SAPinsider has released its latest benchmark report, Technology Leaders’ Strategic Agenda for 2026, outlining how SAP-focused technology leaders are prioritizing investments amid cost pressure and ongoing transformation.
Authored by Robert Holland, Vice President and Research Director, SAPinsider, the report draws on a survey of SAPinsider community members conducted between December 2025 and March 2026 and is supported by SAP, Microsoft, Boomi, Onapsis, and Red Hat.
Holland previewed elements of the research during the recent SAPinsider Las Vegas CIO Forum, where discussions focused on how leaders are balancing cost control, AI adoption, and business alignment within SAP environments.
Cost Discipline Shapes Technology Priorities
Cost pressure is defining how technology leaders evaluate every initiative in 2026. A total of 70% of respondents identified increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs as their top priority, reinforcing that efficiency is now the primary lever for managing budgets rather than direct cost reduction alone. External conditions are amplifying this focus, with 63% expecting pressure to reduce IT and SAP-related costs this year.
ERP Transformation Continues Across Multiple Phases
ERP remains central to the technology agenda, but the data shows it is not progressing in a linear way. A total of 43% of respondents are focused on optimizing existing SAP S/4HANA environments, while 31% are still transitioning and 21% are expanding or optimizing SAP Cloud ERP. Overlap across these groups highlights the reality of multi-phase, multi-instance SAP landscapes.
Platform and Data Investments Take Priority Over AI
Investment patterns indicate that foundational capabilities are receiving more funding than emerging technologies. SAP Business Technology Platform leads planned investments beyond core ERP at 48%, followed by analytics initiatives at 43%, while AI/ML embedded in SAP ranks lower at 33%. This distribution reinforces the role of integration, data, and platform readiness as prerequisites for broader transformation.
AI Adoption Is Focused on Operational Use Cases
AI is advancing, but within defined boundaries. Only 16% of respondents report using AI in more than a limited manner, while planned use is concentrated in specific areas, with 40% targeting intelligent automation and 40% focusing on predictive analytics and forecasting. These use cases position AI as an operational capability within core ERP processes rather than a broadly deployed layer.
Security Risks Increase as Complexity Expands
Cybersecurity ranks lower as an explicit business priority, with only 17% of respondents identifying it as a focus for 2026. This stands in contrast to the increasing complexity of SAP environments, as organizations continue ERP transformation and expand AI adoption, creating a growing gap between exposure and attention.
How These Priorities Are Being Balanced in Practice
The 2026 agenda suggests that technology leaders are managing several priorities at once, even as investment patterns show some sequencing beneath the surface.
ERP transformation remains active across optimization, migration, and cloud expansion, while AI adoption is advancing more selectively and often through foundational investments in SAP Business Technology Platform, analytics, and data. That combination points to a year shaped less by a single transformation program than by overlapping decisions across cost, architecture, and execution.
It also means AI progress is likely to depend on platform readiness more than ambition alone. With spending on SAP BTP and analytics outpacing direct AI investment, organizations appear to be strengthening the integration, data, and extension layers needed to support broader AI use over time. In practice, that ties AI adoption to wider decisions around cloud ERP, data quality, and systems design.
At the same time, the report points to a growing tension around risk. As SAP environments become more complex through ongoing ERP work and expanding AI use, cybersecurity remains a comparatively low explicit priority. That leaves technology leaders balancing not only transformation and cost pressure, but also the challenge of making sure security keeps pace with a more connected and demanding landscape.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
AI planning shifts from projects to architecture. Planning for AI in SAP is becoming an architectural decision rather than a discrete initiative. As SAP embeds AI into applications and interfaces, organizations will need to design for AI readiness before clear use cases or ROI are fully defined.
Business alignment becomes an execution dependency. Closer alignment between IT and business is evolving from a best practice into a delivery requirement. As initiatives span ERP, data, and AI, shared ownership models will determine whether investments translate into measurable outcomes or stall in execution.
Security must scale with system complexity. Security risk is no longer isolated to individual systems but extends across interconnected SAP environments. As ERP, data platforms, and automation layers expand, organizations will need to integrate security into design and operations rather than applying it after deployment.
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This article was originally published by SAPinsider on April 1, 2026.
