Key Takeaways
The “SAP-Centric” Blind Spot: Relying only on SAP Access Control creates a “control silo.” Risks now live in the hand-offs between SAP and cloud apps (e.g., approving in Ariba, paying in S/4HANA).
Identity Sprawl is Real: Without cross-system visibility, users often accumulate conflicting permissions across different platforms that standard GRC tools never flag.
Shift to Process-Centric Controls: Governance must follow the full journey of a transaction (Purchase-to-Pay or Travel-to-Reimbursement) across every application it touches.
Unified Rule Repository: Efficiency comes from having one version of the truth for SoD rules that applies to every connected system, rather than managing fragmented spreadsheets.
Automated Assurance with UAS: Diligent User Access Shield leverages SAP BTP to provide real-time monitoring and automated provisioning, turning compliance from a reactive “firefighting” exercise into a continuous business process
Overview
For many enterprises, SAP is the heartbeat of finance, procurement, and core operations. General ledger postings, purchase orders, inventory, and revenue recognition run through ECC or S/4HANA, making SAP a natural starting point for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC).
At the same time, the rest of the organisation no longer lives in a single monolithic stack. Cloud services such as SAP Ariba, Concur, SuccessFactors, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), and a long list of non-SAP line-of-business systems now sit around that core, and critical processes stretch across all of them.
When GRC programmes focus only on SAP, risk visibility stops at the ERP boundary. Identities, roles, and approvals in surrounding applications slip into local admin practices and spreadsheet-driven reviews. Cross-application governance brings these pieces together, creating one connected view of access and controls across the full application estate.
Why SAP-Centric GRC Alone Is No Longer Enough
Traditional SAP GRC tooling was designed for a world where most risk lived inside one ERP environment. That world has changed. Business workflows now move fluidly between SAP and multiple cloud applications, while data and approvals travel across different user interfaces and devices.
A few patterns stand out:
- Fragmented application landscape
SAP S/4HANA or ECC may remain the system of record, but key steps happen in other places: sourcing in Ariba, travel and expenses in Concur, workforce actions in SuccessFactors, dashboards in SAC, and CRM, banking, HR, and analytics tools outside the SAP umbrella. GRC teams suddenly face dozens of systems holding pieces of the same business process. - Control silos
Many organisations implemented Segregation of Duties (SoD) rules and access reviews only inside SAP. Roles in Ariba, Concur, SAC, or non-SAP systems grow independently, often with different naming conventions and design principles. Access can look perfectly compliant when viewed from SAP, yet create serious conflicts when combined with permissions in surrounding applications. - Higher pressure on audit and compliance teams
When auditors ask a question such as, “Who can initiate and approve payments end-to-end?”, answering that question often means exporting user lists, stitching them together in spreadsheets, and manually interpreting role names across different platforms. That approach consumes time, creates room for human error, and leaves risk owners uncomfortable about blind spots.
What Cross-Application Governance Really Means
Cross-application governance goes beyond adding one more tool to the stack. It represents a shift in how organisations think about controls. Instead of focusing on a single system, GRC teams focus on the full journey of users, roles, and transactions across applications.
At its core, cross-application governance means:
- A unified risk lens
SoD rules, critical access definitions, and policy controls apply consistently across S/4HANA, Ariba, Concur, SAC, and other connected applications. The same definition of “who should not both initiate and approve a high-value transaction” applies everywhere, not only inside one system. - Identity- and process-centric controls
Governance starts with business roles and end-to-end processes, rather than technical role codes alone. Risk owners think in terms of purchase-to-pay, order-to-cash, record-to-report, and travel-to-reimbursement, and see how each persona interacts with those flows across applications. - Continuous, analytics-driven monitoring
Static, quarterly SoD reports from a single system no longer offer sufficient assurance. GRC teams require near real-time insights into risky combinations, unusual transaction patterns, and users who accumulate access as they move across roles and projects. - Principle of least privilege at scale
Users receive only the access they genuinely need, across the full stack of systems, based on well-defined personas and workflows. Over-entitlement reduces significantly and becomes easier to detect when a central view exists.
Risk Scenarios When SAP Is Your Only Control Plane
Highlighting practical scenarios often exposes hidden gaps faster than frameworks. Suppose you trace a few everyday processes across your SAP environment. The weak points usually appear exactly at the hand-off between SAP and other systems.
Purchase-to-Pay Across SAP and Ariba
Imagine a purchase request created and approved in Ariba, with the resulting purchase order and invoice ultimately handled in SAP. If SoD rules focus purely on SAP roles, a user could appear compliant within SAP while still holding conflicting permissions in Ariba, such as creating and approving purchase requests.
In that situation, the real conflict exists in the combined journey. GRC teams only see it when rules and analytics operate across both SAP and Ariba.
Travel & Expense Between Concur and SAP Finance
Travel and expense management often lives in Concur, with final accounting entries recorded in SAP FI. Suppose an employee can approve expenses in Concur and post adjustment journals in SAP.
If access is evaluated separately, neither system flags a conflict on its own. When viewed through a cross-application lens, that combination clearly undermines control over expense claims and financial reporting.
