The company has appointed Arnold Nel as SAP alliance lead partner to bring global SAP expertise to the local market to help clients migrate from their current SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to its enhanced intelligent enterprise S/4HANA.

Nel has over 30 years of SAP and technology experience, including running the largest global SAP practice, as part of the technology sector for PwC in the US.

He joins current SAP partner Jeff Casey and director Deborah Hardiman, along with a number of experienced hires. This further builds on PwC's New Equation strategy, which brings together the best people, capability and technology to support clients to build trust and deliver sustained outcomes for Aotearoa.

The key driver for the practice growth is SAP's drive to move ERP customers to the cloud and a run of strong engagements, including helping deliver the largest ERP transformation in Australasia.

While some companies in New Zealand have started on the transformation journey, Arnold says many more need to be thinking about it.

"Globally 75% of companies that run the SAP suite need to migrate the platform by the end of 2027, and we believe that's an even higher number in New Zealand," Arnold says.

"We've got a lot of ground to cover in the next five years, especially when you couple that with the ongoing shortage of tech capability and current immigration policies.

"We're excited at the opportunity to bring the global SAP expertise and assets we've developed within the PwC network into the New Zealand market.

"That will be a huge advantage as we  help our customers adopt the cloud enablement they need to go through, as well as the migration for the intelligent enterprise on the SAP suite."