Procurement and Supplier Portal Selection Guide for SAP ECC and S/4HANA

Procurement and supplier portal selection is the process of choosing the platform that manages a company’s requisition, quotation, approval, order, and invoice processes with its suppliers through SAP, based on the company’s current ERP version and S/4HANA migration timeline.

If your company still runs SAP without a procurement and supplier portal, a large share of your supplier interactions most likely happens in email inboxes and Excel files. The standard procurement (MM) processes in SAP ECC and S/4HANA do not, on their own, give suppliers an interface where they can log in, confirm orders, or track invoice status. This gap slows down quotation and order communication, makes it harder to track the process from requisition to payment, and leaves suppliers dependent on the procurement team for every question.

Once the need for a portal is clear, the next question follows: What kind of procurement and supplier portal should we choose?

For companies running SAP ECC, mainstream maintenance ends on December 31, 2027. This means the procurement and supplier portal you choose today will most likely go through an S/4HANA migration as well. It is therefore not enough for the portal to run on ECC today. It should also not require a new implementation project during the migration.

In this article, we first look at the challenges of running SAP without a procurement and supplier portal. We then set out decision criteria for SAP ERP landscapes. For general selection criteria, see our guide on choosing the right supplier portal for SAP users.

Challenges of Running SAP Without a Procurement and Supplier Portal

In companies without a portal, the procurement department is not the only team that feels the gap. Quality, logistics, and accounting teams feel it too. The lifecycle of an order, from placement and goods receipt to invoicing and payment, involves several departments. Supplier steps such as registration, quotation, and order confirmation are also part of this cycle.

In short, an SRM and procurement solution manages the processes of multiple parties.

Without this structure, many companies run into the following four problems:

Fragmented Communication and Lost Audit Trails

Order confirmations, delivery date changes, and invoice queries move across separate email threads, phone calls, and messaging apps. In a dispute, finding out who approved which date takes far longer than it should. Multiple versions of the same document circulate, and the team cannot be sure which one is current.

Manual Data Entry and a Growing Operational Workload

Purchase orders go out by email as PDF attachments. When the supplier’s confirmation comes back, a buyer keys the information into SAP manually. Even when invoices arrive as e-invoices, many companies still match them against purchase orders and goods receipts by hand. In a high-volume function like procurement, every manual entry creates room for errors and increases the risk of delays. The team ends up spending its time on low-value tasks.

Processes Suppliers Cannot See

Suppliers cannot see whether their order has been approved, where their invoice stands, or when they will be paid. Each of these questions turns into a phone call or email to the procurement or accounting team. On the company side, it becomes harder to see delayed deliveries and pending invoices at a glance. To find the bottleneck, the team has to check multiple sources one by one.

Quotation, Approval, and Document Processes Outside the System

Buyers collect quotations from email attachments, compare them in Excel, and request approval from managers by email. Contracts, quality certificates, and compliance documents sit in separate folders. During an audit, tracing the rationale behind a purchasing decision becomes difficult, and keeping track of procurement compliance requirements gets harder.

Choosing a portal is the first step toward solving these problems. However, choosing the right portal for a company that runs SAP means weighing several criteria. One of them is the current and future state of your ERP.

Why Do SAP ECC and S/4HANA Timelines Affect Your Procurement and Supplier Portal Decision?

SAP has published a clear maintenance timeline for the Business Suite 7 core applications. The key dates for ECC 6.0 are:

December 31, 2025: Mainstream maintenance ended for EhP 0-5.
December 31, 2027: Mainstream maintenance ends for EhP 6-8.
2028-2030: SAP offers optional extended maintenance for an additional 2 percentage points on the maintenance base.
2040: SAP has committed to innovation for S/4HANA until this year.

SAP ECC customers who do not opt for extended maintenance move to customer-specific maintenance from 2028. The dates come from SAP’s official maintenance strategy page.

This timeline has a direct impact on your portal decision. Companies use a portal for many years. Suppliers get used to it, and the procurement team builds its processes around it. If the portal a company chooses on ECC does not run on S/4HANA, the company has to invest twice. Both the procurement team and suppliers have to adapt to a second system. At JetSRM, our experience shows that moving to a new technology is not the hard part. The real challenge is helping the people who use that technology adapt to it and preventing resistance.

