For more SAP util­i­ties insights, sign up to receive ASUG’s free The Top­ic: Util­i­ties newslet­ter, and to get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty. Con­nect with SAP teams across the util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty as they explore AI adop­tion, clean core, data strat­e­gy, and more at SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG in San Anto­nio, Octo­ber 6 – 9, 2026.

For SAP cus­tomers star­ing down the end of ECC sup­port, the path for­ward often feels less like a choice and more like an inevitabil­i­ty. At OG&E, that real­i­ty con­verged with the need to mod­ern­ize a high­ly cus­tomized SAP envi­ron­ment and set the stage for a trans­for­ma­tion that is still unfolding.

David Keny­on, Chief IT Archi­tect at OG&E, has had a front-row seat to that jour­ney. ​“I’ve been with the com­pa­ny for about 20 years, all of it in IT,” he said. ​“I was a pri­ma­ry con­trib­u­tor to the orig­i­nal strat­e­gy that we used to get our SAP trans­for­ma­tion off the ground back in 2021.”

What fol­lowed was not just a sys­tem upgrade, but a fun­da­men­tal reset of how the com­pa­ny thinks about enter­prise technology.

Mod­ern­iz­ing a Long-Stand­ing ERP Foundation

OG&E’s SAP envi­ron­ment had been evolv­ing for more than two decades, shaped by busi­ness needs and a sig­nif­i­cant degree of customization.

“Like most com­pa­nies, we had a long his­to­ry of cus­tomiza­tion, and over time, not every lega­cy change remained ful­ly trace­able in cur­rent doc­u­men­ta­tion, and that wasn’t going to sup­port where we need­ed to go,” Keny­on said. With ECC sup­port time­lines approach­ing and inter­nal exper­tise evolv­ing over time, Keny­on said OG&E had only two peo­ple left from the orig­i­nal imple­men­ta­tion in 1997 and had pro­gres­sive­ly moved to a more tra­di­tion­al man­aged ser­vices oper­at­ing mod­el. It was appar­ent that a change would need to be made to our ERP foun­da­tion to max­i­mize the ben­e­fits of the emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy landscape.”

The com­pa­ny eval­u­at­ed mul­ti­ple paths, includ­ing third-par­ty sup­port and alter­na­tive plat­forms. But one con­clu­sion stood out: inno­va­tion was shift­ing deci­sive­ly to the cloud.

“You start to see the writ­ing on the wall,” Keny­on said. ​“These capa­bil­i­ties won’t be on-prem, but they will be avail­able in the cloud. You want to be where the invest­ment is being made.”

That real­iza­tion ulti­mate­ly led OG&E to RISE with SAP and a green­field S/4HANA transformation.

From ​“Fit-to-Stan­dard” to ​“Clean Core”

Like many orga­ni­za­tions, OG&E began with an ambi­tion to adopt a ​“fit-to-stan­dard” approach. But as the work pro­gressed, the team iden­ti­fied areas where thought­ful per­son­al­iza­tion was still needed.

“Every­one buys into that con­cept at the begin­ning, and right­ly so,” Keny­on said. ​“But when you get into the actu­al work, there are always func­tion­al­i­ty gaps that you’re not going to be able to over­come with­out cre­at­ing some personalization.”

Rather than aban­don­ing dis­ci­pline, OG&E refined its strat­e­gy and sup­ple­ment­ed its fit-to-stan­dard objec­tive to include a clean core frame­work. That shift required rapid edu­ca­tion across teams and partners.

“Clean core was still an emerg­ing dis­ci­pline for many orga­ni­za­tions at the time,” Keny­on said. ​“Estab­lish­ing that capa­bil­i­ty became a key pri­or­i­ty for our team and partners.”

The results were sig­nif­i­cant. OG&E reduced its cus­tom objects from rough­ly 12,000 in ECC to about 4,000 in S/4HANA and sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved align­ment with clean core principles.

“About 97% of our cus­tom RICE­FWs meet clean core cri­te­ria in S/4HANA,” Keny­on said. ​“It’s very easy to show our user base and our exec­u­tives that we accom­plished a sig­nif­i­cant objec­tive that will pay div­i­dends well into the future.”

One of the more chal­leng­ing aspects of the trans­for­ma­tion was assess­ing his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge and design con­text across a long-run­ning environment.

“As with many long-run­ning enter­prise envi­ron­ments, some his­tor­i­cal design intent required addi­tion­al analy­sis to deter­mine what should be car­ried for­ward,” Keny­on said, point­ing to a large vol­ume of code with depen­den­cies that need­ed to be care­ful­ly assessed.

That gap became a cat­a­lyst for innovation.

Gen­er­a­tive AI as a Project Accelerator

Years before gen­er­a­tive AI became main­stream, OG&E began exper­i­ment­ing with it out of neces­si­ty. Over time, the team applied AI across the project life­cy­cle in the fol­low­ing ways:

• Eval­u­at­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion qual­i­ty from sys­tem integrators
• Gen­er­at­ing func­tion­al and tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions from lega­cy code
• Assist­ing with code cre­ation for clean core extensions
• Build­ing and val­i­dat­ing test scripts
• Iden­ti­fy­ing and resolv­ing defects

The agent scans the code and cre­ates a func­tion­al spec­i­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ment. From there, the infor­ma­tion is used to cre­ate a tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tion and direct­ly sup­port the devel­op­ment of a clean-core-aligned extension.

In addi­tion, AI began to close the loop on devel­op­ment work­flows at OG&E.

“Being able to log a test defect record, sug­gest the reme­di­a­tion, sup­port imple­men­ta­tion of the fix, and then eval­u­ate its effec­tive­ness — all using GenAI — was instru­men­tal,” Keny­on said.

