Most organizations start an SAP digital transformation project with a timeline, a budget, and a false sense of security, often underestimating the complex SAP Warranty Implementation Risks that can derail their progress. They believe they know how their warranty processes work. They assume their current rules for returns, claims, and supplier recovery are clear, documented, and followed by everyone.
Experience shows this is rarely true. In reality, warranty processes are often messy, living in spreadsheets on a manager's desktop or buried in email chains between service reps and customers. They rely on "tribal knowledge" held by employees who have been around for twenty years, making service lifecycle management difficult to standardize. When you try to force these fragmented, undocumented habits into a standardized warranty management system without looking at them closely first, the project breaks.
This is where the implementation risk lies. It is not usually a software failure; it is a scope failure. Companies rush to configure the technology before they understand the specific claim processing problem they are trying to solve. This leads to change orders, delays, and a final product that doesn't actually fit the business or capture revenue leakage.
At Detering Consulting, we take a different path to mitigate SAP Warranty Implementation Risks. We refuse to guess at the scope. Instead, we use a structured assessment called the QuickScan. This exercise is not just about gathering a list of wants; it is a strategic focusing effort that defines exactly what your business needs, how your money moves, and which Aftermarket Claims Service solution fits your goals.
Are you an SAP customer but not satisfied with your warranty claims processing solution? Ask us about the Warranty QuickScan!
SAP Warranty Implementation Risks: The Hidden Danger of Rushing Implementation
The pressure to launch is real. Executives want to see ROI, and IT teams have deadlines. This pressure often forces teams to skip the heavy lifting of process discovery. They jump straight into configuration workshops, which is a mistake that increases SAP Warranty Implementation Risks.
When you rush the beginning of an SAP warranty project, you miss the details that cost money later, i.e. pricing procedure rules that are overly onerous and beg to be simplified. You might miss a specific return material authorization (RMA) logic used by a single warehouse in Europe. You might overlook a supplier recovery agreement that saves the company millions of dollars a year but isn't tracked in your current legacy warranty management system.
These missing pieces always surface eventually. But without an upfront assessment, they surface during user acceptance testing or, worse, after go-live. At that point, fixing the issue costs ten times more than it would have during the design phase. We see this constantly in the aerospace and automotive warranty sectors.
A company thinks they have a standard SAP warranty claims process, only to realize their heavy equipment division operates on a completely different set of entitlement rules.
If you do not map these warranty claim processing variations during your QuickScan before you sign the software and implementation project contract, your scope is wrong. If your scope is wrong, your budget is a fantasy. SAP Warranty implementation risks management requires a clear understanding of these complexities from day one.
Many system integrators approach warranty projects with a simple question: "What do you want the system to do?"
This sounds like a good question, but it is dangerous. It assumes your users know what is possible. It also assumes your users understand their own claim processing workflows perfectly. Often, users focus on replicating the quirks of their old legacy system. They ask for buttons and reports that match what they used ten years ago. They do not think about how to modernize or automate.
SAP warranty claim processing project requirements gathering often results in a list of features rather than a business strategy. It creates a software build that automates bad habits. Soren Detering, with his two decades of experience, has seen this pattern repeatedly. He notes that clients often ask for customizations that SAP ACS Warranty handles natively, simply because they don't know these standard features exist.
A true assessment must go deeper than asking users what they want. It has to investigate how the business actually functions. It has to look at the physical flow of parts and the digital flow of dollars. It must uncover assumptions that no one talks about because "that's just how we do it," which is the only way to truly mitigate SAP Warranty Implementation Risks.
We developed the QuickScan to solve the scope problem. It is a productized service approach to SAP implementations. Think of it as a diagnostic tool before surgery. You wouldn't let a surgeon operate without an MRI, and you shouldn't let a systems integrator touch your SAP S/4Hana without a QuickScan to identify potential SAP Warranty Implementation Risks.
This is a two to four-week project. It involves intense onsite or remote workshops and remote analysis. It is not a sales exercise designed to just sell you software. It is a rigorous interrogation of your business model. We look at undocumented SAP Warranty Management processes, RMA workflows, and service contract details for both domestic and international operations.
