If you’re a SaaS vendor on the journey of integrating your product with SAP and are looking for a reliable, experienced SAP integration consultant who can make SAP feel less overwhelming, this guide is for you.

Once you start searching for the right SAP integration consultant, you quickly realise that everyone you speak to says they “do SAP.” Everyone has slides. Everyone promises best practices.

And yet, deep down, you’re probably worried about one thing:

How do I know who will actually get this right, and not turn SAP into a long, expensive lesson?

That concern is valid. Most SAP integrations fail because the wrong type of consultant is chosen for the job.

The following seven practical, experience-based tips will help you choose the right SAP integration consultant, especially if this is your first time navigating the SAP ecosystem.

1. Don’t Hire Someone Who Starts With Tools Instead of Questions

If the very first thing a consultant talks about is “We’ll use tool X.” “We always implement it this way.”

“Our accelerator does everything.”

That’s your cue to slow the conversation down. 

 

It’s not that tools or accelerators are bad; they matter. But when they come up before anyone has taken the time to understand your business problem, it usually means the consultant is fitting you into their solution, not designing a solution for you.

 

Experienced SAP integration consultants take the opposite approach. They start by asking questions, and often uncomfortable ones:

 

• What problem are you actually trying to solve with this integration?
• Which system should be the system of record, and why?
• Who owns the data once it moves between systems?
• What does success look like six months after go-live, not just on day one?

In most SAP integration projects, SAP itself is rarely the root cause of failure. What causes trouble are assumptions that were never aligned early on, about ownership, responsibilities, and expectations. Good consultants know this, and they make sure those assumptions are surfaced before a single line of integration is built.

2. Look for Someone Who Talks About Risk, Not Just Possibilities

Consultants who have been through real SAP integration projects don’t just talk about what can be done. They naturally talk about limits, trade-offs, and things that are better left untouched.

 

You’ll hear them bring up topics like:

• Constraints imposed by SAP landscapes and governance
• Trade-offs between speed, flexibility, and long-term maintainability
• Which integrations add real value, and which ones create unnecessary complexity
• The points where projects usually stumble, based on past experience

If a consultant only focuses on possibilities and never on boundaries, that’s usually a sign they’re selling optimism rather than delivery. The best SAP integration consultants help you make fewer mistakes by highlighting risks early. Their value isn’t just in what they build, but in what they help you avoid building in the first place.

3. Make Sure They Understand Enterprise Buying, Not Just Integration

Your first SAP integration project is rarely just a technical exercise. In reality, it’s an organisational journey, one that involves far more people, reviews, and checkpoints than most SaaS teams expect. Experienced SAP integration consultants understand how enterprise buying really works. 

 

They’ve seen and navigated things like:

• Security and compliance reviews that happen early and often
• Architecture boards that challenge every design decision
• Governance and approval processes that don’t move at startup speed
• The reality that enterprise SAP environments prioritise stability over speed

Consultants who have only worked in isolated technical roles often underestimate this side of the equation. They may be surprised by how long approvals actually take, how cautious SAP customers can be when core systems are involved, and how much documentation, clarity, and reassurance stakeholders expect.

For your first SAP integration, you don’t want someone learning how enterprise SAP organisations operate on your project. You want someone who already knows the terrain and can guide you through it with fewer surprises.

4. Ask How They Handle the “Second Customer” Problem

This one often gets overlooked, but it’s critical, especially if you’re building SAP integration as part of a growth strategy, not a one-off customer request.

 

A simple question to ask is:
“How do you make sure this integration works for our second, third, or tenth customer?”

 

Pay close attention to how they answer. If the response sounds like “We’ll adjust it per customer.” “It depends on the landscape.” “We’ll handle it case by case.”

That’s usually a warning sign.

 

Those answers often mean the consultant is thinking in terms of one-off delivery, not repeatable design. That might work for a single customer, but it quickly becomes painful as you scale; every new SAP customer turns into a mini reimplementation.

 

Good SAP integration consultants think ahead. They design integrations using repeatable patterns, clear boundaries, and sensible defaults. Their goal is to make your first SAP integration a solid foundation you can build on and scale across all customers’ landscapes. 

5. Pay Attention to How They Explain Things

This point often gets underestimated, but it matters more than most people realise. SAP integration doesn’t live in isolation. Decisions made during design have to be explained, again and again, to people who weren’t in the room when those decisions were made. If a consultant can’t explain their thinking clearly, that burden eventually falls on you.