While the project extend­ed from a planned two years to two and a half, Keny­on said AI helped the team work more effi­cient­ly and avoid addi­tion­al delays.

“AI was instru­men­tal in help­ing us accel­er­ate parts of the pro­gram,” he said. ​“It helped us man­age the time­line more effec­tive­ly and sup­port our over­all deliv­ery objectives.”

A Plat­form for the Future

For OG&E, the trans­for­ma­tion was about posi­tion­ing the com­pa­ny on a mod­ern plat­form built for the future. The move to S/4HANA sup­port­ed OG&E’s tran­si­tion to the cloud, intro­duced more intu­itive user expe­ri­ences, and strength­ened the foun­da­tion for secu­ri­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and ongo­ing innovation.

“Our focus was on mov­ing to the cloud, giv­ing our users more mod­ern inter­faces like Fiori, and improv­ing our over­all secu­ri­ty and tech­nol­o­gy foun­da­tion,” he said. ​“We want­ed to be on the plat­form where SAP is mak­ing its strate­gic invest­ments and where future capa­bil­i­ties will con­tin­ue to evolve.”

Ana­lyt­ics: Key Insights and Ongo­ing Optimization

The ana­lyt­ics tran­si­tion also pro­vid­ed use­ful insights. OG&E moved from a lega­cy ana­lyt­ics stack cen­tered on Busi­nes­sOb­jects and on-premis­es HANA toward a foun­da­tion of SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud and Data­s­phere, and the expe­ri­ence helped clar­i­fy con­sid­er­a­tions relat­ed to cost, com­plex­i­ty, and plat­form fit.

“Our Data­s­phere envi­ron­ment has been more com­plex than was orig­i­nal­ly antic­i­pat­ed,” Keny­on said.

A key les­son learned was that the team could have made broad­er use of embed­ded ana­lyt­ics in S/4HANA and relied less on cus­tom views in select­ed areas, cre­at­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take greater advan­tage of stan­dard embed­ded ana­lyt­ics content.

“That expe­ri­ence high­light­ed addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to take advan­tage of stan­dard embed­ded ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties,” he said. ​“We are incor­po­rat­ing more of those capa­bil­i­ties as part of our ongo­ing opti­miza­tion work.”

The OG&E team is now revis­it­ing foun­da­tion­al design deci­sions, mov­ing back toward more stan­dard data struc­tures and incor­po­rat­ing more native capa­bil­i­ties where they make sense.

Despite the scale of trans­for­ma­tion, OG&E main­tained oper­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity at go-live.

“We hit our first month-end as planned and hit our first billing cycle as planned,” Keny­on said. ​“All crit­i­cal busi­ness process­es oper­at­ed successfully.”

That suc­cess was dri­ven by a struc­tured orga­ni­za­tion­al change man­age­ment (OCM) approach, includ­ing ear­ly stake­hold­er engage­ment, con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and embed­ded train­ing resources.

“We put in place the core change man­age­ment prac­tices need­ed for a trans­for­ma­tion of this scale,” he said. ​“Our OCM pro­gram per­formed well.”

Gov­er­nance, Part­ners, and Deliv­ery Discipline

Like many large trans­for­ma­tions, OG&E worked close­ly with sys­tem inte­gra­tors, includ­ing Accen­ture. Keny­on said the expe­ri­ence rein­forced the impor­tance of strong gov­er­nance, clear account­abil­i­ty, and active over­sight through­out the program.

“You have to go into a trans­for­ma­tion of this size with clear gov­er­nance and real­is­tic expec­ta­tions,” he said. ​“It’s impor­tant to val­i­date deliv­er­ables, stay engaged, and make sure the right con­trols are in place along the way.”

The team iden­ti­fied oppor­tu­ni­ties to deep­en clean core knowl­edge, strength­en doc­u­men­ta­tion, and tight­en val­i­da­tion process­es in select­ed areas. OG&E respond­ed by rein­forc­ing gov­er­nance and using AI to help review and val­i­date key deliverables.

“Good gov­er­nance is essen­tial in a pro­gram like this,” Keny­on said. ​“You need the right checks and bal­ances to make sure qual­i­ty stays high and the project remains on track.”

The Next Phase: AI-Enabled Innovation

While the ini­tial trans­for­ma­tion was about cloud and stan­dard­iza­tion, the next chap­ter is being shaped by AI.

“The mar­ket is evolv­ing from a pri­mar­i­ly SaaS-focused mod­el toward one increas­ing­ly shaped by AI capa­bil­i­ties,” Keny­on said. ​“Even­tu­al­ly, I think that’s going to turn SaaS on its head.”

OG&E is already adapt­ing its approach, explor­ing cus­tom AI-dri­ven exten­sions con­nect­ed via stan­dard APIs and gov­erned inte­gra­tion services.

“We expect to con­tin­ue deliv­er­ing tar­get­ed clean-core exten­sions going for­ward,” he said, ​“using a dis­ci­plined approach aligned with our archi­tec­ture and gov­er­nance standards.”

At the same time, the com­pa­ny is prepar­ing for a new oper­at­ing rhythm: fre­quent upgrades, con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion, and broad­er orga­ni­za­tion­al participation.

“Going live was just the first step,” Keny­on said. ​“The next phase is insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing a repeat­able upgrade and inno­va­tion cadence.”

For more SAP util­i­ties insights, sign up to receive ASUG’s free The Top­ic: Util­i­ties newslet­ter, and to get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty. Con­nect with SAP teams across the util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty as they explore AI adop­tion, clean core, data strat­e­gy, and more at SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG in San Anto­nio, Octo­ber 6 – 9, 2026.