SAP’s end of mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC 6.0 at the close of 2027 has put a firm date on the migration work facing SAP practices. Optional extended maintenance is available to the end of 2030. SAP recruiters and analysts widely report a shortage of experienced S/4HANA delivery people. Hiring them one at a time can take longer than a program timeline allows. That pressure makes an SAP team move, hiring a group that already works together, worth a serious look.
A well-run team move adds tested delivery capacity in one step. It also comes with legal exposure, a sequence that matters and conditions that decide whether it pays off.
Some of the most-cited research here comes from Boris Groysberg at Harvard Business School. His study of star Wall Street analysts tracked their performance over several years after they changed firms. Stars who moved alone generally saw their results fall. Those who moved with colleagues tended to keep their performance. As a result, Groysberg concluded that much of a star’s output depends on the colleagues and resources around them.
Groysberg and Robin Abrahams later studied several dozen lift-outs across industries in Harvard Business Review in 2006. They argued that a lifted team arrives with trust and working norms already in place, so it makes an impact quickly. They also described the lift-out as a staged process. It begins with courtship between the hiring firm and the team leader, well before any offer.
In SAP delivery, a team that has taken programs live together already knows who owns the data migration plan. It knows who runs the cutover rehearsal and who the client calls at two in the morning during hypercare. Individual hires have to work that out on a live engagement, where any learning curve is visible to the client.
The analyst study comes from financial services and the lift-out research from a mix of industries. Both serve as a guide for SAP practices, although neither examined SAP consulting directly.
A lift-out makes most sense when a practice needs a capability it has no foothold in yet. That could be a new line of business, industry or country. It also suits a firm whose demand window is shorter than the time organic hiring would need. The same applies to a firm with a pipeline opportunity that a ready-made team could staff from week one.
In our view, building from scratch makes the stronger case when clients buy a firm’s own delivery methods and culture. That is because a lifted team brings its previous employer’s habits along with its skills. Building also wins where the skill is easy to find in the open market. It suits a practice that has neither immediate work for a team nor the management capacity to absorb one.
Buying a small SAP partner outright is a third route with its own risk profile. In a share purchase, the buyer takes on the company’s liabilities along with its client contracts and brand.
First, establish how much of a team’s track record belongs to the team. Results that relied on a former employer’s pre-sales function, offshore delivery center or in-house accelerators may only partly travel. So ask each member to walk through their own role in named go-lives.
Next, identify who the move depends on. That is often a small core around the leader, such as a lead architect or senior functional lead. The business case should survive one of them staying behind.
Motive matters as well. In our experience, a team drawn by a bigger opportunity is a safer hire. A team escaping a troubled program or an internal dispute carries more risk. With each person’s consent, review notice periods, post-employment restrictions and bonus terms before drafting offers. Then gather references discreetly from people who have already left the team’s current firm.
In Germany, recruiting a competitor’s employees, including several from one team, is generally lawful under the constitutional freedom of occupation. Whether it becomes unlawful turns on the methods used. The number of people resigning together carries little weight on its own.
Recruitment crosses the line under the German Act Against Unfair Competition (UWG) when it uses unfair methods. Examples include inducing people to leave before their notice ends, applying pressure or disparaging the current employer. Recruiting mainly to damage the other firm also crosses it. Hiring firms and recruiters can both face injunctions and damages claims.
The departing leader carries the heaviest exposure. While still employed, they owe their employer a duty of loyalty. German labor courts have treated actively recruiting colleagues for a competitor during that period as grounds for a warning. In serious cases, it can justify dismissal.
The approach itself has limits too. Case law from the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) permits a brief first call at work to check interest. That call can outline the role, and any longer conversation belongs outside working hours.
What happens after employment ends depends on each contract. In Germany, a post-employment non-compete under §§ 74 ff. HGB must be in writing and can last at most two years. It binds the employee only if the employer pays compensation for the restricted period. Austria’s § 36 AngG limits such a clause to one year and applies it only above a statutory pay threshold. Meanwhile, § 37 AngG sets out when it survives an employer-initiated termination.
Two further risks deserve a lawyer’s view. Client lists, pricing models or internal tools can found a claim under the German Trade Secrets Act (GeschGehG). That applies where the old employer protected them as secrets, even when the move itself is lawful. In service businesses with few physical assets, hiring a large share of a unit’s staff carries another risk. In some circumstances it can count as a transfer of that business under § 613a BGB, with obligations of its own. Other jurisdictions, the UK included, apply their own rules.
