Clean Core has become one of the most talked-about concepts in SAP. But what does it really mean, and why does SAP highlight it as one of the most important principles for the future of ERP?
In this episode of Implema Talks, Johan Söderström meets with SAP’s Clean Core expert Eero Koskinen to clarify why Clean Core is about much more than technology. It’s a way to reduce complexity, lower long-term maintenance costs, and create conditions for continuous innovation.
Clean Core is about keeping SAP as standardized as possible and moving customizations outside the ERP core. The result is lower costs, easier upgrades, faster access to innovations, and a platform ready for AI and future business needs. It’s not just a technical principle. It’s a strategic approach to getting more business value from your SAP investment.
Clean Core has become one of the most talked-about concepts in SAP. But what does it really mean, and why does SAP highlight it as one of the most important principles for the future of ERP?
In this episode of Implema Talks, Johan Söderström meets with SAP expert Eero Koskinen to clarify why Clean Core is about much more than technology. It’s a way to reduce complexity, lower long-term maintenance costs, and create conditions for continuous innovation.
Clean Core means keeping the ERP core as close to SAP’s standard as possible. Instead of building extensive customizations directly in the system, modern extensions, integrations, and services are used outside the core.
This allows the business to benefit from SAP’s continuous innovations without building up technical debt that complicates future upgrades.
“Clean Core helps customers work according to SAP’s standard processes. It makes the business easier to run, easier to maintain, and easier to develop.”
– Eero Koskinen
For many years, companies have customized their ERP systems to fit existing ways of working. This has often solved short-term needs, but at the same time made systems more complex over time. A heavily customized SAP landscape often leads to:
By starting with standard processes, the business instead gets a stable platform that is easier to develop further when the business changes.
All businesses have unique needs. Clean Core doesn’t mean stopping business development, but developing it the right way. Instead of changing the ERP core, new features are built using, for example, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), APIs, and modern integration solutions.
This makes it possible to:
Clean Core thus becomes an enabler for innovation, rather than a limitation.
Eero also highlights an aspect that is often overlooked. Large organizations sometimes have thousands of SAP users. If every implementation looks different, training, support, and maintenance become significantly more resource-intensive. Standardized solutions make it easier to:
The result is a lower total cost of ownership and a more efficient organization.
It’s easy to see Clean Core as a technical issue. But the biggest gains occur in the business. A standardized SAP platform provides better conditions to:
Clean Core is therefore not about limiting the business. It’s about creating the right conditions to develop it.
SAP Clean Core is a strategy where the ERP system is kept as close to SAP’s standard as possible. Customizations are built outside the core using SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), APIs, and modern integration solutions. This makes the system easier to upgrade and future-proof.
Clean Core reduces complexity in the SAP landscape, lowers maintenance costs, and makes it easier to implement new features, AI, and innovations from SAP.
The main benefits are:
No. Clean Core is not about avoiding customizations. It’s about building them outside the ERP core with modern extensions and integrations instead of modifying the standard system.
A standardized ERP platform makes it significantly easier to implement new AI features, automation, and cloud services because the core can be upgraded continuously without extensive rebuilding.
Clean Core is much more than a technical recommendation from SAP. It’s an approach that helps organizations reduce complexity, lower costs, and create a stable foundation for future innovation. By standardizing where possible and building smart extensions where the business needs to differentiate, the SAP platform becomes both more sustainable and more business-driven over time.
Sales Director SAP
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