Our strong tech teams have had the pleasure of working with multiple complex SAP Commerce Cloud projects with various partners. With years of accumulated experience, we have learned how to maximise results and growth while avoiding the common pitfalls many companies face when working with the SAP ecosystem.

In this article, we will go over seven strategies that can help increase efficiency, whether it's during a migration, expanding your SAP ecosystem, or simply operating as usual.

While on the topic of SAP, take a look at our whitepaper on ensuring a seamless migration to SAP Commerce Cloud in the Public Cloud.

1. Follow SAP coding guidelines and best practices

SAP Commerce Cloud has a powerful default framework based on Java, as well as its own persistence, caching, and search indexing systems. The software is designed to support custom functionalities while also providing core features without requiring extensive changes.

Our SAP specialists recommend adhering to SAP's recommended practices for data types, ImpEx files, interceptors, and automated tests. This not only ensures clean, maintainable code but also smooth upgrades and integrations in the future.

Of course, sometimes your organisation will require personalised code to address your unique business cases. In those cases, it's important to work with an experienced team that can address today's challenges without risking tomorrow's scalability.

Positive impact: Following SAP's guidelines keeps code clean, maintainable, and easier to extend or upgrade. Organisations benefit from faster release cycles and reduced complexity when moving to newer versions.

Risk if ignored: Straying from the guidelines increases the chance of running into hard-to-resolve errors and increases maintenance costs as well as technical debt.

2. Leverage SAP's order management architecture

SAP Commerce Cloud offers a robust system of extensions that offers a fully featured order fulfilment process that helps organisations manage and simplify orders from placement to delivery. It's auditable, pause-and-resume capable, and far easier to debug than custom code. The system also allows the addition of custom steps, depending on your business context, such as fraud or compliance checks.

Building on the previous strategy, using SAP's built-in systems ensures that your developers deliver results faster and that your organisation remains resilient.

Positive impact: Defining fulfilment through processes makes workflows auditable and easier to troubleshoot without limiting you from customising the architecture to the specific needs of your organisation or clients.

Risk if ignored: If order logic is scattered across custom code or third-party extensions, it becomes harder to track or debug orders. This can delay order resolution, impact SLAs, and lead to a poor customer experience.

3. Embrace a flexible approach to development

SAP Commerce Cloud in the public cloud offers increased flexibility compared to its predecessor, CCv1, primarily through its microservices architecture. CCv2 adopts a modular approach, allowing businesses to develop, deploy, and scale specific functionalities independently. The decoupling of services in CCv2 facilitates a more adaptable and customisable e-commerce environment, providing organisations with the flexibility to meet evolving business needs efficiently.

Positive impact: A modular, headless setup enables independent scaling of front-end and back-end. Businesses can focus on the features that bring the best ROI, roll out new experiences faster, and future-proof their architecture.

Risk if ignored: Remaining tied to a monolithic setup limits agility. It becomes harder to adapt to new digital channels, integrate third-party services, or launch in new markets quickly.

4. Plan your migration thoroughly, cleanly, and carefully

The more time you have to plan your migration, the smoother it will be. Starting early gives you time to better assess the current infrastructure, identify potential challenges, and align strategically with your migration partner.

Remove all unnecessary code and data before migration. A clean slate ensures that unnecessary legacy configurations and customisations are phased out, allowing for the adoption of cloud-native best practices.

Without the need to carry over outdated configurations, the migration process becomes more streamlined and easier to manage.

Positive impact: Assessing integrations, removing outdated code, and cleaning old product or customer data reduces complexity. This results in smoother migration, lower costs, and fewer post-go-live issues.

Risk if ignored: A "lift-and-shift" migration carries over inefficiencies and technical debt, leading to sluggish performance and higher long-term costs.

5. Optimise performance proactively

SAP Commerce Cloud is designed to handle high volumes of traffic and transactions, making it ideal for large enterprises. The platform features dynamic scaling, enabling retailers to efficiently manage varying workloads.

Still, you need an experienced tech team to monitor admin performance, clean up table bloat, tweak slow queries, and tune build times. These specialists can optimise CPU, memory, and database DTUs to fit your day-to-day specifications as well as known high-traffic periods like Christmas or Black Friday.

Our advice is to continuously focus on optimisation, even while developing new features, as this helps keep costs low and ensures that customer experience remains constantly high.

Positive impact: Faster page loads improve customer experience, conversion rates, and SEO. Proactive monitoring helps prevent issues before they impact customers.

Risk if ignored: Slow performance leads to abandoned carts and lost sales. Over time, poor responsiveness can damage brand reputation and customer loyalty.

6. Don't forget about cybersecurity

Cybersecurity risks in the Retail and Consumer Goods industry have become increasingly dangerous. Take, as an example, the coordinated attack against several major UK retailers in early 2025.

Leveraging a centralised SAP platform makes it easier for businesses to store, monitor, and control their data. System administrators can set roles and authorisation levels, so every member of the team has timely access to the data they need without the risk of it falling into the wrong hands.

Managing cloud-based storage solutions also takes the pressure off internal IT teams, as regular backups and modern server facilities ensure data integrity and safety both from digital and physical risks.

Lastly, by integrating the relevant SAP modules, a company can enhance its risk and compliance teams. The software can automate repetitive or low-complexity tasks, helping identify and address risks sooner and streamline audit management by collecting documents and evidence and generating reports.

Positive impact: Protecting your organisation from bad actors is a crucial step to ensuring business continuity, avoiding costly breaches, and maintaining customer trust.

Risk if ignored: The average cost of a data breach in Germany in 2025 is $ 4.03 million, with similar costs in other European countries.

7. Work with the right tech partner

The SAP ecosystem is expansive and provides retailers with endless possibilities to enhance and expand their operations, but it also comes with a high level of technical complexity.

A strong tech team offers invaluable support at every touchpoint, from digital transformation or migration, to new feature development, as well as testing and managed services. The right partner can offer both consultancy, covering architecture and planning matters, and coding, ensuring the platform meets all business needs and performance metrics.

A successful and long-lasting relationship prioritises personal relationships together with digital progress. At Accesa, we call this strategy "friendshoring", a portmanteau of nearshoring and friendship, incorporating:

• Events, from hackathons focused on specific business or technologies, to an annual tech conference where experts can gather and share their ideas and experience.

• Regular mutual visits that help teams connect on a personal level and build stronger bonds.

• Effective and transparent communication focused on technology strategies and paths to innovation that ensure both us and our partners create long-term value.

Positive impact: Finding and building a strong relationship with the right tech partner enables you to integrate their teams into your value chains. This change in approach shifts the collaboration from simple development outsourcing to a collective effort towards growth and innovation.

Risk if ignored: Short-term outsourcing with several tech partners, without prioritising mutual understanding and skill development, can lead to a siloed IT ecosystem that becomes difficult to maintain, update, and expand.

In our over 20 years of experience supporting organisations in the Retail industry, as well as Manufacturing, and Financial Services, we have walked alongside our clients through both good and sometimes challenging times and learned from every project.

Find out how our strong tech teams develop secure and scalable IT solutions for Retail excellence.