Forget SAP’s “Clean Core” Obsession Focus on Benefit Alchemy
Forget SAP’s “Clean Core” Obsession—Focus on Benefit Alchemy
“Clean Core” has become one of the most dominant narratives in SAP transformation—but is it actually driving business value, or just reinforcing technical purity at the expense of outcomes?
In this article, I challenge the industry’s fixation on clean core as an end in itself. Instead, I introduce the idea of “Benefit Alchemy”—a more pragmatic, value-driven approach that focuses on extracting measurable outcomes from existing landscapes, rather than pursuing idealised architectures.
For CIOs, CFOs, and transformation leaders, this is a shift in perspective: from compliance to value, from rigidity to pragmatism, and from theory to real-world impact.
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Alisdair
About the Author
Alisdair Bach is a recognised SAP Programme Director and turnaround specialist — often called a “turnaround king” by clients for his ability to stabilise and recover the most complex and failing SAP programmes. With decades of experience across global private equity and public sector portfolios, Alisdair has led high-stakes SAP S/4HANA transformations, finance and supply chain turnarounds, and complex delivery rescues.
Alisdair is also a SAP analyst working to define for investors where next with SAP, he is a author and lecturer, he defined the SAP upcycling concept as the alternate narrative to rip it out and start again clean core that is counter intuitive to AI adoption and SAPs 5X growth strategy.
Through Dragon ERP, he brings board-level assurance, forensic diagnostics, and hands-on leadership to programmes that others have written off — combining empathy with no-nonsense execution to deliver results where failure once seemed inevitable.
