This blog was last updated on February 6, 2020

With today’s announcement that SAP is extending support for its Business Suite 7 software suite until the end of 2027 many are breathing a sigh of relief. But are they falling victim to a false sense of security?

While SAP adjusted its timeline, largely due to increasing customer pressure, know that governments have no such plans to alter their course of action and will not yield on integrating new regulatory standards for businesses to comply with.

Despite the respite provided by SAP today, the pace of global regulatory change towards continuous controls and digitization continues to accelerate. Most businesses, without the protection that the Sovos compliance solution affords them, will struggle to meet these rapidly changing standards and remain compliant.

Sovos solutions are designed and certified to work with multiple generations of SAP ERP solutions including ECC and S/4HANA. They are available to help customers solve their tax and regulatory issues both today and in the future. So, no matter what platform you are operating on, we are already here to help.

Migrating to a new platform is hard. SAP understands this better than anyone. As Co-CEO Christian Klein said today, ““We know that our customers have deep business transformations underway… SAP will provide additional flexibility to fully embrace the groundbreaking opportunities of SAP S/4HANA that reflects the individual pace and complexity of our customers’ projects.”

Translation, this is a long and complicated process. Companies will need every day of this extension to fully integrate with and launch the new platform. My advice? Don’t wait to get your tax and regulatory issues settled. No matter which course of action SAP decides, governments have made their position clear and they are full steam ahead with enforcement.

We still believe strongly that the future direction for most companies includes the move to S/4HANA. Sovos remains fully committed to solving tax for good and helping customers be successful with their multi-year digital transformation plans.