Retail giant Kingfisher rejects SAP ERP upgrade plan
Summary
Kingfisher has declined SAP’s prescribed upgrade route from ECC to S/4HANA and the bundled RISE with SAP subscription/licensing model. Instead the retailer migrated its existing ECC 6.0 instance to Google Cloud Platform and contracted Rimini Street to support its heavily customised ERP, saying this approach delivers the innovation SAP promises — AI, personalisation and dynamic pricing — without the steep licence hikes. CTO Chris Blatchford urged vendors to demonstrate clear value rather than present price lists that spike costs.
Key Points
- Kingfisher rejected SAP’s upgrade strategy and the shift to subscription licensing (RISE with SAP).
- The retailer moved its ECC 6.0 instance to Google Cloud Platform and engaged Rimini Street for support of customisations.
- Kingfisher reports it has built AI, personalisation and recommendation engines on top of core ERP data without migrating to S/4HANA.
- It uses ETL pipelines plus Databricks and Google analytics/ML products to extract and operationalise ERP data.
- Rimini Street claims customers pay 50–90% less than they did for vendor maintenance.
- Kingfisher emphasises a modular, API-first and event-driven architecture to enable quicker vendor swaps and ongoing innovation.
- SAP mainstream support for ECC 6.0 ends in just over two years; extended support is available to 2030 at a premium.
Context and relevance
This is significant for CIOs and IT leaders deciding whether to follow SAP’s upgrade playbook or pursue alternative, cost-conscious strategies. Kingfisher’s case shows an option: lift and shift a legacy ERP to the cloud, outsource bespoke-support, and build modern data and AI capabilities on top. The story underlines current tensions over licensing models, ‘clean core’ approaches that discard customisations, vendor lock-in and how organisations fund AI-enabled transformation.
Why should I read this?
Because if you’re wrestling with ERP upgrades, licence sticker shock or vendor pressure, Kingfisher just proved you can dodge the hard sell and still ship the AI bits — without being nicked for a 20x cost spike. Short and sharp: value beats invoices.
Author style
Punchy — this is a practical, high-impact decision other large organisations should study closely. If you manage ERP strategy or vendor contracts, the detail is worth your time.