The scale of operations is staggering for automotive giants like JLR. Every vehicle produced comprises approximately 14,000 individual components, all of which must be tracked, procured, and assembled with surgical precision.
Speaking during a session at the SAPinsider 2026 Las Vegas Conference, Geoffrey Frost, Senior Product Manager at JLR, noted that when the company embarked on its SAP S/4HANA journey, the goal was to upgrade a legacy system and build a future-proof foundation. The latter had to be capable of handling immense complexity while remaining agile enough to adopt new technologies.
At the heart of this transformation was the Clean Core strategy—a commitment to keeping the ERP system as close to standard as possible. However, as Frost pointed out, “Clean core is a journey, and there will be compromises.”
The Pyramid of Governance
To maintain discipline, JLR established a rigorous governance structure based on the SAP Activate methodology. The company visualized its extensibility strategy as a pyramid, with Standard Configuration at the base. Above that sat Green Extensions, which comprised options like Key User Extensibility that don’t involve complex integrations and maintain core integrity.
Moving higher into Amber (using released BAdIs) and Red (core modifications), the scrutiny increased.
“You’ll quickly get out of hand if you don’t have the governance set up,” Frost warned during the session. For every proposed deviation, JLR’s SAP Standardisation Board asks three critical questions:
- What would the green solution be?
- What is the total cost of ownership (TCO)?
- What is the roadmap to get back to a clean core?
What This Means for ERP Insiders: Organizations on the SAP S/4HANA journey must establish governance before the first request. JLR’s success relied on having a clear governance structure—including a Standardisation Board and Integration Design Authority—from the start of the project. Without this, the pressure to customize will quickly overwhelm an organization’s team.
Why Standard Isn’t Always Enough
While the Clean Core is the ideal, JLR recognized that sometimes the software doesn’t meet the specialized needs of a global car manufacturer. Frost noted that JLR occasionally had to step into the Amber or Red zones due to a lack of best-practice solutions for industry-specific processes, such as Complete Knock-Down (CKD) vehicle sales or pre-build solutions for new vehicle launches.
Technical gaps in newer products, such as Central Procurement, also forced JLR to innovate. “We found quite a few gaps in the solution. So, when looking at the end-to-end process, it just did not hang together,” Frost explained regarding early versions of Central Procurement.
What This Means For ERP Insiders: IT must secure top-down and bottom-up buy-in from all stakeholders. It is not enough for the IT department to want a clean core. Global Process Leads and Product Owners must understand and support the strategy. As Frost noted, “If the [Global Process Leads] don’t care about clean core, it’s not going to work.”
Leveraging the Extensibility Toolkit
To bridge these gaps without breaking the system, JLR leaned heavily on modern extensibility. A cornerstone of the car manufacturer’s strategy was a policy of using only Fiori. By mandating that users access SAP via Fiori rather than the traditional GUI, JLR unlocked what Frost described as Key User Extensibility features that are unavailable in the old interface.
The company also used SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and the ABAP RESTful Application Programming Interface (RAP) to build sidecar applications. Frost illustrated this process with one standout example, a Quality Management Cockpit. This application was designed specifically for the shop floor and is mobile-enabled through SAP Start. It allows JLR to improve the user experience and data entry efficiency without cluttering the core SAP S/4HANA system.
As Frost concluded, the goal isn’t to be perfect but to be deliberate: “The important thing is you’ve done the governance in the right way, and you’ve made the decision in the right way.”
What This Means for ERP Insiders: Internal SAP teams should treat Clean Core as a persistent path to the Green Zone. A clean core is not a one-time achievement but a continuous process. JLR conducts reviews every 12 to 18 months of all their Amber and Red enhancements to see if new SAP updates or business process changes allow them to return those customizations to a Green standard.
For a deeper look at how JLR scaled these operations, read how JLR’s Successful Scaling of SAP S/4HANA Transformed Operations on our sister publication, SAPinsider.