Some firms agree with partners to leave each other’s people alone. Under § 75f HGB, such agreements are generally unenforceable in German courts. The BGH allowed narrow exceptions in a 2014 ruling (I ZR 245/12). One example is a clause protecting a specific relationship of trust inside a cooperation. Even then, it should generally run for no more than two years after that cooperation ends.
Competition law has since raised the stakes. The European Commission issued its first labor-market cartel decision in 2025, against Delivery Hero and Glovo. It treated a no-poach arrangement as part of a cartel. Then, in CD Tondela (C-133/24), the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in April 2026. It held that a no-poach agreement can restrict competition by object, depending on its content and context.
Several national competition authorities in the EU opened labor-market investigations during 2025 and 2026. For SAP partners that subcontract to one another, informal understandings about staff deserve a review with counsel. The same goes for any no-hire clauses in alliance agreements.
A careful sequence contains much of the legal risk in a team move. The work starts inside the hiring firm. It needs an agreed business case and a likely first engagement. It also needs employment-law advice before anyone outside the building hears about the plan.
The leader signs first. From that point the hiring firm, or a specialist recruiter acting for it, approaches every other member individually. It does so without relying on the leader for names, pay data or introductions. Each person receives their own offer and makes their own decision.
That record pays off later. A file showing separate conversations and acceptances is easier to defend than an account pieced together afterwards. That matters if the old firm alleges an orchestrated exit. Recruiters carry legal responsibility for those approaches too, which is worth weighing when choosing one.
Contractual notice periods in Germany and Austria often run longer than the statutory minimum. They can also differ across a team, so arrivals may well be staggered. Some employers also release departing staff from work for the rest of their notice, known as Freistellung. That keeps them away from clients while their duties to that employer continue. Keeping each joiner engaged through that gap is part of the hiring manager’s job.
Before day one, each joiner should confirm in writing that they bring no confidential material. They should also return every device to the old employer and leave client data behind. Where a German hiring firm has a works council, its rights over new hires under § 99 BetrVG belong in the timetable.
Former clients come last. Approaches wait until any restrictions have expired or been cleared, and the firm logs every contact. The law generally treats a client that follows on its own initiative differently from one the firm solicited.
Plan, too, for a partial move. An essential member may accept a counter-offer. The old firm may also answer the resignations with legal letters or retention calls to clients. Deciding the response to each in advance turns a stressful week into a managed one.
A lifted team needs billable work from day one, so the first engagement should be pipeline-backed before anyone joins. In the early months, keep the team intact and define the leader’s authority clearly inside the practice. That protects the working relationships the firm paid to acquire.
Method differences surface quickly. The team will be used to its old firm’s version of SAP Activate, its quality gates and its tooling. It needs a clear decision on which standards now apply, and time to adopt them.
People who built the practice will notice newcomers arriving at similar grades. Meanwhile, EU member states are transposing the Pay Transparency Directive. As that happens, pay differences between joiners and existing staff doing work of equal value will need objective, gender-neutral criteria.
Retention and sign-on arrangements are common tools for keeping a team in place. Their repayment conditions should stand up to a court’s review. Compensation for bonuses forfeited at the old firm plays a similar role.
The fair test of a lift-out comes after a meaningful period. Did the team stay, and did it bill as a unit? Did it win work the practice would have struggled to reach alone?
For a hiring manager, a well-run lift-out is strong evidence of practice-building ability. Word of how they handled it travels too. The SAP services market is small enough that candidates and partner firms tend to hear how a move went.
In our experience, managers who handle this well know the teams they might hire long before any move. They treat every person in those teams as an individual with a career of their own. That habit makes the legal sequence easier to follow and the integration more likely to hold.
IgniteSAP works with SAP consultancies on exactly this kind of hire. Our support runs from approaching individual team members at arm’s length to managing offers and staggered start dates. If a team move is on your practice’s agenda, contact us on LinkedIn.
What the Bench Costs: How Unassigned Consultants Shape SAP Hiring and Offers
Pay Transparency and SAP HR: What the Directive Asks of Payroll and SuccessFactors Data
