Most companies stay with an SAP support provider they've stopped trusting. Loyalty rarely has anything to do with it. They're afraid of the switch: the old team leaves, the new one doesn't know the system yet, and month-end close lands in the gap. The fear is reasonable. It's also manageable, if you run the handover as a project with its own plan, owner and finish line.
Know why you're leaving
Before you look for someone new, write down what's wrong with the current setup, in plain numbers. "Slow" doesn't help anyone. "Priority-two tickets take five days and a third of them come back" does. That list becomes your brief for the next provider, and the yardstick you'll measure them against.
It also tells you whether you need a new provider at all. Sometimes the real problem is a contract that pays for tickets closed, so the team closes them fast and the same issues return. Switch providers without fixing the contract and you'll be back here in two years.
Read your contract before you tell anyone
Three things matter here: the notice period, what the outgoing provider owes you on exit, and who owns the documentation. Many AMS contracts have an exit clause that obliges the old team to help with the handover. If yours only says "reasonable cooperation", pin down what that means before you give notice, while you still have something to bargain with.
Then check access. You need your system users, transport routes, monitoring tools and the full ticket history. The ticket history is the most honest record of how your SAP environment actually behaves, so make sure it stays with you.
The handover, step by step
A good transition runs in four stages, and each one has a job.
- Discovery. The new team reads everything: documentation, ticket history, custom code, interfaces. Then they list what's missing. The list is usually long, because documentation written at go-live rarely gets updated after it, a problem Siili's AMS team describes well.
- Shadowing. The new team watches the old one handle real tickets. This is where the undocumented workarounds come out.
- Reverse shadowing. The roles flip. The new team does the work and the old team checks it, so problems surface while there's still someone to ask.
- Cutover and hypercare. The new team takes full ownership, with extra people on hand for the first weeks and a clear escalation path.
Give every stage a finish line you can measure, such as "the new team resolved 50 priority tickets without help." A date on a plan tells you when a stage was supposed to end. It doesn't tell you whether the team is ready.
Pick the window, and pick an owner
Don't cut over during month-end close, year-end, an audit or a major release. For most companies that leaves a handful of good windows a year. Choose one and plan backwards from it. If an S/4HANA migration is on the calendar, keep the two apart. Change one thing at a time.
Transitions usually stall in the middle, when each side assumes the other is coordinating. Name one person on your side who owns the switch. They run a short weekly meeting with both providers, keep the open list and sign off each stage.
Bring your key users in early, too. They know which report finance can't close the month without, and which workaround the warehouse uses on Fridays. An hour with each of them in the first weeks saves days of guessing later.
What the first 90 days should look like
Expect a short dip right after cutover while the new team settles in. Then the numbers should start to move: fewer escalations, faster fixes, fewer tickets coming back. If nothing has moved by the end of the first quarter, raise it then. Waiting for the annual review costs you nine more months.
At Sync, the leadership team is in the first meeting with every new client, and the transition plan is agreed before anything changes hands. Within 90 days, clients typically see their escalation rates drop. The hours their people spent chasing the old provider go back to the roadmap, which is the reason to switch in the first place.
Before you give notice
Run through this list. If you can't tick every line, you're not ready yet.
- A written list of what isn't working, with numbers
- The exit terms in your contract, and what the old provider owes you
- Access to your systems, tools and full ticket history
- One person on your side who owns the transition
- A cutover window clear of month-end, audits and major releases
- A measurable finish line for each stage of the handover
If you're weighing a switch, Sync's founders can go through your contract and ticket history with you before you decide anything. Book a call with the founders.
