By Caleb Billingsley, Performance Expert at Foulk Consulting
If your company has invested in S/4HANA, or is planning to, you already know the stakes. SAP doesn’t just sit quietly in the corner of your architecture. It runs finance, supply chain, manufacturing, HR, and everything in between. Which means if it slows down, your business slows down. And if it breaks during month-end close? Let’s just say you’ll be hearing about it.
Here’s the reality: moving to S/4HANA is a multi-million-dollar commitment. But too many companies still treat performance testing as a final checklist item. That’s a costly mistake. To truly maximize your SAP investment, performance needs to be an integral part of your S/4HANA program, from sandbox to production, and beyond.
SAP Performance Is Not What It Used to Be
Let’s clear something up. Just because you’ve moved to HANA and cut batch runtimes in half doesn’t mean you’re done. The architecture has changed, yes — but so have the risks.
- You now have embedded Fiori apps with browser-based front ends. What used to be a GUI transaction is now a hybrid of OData calls, CDS views, and frontend rendering.
- You’re dealing with cloud integrations like Ariba, SuccessFactors, Concur that create new latency and security choke points.
- You’ve likely customized processes to keep legacy behaviors, even on top of HANA. That’s where performance bottlenecks hide.
We’ve worked with clients who made the jump to S/4 and saw unexpected CPU spikes, pegging delays, and sluggish MRP jobs, despite “green” go-live dashboards. Why? Because they skipped performance modeling. Or only tested GUI. Or forgot to simulate concurrent Fiori sessions with real-world data.
What You Don’t Test Will Hurt You
The most common post-migration complaints we hear sound like this:
- “TECO is locking up during shift close.”
- “It takes 9 minutes to open the app for planned orders.”
- “Our COEP allocations are blowing up CPU during close.”
Each one of those is preventable if performance testing is scoped correctly.
What Smart Companies Are Doing Differently
- They’re Testing the Business, Not Just the App
Performance tests aren’t just for IT. We simulate complete business processes across modules like end-to-end month-end close, MRP regeneration with planned orders, invoicing, or customer sales-to-cash cycles. Because that’s where user pain actually shows up. - They Include Analytics and Reporting Loads
Embedded analytics in S/4 are powerful and performance-intensive. If you’ve got users hammering real-time reports while transactional loads are peaking, you better test it. We’ve seen HANA memory thresholds get breached during peak analytical queries with just 25 users. - They Integrate Dynatrace or SAP Focused Monitoring Tools
Testing without observability is like driving blindfolded. Our clients pair LoadRunner or NeoLoad scripts with Dynatrace, SAP Solution Manager, or even PowerConnect to correlate backend CPU, RFC wait times, and HANA memory usage with frontend actions. - They Run Real-World Fiori Scenarios, Not Just RFCs
A transaction like ME21N might look fast in backend SAP, but when tested through Fiori on Chrome with real security roles and long dropdowns, it tanks. You need user-centric scripts, not just backend-only tests. - They Test With Real Org Data and Authorizations
Many clients underestimate the impact of roles. The same app accessed by a power user vs. a casual user can perform differently. We use production-like org data, test accounts with true security profiles, and simulate realistic user concurrency by module and region.
Trends You Should Be Watching
- SAP RISE + Private Cloud / Gov Cloud = New Performance Landscape
If you’re moving from on-prem to SAP RISE or hosted private cloud, you no longer control the full stack and that changes your testing strategy. You’re optimizing usage and cost, not hardware. And you can’t tune what you don’t test. - AI in Forecasting Loads for Capacity Planning
Some of our clients are leveraging AI to predict growth in Fiori adoption and usage patterns across plants, roles, and geographies. That forecast informs load models and helps prevent licensing or scaling issues later. - S/4 Upgrades Are Coming Faster Than You Think
Quarterly feature pack stacks mean new functionality (and regressions) are hitting more often. Continuous performance validation, and not just big-bang go-live testing, is becoming the norm.
ROI You Can See (and Measure)
One client reduced their quarter-close processing time by 29% after we ran a focused COEP and burdening simulation. Another avoided a $750K support contract escalation by proving performance bottlenecks were tied to a partner cloud integration, not their core S/4 system.
This isn’t about being reactive. It’s about being smart, proactive, and prepared. Performance testing in S/4HANA is no longer a “nice to have.” It’s a business enabler. It safeguards user experience, protects uptime, and gives you the confidence that your massive SAP investment will actually perform under pressure.
If you’re heading into a migration, planning an upgrade, or seeing odd user behavior post-S/4HANA go-live, now is the time to engage. At Foulk, we’ve been performance tuning SAP systems for 20+ years. And we know where the ghosts hide.
Let’s make sure your next S/4HANA milestone is about outcomes, not outages.
