How to Reduce Hypercare in SAP Migrations: A Quality Engineering Perspective

Imagine a CEO saying, “We know the car has critical flaws, but let’s put it into production anyway. If need be, we will recall the car after a week.”

Or a pharmaceutical director telling their board, “We know the medication has drastic side effects, but let’s start producing it anyway.”

In regulated spaces like the automotive and life sciences industries, these would be career-ending decisions. Yet when it comes to the technology space, IT departments put new software into production knowing the application still contains bugs. This often leads to costly fixes that take much needed development time away from updates and new features.

This should not be the norm.

By embedding the right quality assurance practices into your operations, you can drastically reduce this ‘hypercare’ phase.

What is hypercare and why has it become a necessity in SAP projects?

Hypercare is a widely accepted term within the SAP ecosystem that refers to the intensive support period immediately following go-live. During this period, a team is on standby to address production issues in real time. It’s often seen as a safety net—a buffer to catch what wasn’t caught during testing.

In theory, this phase should be short and focused on minor refinements. But too often, it turns into what one of our consultants describes as ‘open heart surgery.’ Why? Because many organizations treat hypercare not as a contingency, but as part of the plan. In some cases, hypercare is budgeted and accepted long before the first test is even run.

What are the consequences of too many defects in hypercare?

When hypercare is overloaded with issues that could have been addressed earlier, the consequences are severe. Financially, the costs of extended support, emergency fixes, and productivity loss can spiral. Organizationally, teams burn out. From a risk perspective, unresolved defects can damage compliance, customer satisfaction, and operational integrity.

We’ve seen organizations lose millions because their SAP systems couldn’t send invoices or process payments for weeks after go-live. In one case, a company’s production line was halted for an entire month. This wasn’t due to unexpected system behavior—but rather due to known testing shortcuts made to stay ‘on schedule.’ Ironically, fixing the aftermath cost far more than thorough testing would have. ‘Riding the wave’ was clearly not the right approach.

Can you avoid hypercare altogether?

In many cases, yes—or at least minimize it to a matter of days. Hypercare is not an inevitability, but a symptom of insufficient pre-go-live preparation. Most extended hypercare periods result from inadequate SAP testing, unrealistic timelines, or over-reliance on business SMEs who are not professional testers. We all know that testing is an activity that business users absolutely detest. They may know the business processes inside-out, but they don’t have the mind of a test professional.

One of the core problems is implicit testing—when subject matter experts test only the scenarios they’re familiar with, using their own data. All they care about is to see that everything they know is still working. This approach often misses edge cases, integration issues, and negative scenarios. Explicit testing, in contrast, uses professionally designed test cases based on a comprehensive risk assessment. A professional tester will purposely look for failures. This is the foundation of any sound quality assurance strategy.

The best proof that hypercare can be avoided? You will not find hypercare in trading systems, in core banking systems. Banks know: if we give our customers an unfinished product, they will jump to another bank. The same goes for many other customer-facing applications. Hypercare usually happens with internal systems where the risk is limited. This trade-off was easy to accept when, for instance, ERP-systems were only upgraded every two years. But now that we are migrating to the cloud, we get quarterly or monthly releases, or even weekly patches. The trade-off does not work anymore. Because while you are still in hypercare for one release, the next release is already coming up.

Making hypercare shorter with quality engineering

Reducing or avoiding hypercare starts with shifting left—moving testing activities earlier in the project lifecycle. A strong quality assurance approach includes early-stage risk analysis, robust test planning, and ongoing validation through every development sprint.

Quality engineering practices further enhance this by aligning testing with business priorities. At TTC Global, we often begin engagements with a Quality Maturity Assessment (QMA) to assess where the client stands and what testing gaps need to be filled. In one recent engagement, we combined a QMA with AI-enhanced tools to give the client a roadmap to higher test maturity, thereby reducing their hypercare phase to a few days. This is the reason why SAP is pushing solutions for test automation or impact analysis.

The role of Test Automation, Impact Analysis, and AI

Tools matter, but only when they’re used strategically. As the saying goes: “A fool with a tool is still a fool.” Test automation tools like Tricentis Tosca offer speed and efficiency, but they don’t completely replace professional testers or proper planning. You need to set up your test strategy first before you can even think of automating tests.

When paired with intelligent impact analysis solutions like Tricentis LiveCompare, test automation becomes exponentially more effective. Tricentis LiveCompare helps teams understand what parts of the system have changed and what needs testing—no more, no less. This risk-based testing approach ensures coverage of critical business processes without unnecessary test effort.

Artificial intelligence is also beginning to play a role. While AI can’t replace human decision-making in SAP testing yet, it can support testers by suggesting test variations, analyzing large datasets, and helping prioritize where defects are most likely to occur. In some projects, we’ve used AI to generate targeted testing recommendations based on real production usage.

How TTC Global helps minimize hypercare

We combine quality engineering, test automation, and impact analysis to help clients go live with confidence. In one SAP S/4HANA migration, we recommended a robust test strategy that included early usage of Tricentis Tosca and Tricentis LiveCompare. The client initially declined in favor of their traditional process only to face months of production downtime, missed invoices, and operational gridlock. They came back to us post-go-live for help stabilizing the system. Since then, they’ve adopted our recommendations and significantly reduced issues in subsequent releases.

Our approach typically includes:

• A Quality Maturity Assessment (QMA) to benchmark testing readiness
• Shift-left testing strategies to catch defects early
• Test case design aligned with business-critical processes
• Risk-based test automation using Tricentis Tosca
• Tricentis LiveCompare for smart impact analysis
• Optional use of AI tools for process acceleration and insights

Hypercare may be common, but it shouldn’t be inevitable. Organizations that invest in quality engineering, intelligent test automation, and professional testing practices are reducing the duration of hypercare while eliminating it as a major risk altogether.

Our consultants help clients move beyond the break-fix mindset and into a model of continuous quality. Whether you’re planning an SAP S/4HANA migration or modernizing your ERP landscape, the time to start thinking about quality is now.