The goal is to determine the true scope of your project. We identify every process that needs to be modeled in the SAP software. This provides a record that the project manager can refer back to later. When someone tries to add new requirements halfway through the project, you can point to the QuickScan findings to manage the change. This provides upfront assurance that the project is de-risked.
The QuickScan follows a logical path to uncover the truth about your operations. It moves from high-level strategy down to the specific transaction codes you will need for effective claim processing.
We sit with your teams to map out the actual lifecycle of a claim. We don't just ask management; we talk to the people processing the paperwork. We uncover the shadow processes that keep the business running but aren't in the manual.
We compare your needs against SAP standard capabilities. We design an entitlement framework that defines who gets paid, how much, and why. This is where we spot revenue leakage.
We finalize the decision between SAP Standard Warranty and SAP ACS. We produce a board-defensible business case and a detailed implementation plan.
One of the most important outcomes of the QuickScan is the software decision itself. Many companies do not realize they have a choice. They assume they must buy the biggest, most expensive package, or conversely, they try to force complex needs into a basic tool.
You generally have two paths: SAP Standard Warranty or the advanced SAP ACS (Aftermarket Claims Service) Warranty Management Solution.
SAP Standard Warranty fits organizations with straightforward needs. If your claims are simple, domestic, and high-volume but low-complexity, standard might work. However, many of our clients in automotive, marine, and aerospace need more. They need the advanced capabilities of SAP ACS. This solution comes directly from SAP Germany, and it is built for heavy lifting.
Through our close collaboration with the SAP ACS development team, we know exactly what this software can do. The QuickScan helps you decide which pieces of the Aftermarket Claims Service solution you need to order. It prevents you from overpaying for software you won't use, while guaranteeing you have the horsepower to handle complex entitlements, parts return logic, and supplier recovery.
Making this decision without a QuickScan is a gamble. If you buy Standard and need ACS, you will spend millions on custom code to bridge the gap. If you buy ACS but only need Standard, you have wasted budget on shelfware. The assessment clarifies this choice before you spend a dime on licenses, significantly reducing SAP Warranty Implementation Risks.
Don't rely on a generic software demo to pick your solution. Use your own real-world claim scenarios during the selection process to see if the standard solution breaks.
Warranty projects often struggle to get funding because they are viewed as "cost centers." Executives see warranty as money going out the door. The QuickScan flips this narrative. It helps you build a business case that proves the project will pay for itself by optimizing claim processing.
We do this by identifying revenue leakage. Leakage happens when you pay a claim you shouldn't have paid. It happens when you replace a part for free that was out of warranty. It happens when you fail to collect money from your supplier recovery efforts for faulty parts they sold you.
Soren Detering has helped enterprises increase recovery from suppliers and streamline service operations significantly. By modernizing entitlement checks—the logic that decides if a claim is valid—within your warranty management system, you stop the bleeding. The QuickScan puts a number on this. We calculate exactly how much you are losing today due to manual errors and poor system checks.
When you present these numbers to the board, the project stops being a "tech upgrade" and starts being a financial imperative. You can show that implementing SAP ACS isn't just an expense; it is a way to recover millions in lost revenue. This is what we mean by a board defensible business case. It is data-driven proof that the investment is safe and necessary.
Implementing a new warranty management system is one of the most difficult projects an aftermarket service organization can take on. The financial stakes are high, and the operational details are messy. Rushing into this without a clear map is a recipe for failure and increased SAP Warranty Implementation Risks.
The QuickScan offers that map. It is a decision prerequisite that protects your budget and your timeline. By taking two to four weeks to uncover the truth about your processes, you save months of headache later. You gain the confidence that you are ordering the right software from SAP Germany. You gain a business case that proves the value of the investment.
Don't let your warranty project become a statistic of scope creep and cost overruns. Start with the facts. Start with a QuickScan to ensure your SAP Warranty Management journey is a success.
What is the Warranty QuickScan?
The SAP Warranty QuickScan by Detering Consulting is a short, high-impact assessment that uncovers where warranty risk and margin leakage exist today—and what to do about it. In 2–4 weeks, it delivers quantified financial exposure, prioritized improvement opportunities, and a board-level justification for action. The outcome is not just insight, but a ready-to-execute SAP Warranty project plan.