Migrating to SAP HANA is more than a technical upgrade, it’s a business transformation. The promise of faster processing speeds, simplified data models, and advanced analytics only materializes if your organization can effectively adopt and operationalize the new platform.

Even the most carefully scoped migration will fall short if teams resist change or fail to use the enhanced capabilities. That’s why change management and adoption strategy are every bit as critical as the technical migration itself.

At Canidium, we’ve guided organizations through SAP HANA migrations and have seen firsthand the risks of low adoption. Our approach balances the technical move with a human adoption strategy that ensures businesses realize the performance, compliance, and ROI benefits of HANA.

This article explores why adoption matters in a SAP HANA migration, the consequences of poor adoption, and how Canidium helps organizations overcome challenges to capture full value.

How Low Adoption Undercuts HANA Migration ROI

Research shows that 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail to meet objectives. In the context of SAP HANA migrations, that failure is rarely about technology. It’s about whether teams embrace the new workflows and capabilities HANA enables.

When employees revert to legacy processes or underuse the new system, the organization misses out on the speed, agility, and reporting precision that drove the migration investment in the first place.

Key impacts of low adoption include:

• Wasted Investment: A HANA migration requires significant licensing, infrastructure, and services spend. If users cling to old methods, the business never realizes the expected ROI.
  
  
• Decreased Productivity: HANA is designed to accelerate analytics and simplify processes. If teams aren’t leveraging it, bottlenecks and manual workarounds persist.
  
  
• Inaccurate Data and Reporting: Poor adoption leads to inconsistent data entry and reporting gaps, undermining one of HANA’s biggest benefits: reliable real-time analytics.
  
  
• Higher Operational Costs: Without automation and streamlined workflows, operational inefficiencies remain, and ongoing support costs climb.
  
  
• Lower Employee Morale: Frustrated users who don’t understand the system’s value disengage, undermining productivity and morale.
  
  
• Missed Competitive Advantage: Competitors that fully embrace HANA gain an edge in agility and insight. Partial adoption leaves your organization trailing.
  
  
• Compliance Risks: Many organizations migrate to HANA in part for improved auditability. Poor usage jeopardizes compliance and creates audit vulnerabilities.
  
  

Canidium’s Solution: Adoption-Centered Migration

Every SAP HANA migration is unique, but one principle is universal: you need visibility into adoption behaviors to know where interventions are required.

Canidium delivers migrations with adoption built into the project plan. Beyond technical cutover, we help clients understand:

• Which users and departments are engaging with HANA
• Where training gaps exist
• How to reinforce behavior changes for sustained adoption

Our approach combines technical expertise with embedded adoption analytics and change management frameworks, ensuring your migration investment pays off long after go-live.

Overcoming Adoption Challenges with Analytics and Change Management

The strategy you implement to solve your software adoption issue will be unique. You must address the exact reason why your workforce is not fully engaging with your new solution—there is no one-size-fits-all way to approach low adoption rates. However, every company needs one thing to begin formulating its strategic approach to increasing software adoption: insight into how the software is currently being used.

Based on this overwhelming need for an adoption analytics dashboard, our team at Canidium developed a unique tool distinct from standard SAP offerings. The RADiance Plug-in is a powerful dashboard tool that tracks user logins and monitors adoption rates within your incentive management system. It is integrated into embedded analytics to provide a detailed reporting mechanism that helps you understand how your employees interact with the software. The result is RADiance, a handy add-on for SuccessFactors Incentive Management (SFIM) that can be implemented at a fixed price.

The tool offers a variety of widgets, each serving a specific purpose in tracking user engagement. RADiance monitors and reports login activities, giving you greater visibility and insight into new solution adoption.

The plug-in can show you a six-month login history, indicating which employees use the solution frequently. The interactive features also enable you to compare login activities between different users or groups. This capability is instrumental if you have various types of users, such as salespeople, managers, and administrators, and you want to analyze their login patterns.

At the same time, RADiance provides insights into individual users' last login times. This information allows you to identify employees who may not engage with the software as expected, allowing you to address potential issues through targeted training or support.

Four Key Benefits of Our RADiance Adoption Approach

1. Behavioral Insights: Gain clarity on which teams are actively leveraging HANA and which aren’t. These insights guide tailored training and support strategies.
   
   
2. Increased ROI: Prove the value of your migration with data-driven adoption metrics. Demonstrate to stakeholders how higher adoption directly translates to improved efficiency, faster reporting, and cost savings.
   
   
3. Better Change Management: Address resistance to HANA by identifying and targeting groups struggling with the transition. Focused enablement ensures no department is left behind.
   
   
4. Sustained User Experience: Adoption monitoring doesn’t end at go-live. Ongoing visibility ensures emerging gaps are closed quickly, keeping performance gains intact.
   
   

Ensuring Your Migration Pays Off

Your SAP HANA migration is too important to leave adoption to chance. Without deliberate strategies, the risk of wasted investment, frustrated users, and stalled transformation is high.

Canidium ensures your migration is a business success story. By combining deep SAP expertise with a pragmatic adoption framework, we help organizations realize the full ROI of HANA: faster insights, simplified processes, and a more agile enterprise.

Ready to capture the full value of your SAP HANA migration? Let’s talk. Our team is here to share lessons learned, provide a roadmap for adoption success, and ensure your investment delivers the returns you expect.