 

If a consultant struggles to explain SAP integration without hiding behind jargon, without jumping straight into diagrams, and without relying on “just trust me” explanations, they’ll struggle later.

 

The best SAP integration consultants can break down complex concepts into plain, business-friendly language. They help you understand why something is being done, not just how.

6. Beware of “Yes-First” Consultants

In SAP projects, “yes” is often the most expensive word you’ll hear. On the surface, a consultant who agrees with everything can feel reassuring. Requirements move quickly, there’s no friction, and everyone feels aligned. But in SAP integration projects, that early comfort usually hides future pain.

 

If a consultant rarely pushes back on requirements, agrees with every request without questioning intent, and avoids difficult conversations early, you’ll almost always pay for it later, during testing, at go-live, or worse, in production support.

 

That’s when the real cost appears: integrations that technically work but are fragile, hard to support, or misaligned with how SAP actually operates.

 

The right SAP integration consultants are comfortable being honest early. You’ll hear them say things like:

 

• “This is possible, but it’s not a good idea in the long run.”
• “This will cause issues later if we don’t address it now.”
• “There’s a simpler way to achieve the same outcome.”

That kind of pushback isn’t resistance, it’s experience. It’s a sign the consultant is thinking beyond day-one delivery and protecting you from future rework.

7. Ask What Happens After Go-Live

Many SAP integrations technically “work” on the go-live day, and then slowly become painful to live with.

The reality is that go-live is not the finish line. It’s the moment when real usage begins, edge cases appear, volumes increase, and changes start to happen on both sides of the integration.

 

That’s why it’s important to ask very practical questions early:

 

• Who supports this once it’s live?
• How are errors detected and monitored?
• What happens when SAP changes, or when our product evolves?
• Based on experience, what usually breaks first?

These questions reveal whether a consultant has thought beyond delivery and into operations.

If support is vague, monitoring isn’t clearly defined, or post–go-live ownership is brushed aside, it’s a warning sign. In that case, you’re not being handed a production-ready integration; you’re being handed something closer to a demo that happened to go live.

 

The right integration consultants design with operational reality in mind. They assume things will change, errors will happen, and someone will need to own the integration long after the project team has moved on.

Choosing SAP Integration Consultants: Green Flags Vs Red Flags

Area	Green Flags (Good Signs)	Red Flags (Warning Signs)
First Conversation	Starts by asking about your business goals, use cases, and constraints	Starts by pitching tools, accelerators, or predefined solutions
Problem Framing	Focuses on why you need SAP integration before discussing how	Assumes SAP integration is required without validating demand
Risk Awareness	Openly discusses risks, trade-offs, and constraints	Downplays complexity or avoids talking about risks
Approach to Design	Talks about patterns, standards, and repeatable approaches	Everything sounds custom or “depends on the landscape”
Enterprise Experience	Understands security reviews, governance boards, and approvals	Treats SAP integration like a simple API project
Language & Clarity	Explains SAP concepts in plain, business-friendly language	Relies heavily on jargon and vague technical terms
Pushback	Comfortable saying “no” and challenging bad ideas	Agrees with every requirement to keep things moving
Security Mindset	Raises security, access, and data ownership early	Treats security as something to “handle later”
Scalability Thinking	Asks how this will work for the 2nd, 5th, or 10th customer	Focuses only on making the first integration work
Post-Go-Live View	Talks about monitoring, support, and operational life	Treats go-live as the end of the engagement
Confidence Style	Calm, measured, experience-backed confidence	Overconfident promises and “we’ve seen it all” claims
Success Definition	Defines success beyond go-live (stability, adoption, reuse)	Defines success as “integration completed”

You don’t need every green flag to feel comfortable, but multiple red flags in early conversations are a strong signal.

A simple rule of thumb:

• 🟢 Green flags = fewer surprises later
• 🔴 Red flags = costs deferred, not avoided

Final Perspective

Your first SAP integration project sets expectations for everything that comes next. When it’s done well, it builds confidence. Customers trust that your product can coexist with their SAP landscape. Internal teams feel supported rather than overwhelmed. Enterprise sales conversations move faster because fewer questions remain unanswered.

 

When it’s done poorly, the impact is in the opposite direction. Sales cycles slow down. Risk increases. Teams become cautious. And SAP starts to feel unnecessarily complex.

 

That’s why choosing the right SAP integration consultant matters so much. The right partner won’t just focus on “connecting systems.” They’ll help you make thoughtful decisions early, about scope, design, risk, and repeatability, so you don’t spend the next two years untangling avoidable issues.