Analytics and Shadow Access in SAP Analytics Cloud
Sensitive financial, HR, and operational data flows into SAC, where business users explore dashboards, reports, and simulations. Some users may have limited, tightly controlled access inside SAP, yet gain broad data visibility in SAC.
In the absence of cross-application governance, that expanded analytical access remains largely invisible to SAP-centric GRC. Data exfiltration and misuse risks grow quietly at the reporting layer.
During SAP S/4HANA Transformations
Hybrid landscapes, where ECC, S/4HANA, and multiple cloud services coexist, create optimisation opportunities but also risk spikes. Temporary roles for project teams, duplicated permissions in sandboxes, and workarounds for integration issues can all bypass established governance.
When SAP-only GRC tries to keep up with this movement, gaps arise exactly where change happens fastest.
Design Principles for Cross-Application GRC That Actually Works
A sustainable cross-application governance approach blends policy, process, and technology in a way that risk owners, IT, and auditors can all work with. The goal is not another complex framework, but a practical model that makes day-to-day governance easier.
1. One Central SoD Rule Repository
Enterprises gain clarity when one SoD rule repository covers the full landscape: S/4HANA, Ariba, Concur, SAC, and other critical systems. That repository allows teams to define, review, version, and refine rules in one place, rather than copying spreadsheets between teams.
2. Lifecycle-Based User Provisioning
User access needs to reflect the joiner–mover–leaver reality. When employees change roles, departments, or regions, their access across all applications must adjust automatically. Persona-based provisioning can simplify this challenge by mapping business roles to technical roles behind the scenes, while still respecting SoD and licensing constraints.
3. Critical Transaction and Master Data Controls
SoD rules handle structural conflicts. At the same time, governance requires close attention to high-impact activities: vendor master changes, bank detail updates, payment approvals, posting period changes, and key pricing updates across applications. Ongoing monitoring of who performs these activities, and how often, significantly reduces the likelihood of fraud or error.
4. Automated Conflict Detection and Mitigation
Once rules and critical activities are defined centrally, automated engines can continuously check user-role combinations and transaction patterns. Mitigation becomes a workflow topic rather than an email chain: risk owners review, approve, or reject exceptions with documented reasoning and compensating controls.
5. Reporting, Analytics, and Audit Readiness
Dashboards for business owners, internal audit, and IT teams create transparency. When cross-application GRC can quickly answer questions such as “Which users violate these three key SoD rules across all systems?” or “How many high-risk transactions occurred last quarter?”, audit conversations become more constructive and less reactive.
How Diligent User Access Shield Extends GRC Beyond SAP
User Access Shield (UAS) from Diligent Global was built specifically to address these challenges. Rather than replacing SAP, UAS anchors itself in the SAP ecosystem and then extends governance across the wider application footprint.
BTP-Native Foundation for Multi-System Governance
UAS runs on SAP Business Technology Platform, which means it speaks the same language as modern SAP landscapes. Through connectors and APIs, UAS collects user, role, and transaction data from S/4HANA, Ariba, Concur, SAC, and other SAP components, so that one engine can analyse access and SoD conflicts across them.
This design keeps the control layer close to the systems it governs, while still providing a consolidated view.
Centralised SoD Rule Repository
With UAS, SoD rules for all integrated SAP applications live in a single, governed repository. GRC teams can define rule sets, assign risk levels, and apply them consistently across the landscape. Updates no longer require manual replication; once a rule changes, the new definition flows across connected systems.
Smart User Provisioning and FUE Compliance
UAS supports persona-based provisioning workflows that align to joiner-mover-leaver processes. Roles are assigned according to predefined job profiles, subject to SoD checks and relevant licence considerations. Functional User Experience (FUE) compliance becomes part of the process, not a separate clean-up exercise.
As a result, business managers approve access that makes sense for real work, while GRC teams gain confidence that over-entitlement and licence exposure remain under control.
Continuous Conflict Detection and Critical Access Control
UAS continuously evaluates user assignments against the central SoD rule set. Conflicts appear in dashboards and reports, where risk owners can choose to remediate or formally mitigate them. The same engine can highlight critical transactions and access patterns, helping teams prioritise attention where risk is highest.
Role Governance, Dynamic Authorisation, and Audit Trails
Role design and assignment governance sit at the heart of UAS. Time-bound access, emergency roles, and temporary project permissions can all follow consistent workflows, backed by clear approvals. Every change leaves a traceable audit trail, supporting internal reviews and external audits.
Rethinking GRC for a Connected SAP Landscape
SAP will remain the operational and financial core for many enterprises, but risk now travels across every application that touches a critical process. SAP-only GRC leaves gaps around cloud services, analytics tools, and external platforms, making it harder to answer tough audit and compliance questions with confidence. Cross-application governance closes those gaps by aligning SoD, access control, and monitoring with end-to-end business flows, not just a single system. It also reduces manual clean-up, duplicated effort, and last-minute audit firefighting.
To see how Diligent Global’s User Access Shield can help you move to unified, cross-application GRC, book a demo with our team.
