When SAP announced RISE, the pitch was simple and compelling: Move to the cloud, reduce internal SAP Basis costs, and let SAP handle the heavy lifting.
But as more organisations progress through their RISE journeys, a very different reality is emerging, one that is reshaping the SAP Basis profession faster than many expected.
Speaking with SAP Basis consultants across our network, it’s clear the role is moving in a new direction. Internal SAP Basis teams are shrinking. But the workload isn’t. It’s just changing shape.
What RISE Removes — and What It Doesn’t
Across our network, Basis consultants are reporting the same structural shifts:
- No OS access. The traditional toolkit like custom scripts, OS level automation, deep system tuning is gone. Customers can no longer execute the low level tasks that defined the classic Basis role.
- Technical work replaced by service requests Instead of fixing issues directly, teams now raise tickets, wait for ECS, and chase updates. The pace changes. The ownership changes.
- Escalations become repetitive. Every escalation introduces new faces, new explanations, and new delays. Knowledge continuity, once a strength of internal Basis teams is lost.
- The hidden workload remains. Troubleshooting, user management, performance monitoring, integration oversight. RISE doesn’t eliminate these responsibilities. It just removes the tools that made them efficient.
The Talent Market Impact: A Slow Erosion of Expertise
This is the part organisations rarely consider.
As internal teams shrink, years of institutional SAP knowledge disappear, the people who understand the quirks, the integrations, the historical decisions, the undocumented fixes.
Yet companies still need someone who can:
- interpret what ECS is doing
- validate whether changes were delivered correctly
- translate business impact
- maintain continuity across incidents
- bridge SAP ↔ nonSAP systems
- protect the integrity of the landscape
RISE doesn’t remove the need for expertise. It removes the proximity of expertise. And that gap is now being felt across the market.
So, What Does the SAP Basis Role Become?
This is the question our LinkedIn network debated and the comments were telling.
Some argued that a Basis expert is still essential to maintain the landscape view and liaise with ECS. Others pointed out that for simple, out of the box landscapes, RISE is a win win. Some insisted companies should have stayed on prem. Others highlighted the TCO pressure driving RISE adoption regardless of trade offs.
But one theme cut through all of it:
The Basis role is shifting from hands on technical ownership to vendor management, orchestration, and governance.
Less command line. More coordination. Less tuning. More validation. Less deep access. More accountability without control.
It’s a role with less resource and more pressure and organisations are still figuring out how to structure it.
What Organisations Need to Consider Next
Whether you’re already on RISE or evaluating it, three questions matter:
- Who owns the end to end landscape view once OS access disappears?
- How will you retain SAP knowledge when internal teams shrink?
- What skills does your future Basis function actually need? (Hint: governance, integration, vendor management, and cross system understanding.)
RISE changes the operating model but it doesn’t remove the need for expertise. It simply shifts where that expertise sits. The organisations that succeed will be the ones that recognise this early and redesign their teams, skills, and governance models accordingly.
If you’d like to discuss how the Basis role is evolving across the market, or how other organisations are restructuring their teams under RISE, we’re always happy to share what we’re seeing.
