SAP published an IDC Business Value White Paper on August 31, 2026 reporting that organizations using SAP Integration Suite achieved a 368% three-year return on investment with an eight-month payback period. The study was commissioned by SAP and conducted by IDC.
TL;DR
- -SAP published an IDC Business Value White Paper on August 31, 2026 reporting a 368% three-year ROI and eight-month payback period for SAP Integration Suite customers.
- -IDC interviewed eight organizations averaging 48,529 employees and $14.53 billion in annual revenue; SAP describes the findings as quantified from actual outcomes, not a modeled composite.
- -Key metrics include 78% more application integrations, 58% fewer unplanned outages, and 49% more business processes automated; 82% of integrations in the study touch at least one non-SAP application.
What the Study Covered
IDC interviewed eight organizations across manufacturing, consumer products, energy, fintech, healthcare, retail, and transportation. The participating enterprises averaged 48,529 employees and $14.53 billion in annual revenue. They operated across the U.S., Germany, Denmark, India, and the UK. SAP describes the findings as quantified from actual outcomes, not a modeled composite.
IDC analysts Shari Lava, group vice president for AI, Data, and Automation, and Matthew Marden, research vice president for Business Value Strategy, conducted the interviews.
Key Figures from the Study
The white paper reports an average of $47,900 in annual benefits per integrated application, or $9.36 million per organization. Documented metrics include:
Integration speed and scale - 78% more application integrations and 41% less time to complete each one - 99% more application messages processed
Operational reliability - 58% fewer unplanned outages - 35% faster to resolve integration errors - 19% fewer integration errors
Business process automation - 49% more business processes automated, with 21% efficiency gains for business process teams - 32% less time to onboard a business partner
Developer and team productivity - 29% improvement in development team productivity - 31% faster development life cycle for new applications - 32% more efficient application integration teams
Mixed-Vendor Scope
One finding SAP highlights for mixed-vendor environments: on average, 64% of integrated applications in the study are non-SAP, and 82% of integrations touch at least one non-SAP application. SAP positions the suite as the integration backbone for heterogeneous application environments where SAP and non-SAP systems must work together.
One study participant described the platform's role: "SAP Integration Suite is our main connection to the outside world. Every time anyone needs to connect to our SAP systems, it goes through Integration Suite."
Platform Context
SAP describes SAP Integration Suite as its flagship integration platform as a service, delivered on SAP Business AI Platform.
SAP frames the study's timing around agentic AI adoption. It notes that autonomous agents require real-time data access across the full application estate, consistent governance, and an integration layer that can scale without becoming a bottleneck.
The full white paper is cited as IDC Doc #US54820926-BVWP, August 2026, sponsored by SAP. SAP also announced a September 9 webinar featuring Mani Velayudhan, director of SAP Operations at The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, to discuss how the company prepared its integration environment for agentic AI workloads.
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