Procurement and Supplier Portal Decision Matrix by SAP ERP Landscape

The matrix below shows the key question and the main risk for each SAP ERP landscape. Find the row that matches your situation and start your assessment there.

ERP Landscape	SAP Timeline / Scope	Key Question When Choosing a Portal	Risk to Avoid
SAP ECC (EhP 6-8), no migration plan	Mainstream maintenance ends on December 31, 2027. Optional extended maintenance runs until the end of 2030.	Will the portal need to be reimplemented when you move to S/4HANA?	A solution that requires reimplementation or redevelopment during migration
SAP ECC, S/4HANA migration planned or in progress	ECC and S/4HANA run side by side for a period during the transition.	Can the portal keep supplier processes running without disruption during the migration?	A second integration project that competes with the migration timeline
SAP S/4HANA on-premise	SAP has committed to innovation for S/4HANA until 2040.	Does the portal work directly with the Business Partner master data model?	Supplier master data kept as a separate copy outside SAP
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition (RISE)	Classic ABAP extensions are possible; clean core governance is recommended.	Is the portal compatible with the SAP upgrade cycle?	Customizations that require retesting after every upgrade
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (GROW)	Classic extensibility is not available. Extensions are built on released APIs, ABAP Cloud, or SAP BTP.	Does the portal support Public Edition, and how does it connect to SAP?	A solution whose Public Edition support has not been confirmed in writing by the vendor

Scenario 1: Procurement and Supplier Portal for Companies Staying on SAP ECC

Many companies have not moved away from ECC yet and have postponed their migration plans beyond 2028. They need a portal today, but the future of their ERP remains uncertain.

What Does a Company on ECC Gain Today?

A procurement and supplier portal that runs on ECC delivers tangible benefits without waiting for the migration. The procurement team manages supplier applications, quotations, price comparisons, supplier evaluations, and tenders through the portal. Suppliers submit quotation revisions, update their company information, and track payment and invoice status in the portal. The accounting team matches invoices against purchase orders through the portal. The company also moves its supplier onboarding process to a digital workflow.

How Does the S/4HANA Migration Affect a Procurement and Supplier Portal on SAP ECC?

Make sure to ask the vendor the following questions about any portal you plan to use with SAP ECC:

Does the same product run on both ECC and S/4HANA?
Does the portal require a separate project during the S/4HANA migration?
Will approval workflows, supplier screens, and user accounts stay the same after the migration?

A solution that requires reimplementation or redevelopment during migration can increase the portal’s total cost later on. Clarify these answers before you make a decision.

Scenario 2: Procurement and Supplier Portal for Companies Planning or Running an S/4HANA Migration

In companies with a migration project underway, IT capacity is limited. Launching a second integration project during this period puts pressure on the timeline. Even so, procurement and supplier processes must keep running throughout the migration.

Should the Portal Project Start Before or After the Migration?

Both approaches have a sound rationale. The decision depends on your migration approach and team capacity.

Starting before the migration: The procurement team and suppliers get used to the portal early. The user side stays the same during the S/4HANA migration. This approach requires a procurement and supplier portal that works the same way on ECC and S/4HANA.
Starting after the migration: The team cleans up supplier master data as part of the migration and then builds the portal on clean data. However, this approach delays the digitalization of procurement processes.

Scenario 3: Companies Already Running S/4HANA

For a company already on S/4HANA, the question is no longer about the version but about the deployment model. SAP offers S/4HANA in different deployment models. Each model sets its own rules for which types of extensions it allows within the system. That is why assessing a procurement and supplier portal starts with the deployment model.

Procurement and Supplier Portal for S/4HANA On-Premise

In the on-premise model, the company runs the system on its own infrastructure or with a provider of its choice. The company can use classic ABAP extensions in this model. A procurement and supplier portal that works as an integrated part of SAP can use the existing role, authorization, and approval structure in this environment.

S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition (RISE with SAP)

Private Edition combines cloud infrastructure with the flexibility of on-premise. Classic ABAP extensions are also possible in this model. However, SAP recommends placing such extensions under governance as part of its clean core approach. Ask the vendor whether the portal supports Private Edition and how it keeps pace with the SAP upgrade cycle. A setup that requires retesting after every upgrade places an ongoing burden on the IT team.

