps instead. The lock held.
Data work started in Prepare, not Realize. Chart-of-accounts mapping and segment redesign began before configuration did. By the time the first migration cycle ran, the data questions had already been answered — which is the difference between a migration that lands on time and one that doesn’t.
Protected time for a part-time team. The team ran the project alongside client work, and resource constraint was identified at the start as the highest risk. The executive sponsors protected fixed weekly time allocations, and scope was structured so that core finance and professional services could go live first if the full scope ran late.
Where we departed from the standard playbook, and why. SAP Cloud ERP includes standard time recording. We built our own time-capture app instead, because consultants needed a faster, simpler way to log hours across clients. It sits outside the SAP core and talks to it only through SAP’s published APIs, so the core stays clean and upgradeable. The same app is now an accelerator for clients who want a simpler front end without customising SAP itself.