After the S/4HANA Go-Live – When Prioritization Becomes More Important Than Delivery

A successful S/4HANA go-live is often perceived as a conclusion. Project structures are dissolved, responsibilities move into the line organization, and attention shifts toward stable operations. At the same time, some financial flexibility may still exist – often without clear purpose or overarching governance.

It is precisely in this phase that a tension emerges which is rarely addressed explicitly, yet decisively influences whether an S/4HANA implementation turns into sustainable value creation.

The Post-Go-Live Situation

After go-live, business processes are executed under real conditions for the first time. Functional gaps, inefficiencies, and optimization opportunities become visible – many of which were either not apparent during the project phase or deliberately postponed.

At the same time, the operating context changes:

Project resources are reduced, operational teams are focused on stabilization and day-to-day business, and decision-making structures become less explicit than during the implementation. The system is live, but the organization is in transition.

What is often missing at this stage is not willingness to improve, but a structured way to assess and position the growing number of individual requirements.

The Risk of Remaining Budget

Any remaining budget after go-live is often perceived as an opportunity. It creates room for maneuver and suggests flexibility. At the same time, it introduces a significant risk.

Without clear objectives and portfolio-level steering, budget in this phase is rarely invested strategically. Instead, it is distributed across individual decisions driven by urgency, functional pressure, or legacy responsibilities. Each initiative may be justified on its own, yet contribute little in aggregate.

The risk is not underspending.

The risk is investing in the wrong things.

Without a common frame of reference, it becomes impossible to compare initiatives based on impact, dependencies, or contribution to strategic goals.

Business Requests Are a Symptom, Not the Root Cause

The volume of post-go-live requests from business units is not a sign of organizational failure. On the contrary, it indicates that the system is being used and that engagement exists.

The problem arises when these requests are evaluated in isolation. Individually sensible improvements lose their effectiveness when they are implemented without alignment to a broader context. Dependencies remain invisible, capacity is fragmented, and priorities shift continuously.

In this situation, both IT and business leaders are forced into operational decision-making without sufficient context.

Why Portfolio Management Becomes Essential After Go-Live

In project environments, portfolio management is often perceived as administrative overhead. After go-live, its role changes fundamentally.

Portfolio management provides orientation in a phase characterized by structural ambiguity. It enables organizations to assess initiatives systematically rather than reactively, to identify strategic clusters instead of isolated tasks, and to make dependencies and trade-offs explicit.

Most importantly, it shifts the conversation:

from immediate delivery

to deliberate decision-making.

Progress after go-live is not defined by the number of implemented changes, but by the quality of the decisions behind them.

The Structural Gap Between Project and Line Organization

In many organizations, the project formally ends with go-live. Responsibility for further development moves into the line organization, which is typically optimized for operational stability rather than cross-functional investment steering.

This creates a structural gap. Project governance no longer exists, while strategic line governance has not yet fully taken hold. Responsibilities for prioritization, budget allocation, and value tracking remain unclear.

This gap is not a failure of individuals or teams. It is a structural characteristic of large transformation programs.

Steering as a Temporary Management Function

The post-go-live phase does not require a permanent new organizational unit. It requires a conscious, time-bound steering function.

This role bridges project thinking and operational reality. It translates individual requests into portfolio-level decision frameworks and provides management with clarity on trade-offs, dependencies, and impact.

In the context of S/4HANA, this steering function determines whether the platform evolves deliberately or drifts into uncoordinated complexity.

Conclusion

Go-live marks the end of a project, but the beginning of a management challenge.

In the post-go-live phase, prioritization matters more than speed, and steering matters more than activity.

Portfolio management is not an optional layer of process. It is the mechanism that makes complexity manageable and investments effective.

Organizations that actively shape this phase create the foundation for sustainable value creation. Those that leave it unmanaged often realize too late that budget has been spent without meaningful impact.