S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (GROW with SAP)

Public Edition runs as SaaS. According to SAP Community resources, classic extensibility is not available in this model. Developers build extensions using released APIs, ABAP Cloud, or SAP BTP. This structure directly affects how portals connect to SAP. Companies on Public Edition should confirm with each vendor whether the portal supports this model and how it works.

8 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Procurement and Supplier Portal

Whatever your SAP ERP landscape, you can use the questions below as a checklist in vendor meetings.

Process scope: Does the portal manage internal procurement steps such as requisitions and approvals together with the supplier side?
Version coverage: Does the portal work the same way on SAP ECC and S/4HANA?
Migration impact: Does the portal require a separate project and budget during the S/4HANA migration?
Data location: Does the portal keep supplier and order data in SAP, or does it copy that data to a separate database?
Master data model: Does the portal support the Business Partner model in S/4HANA?
Deployment model: Which deployment models does the portal support: on-premise, Private Edition, or Public Edition?
Supplier costs: Does the vendor charge suppliers license or usage fees?
References: Can the vendor arrange a call with a customer in the same ERP landscape as yours?

Get the vendor’s answers in writing. The third and sixth questions in particular have a direct impact on the portal’s five-year cost.

Which SAP Landscapes Does JetSRM Support?

At JetSRM, we designed our procurement and supplier portal to work as an integrated part of SAP. JetSRM runs on SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA on-premise, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition (RISE with SAP). S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is not among the deployment models JetSRM supports.

Because the same product runs on ECC as well as on the on-premise and Private Edition versions of S/4HANA, users do not have to adapt to a new portal during the S/4HANA migration. This also applies to companies moving to Private Edition with RISE with SAP. Supplier and procurement data stays in SAP, and the data flow does not run through a separate copy. Suppliers do not need to use SAP, and JetSRM does not charge suppliers any fees.

In our experience, companies on ECC often postpone the portal decision until their S/4HANA plan is finalized. This delay can leave procurement and supplier processes manual for years. A procurement and supplier portal that runs on both versions lets you separate the two decisions.

Limitations and Considerations

Timeline information: The dates in this article are based on SAP’s published maintenance strategy. Special agreements such as RISE contracts may include different support periods. Confirm your own contract terms with your SAP account manager.
Public Edition: JetSRM does not run on S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Support for this model varies across other portal providers. Companies on Public Edition should confirm this with each vendor individually.
Scope: This guide does not include license or pricing comparisons. For a cost analysis, request quotes with the same scope from each vendor.
Multi-ERP landscapes: Decision criteria differ for groups that run several non-SAP ERP systems. This article focuses on SAP-centric landscapes.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Will a procurement and supplier portal keep working after SAP ECC mainstream maintenance ends?

ECC does not stop working at the end of 2027. It only moves out of mainstream maintenance, so a portal running on ECC continues to operate. However, legal and technical updates for ECC become dependent on an extended maintenance contract. A portal that also runs on S/4HANA reduces your long-term risk.

Does it make sense to adopt a procurement and supplier portal before migrating to S/4HANA?

It makes sense if the portal works the same way on ECC and S/4HANA. The company digitalizes procurement and supplier processes without waiting for the migration. Users also avoid having to learn a new system during the transition. If the portal only runs on ECC, waiting for the migration may be the safer option.

What should a company on S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition look for when choosing a portal?

Public Edition is a SaaS model in which SAP does not offer classic ABAP extensibility. Ask the vendor to confirm in writing whether the portal supports this model and how it connects to SAP. If possible, speak with a reference customer that runs Public Edition. JetSRM does not currently run on Public Edition.

Why does supplier master data change when you migrate to S/4HANA?

ECC stores customers and suppliers as separate master data objects. S/4HANA combines them into a single object called Business Partner. This change can affect applications that read supplier data. That is why it matters that the portal you choose supports the Business Partner model.

Conclusion

Choosing a procurement and supplier portal starts with your company’s current ERP landscape. Companies staying on ECC should look for a portal that does not require reimplementation during migration. Companies running a migration project should plan the portal timeline together with the Business Partner conversion. Companies already on S/4HANA should confirm that the portal supports their deployment model. To learn more about a procurement and supplier portal that runs on SAP ECC, S/4HANA on-premise, or Private Edition, get in touch with the JetSRM team.