Charlottesville reflects on delayed cloud migration after years of ERP challenges

Now, a year later, Charlottesville tech leaders who led the modernization efforts are reflecting back on the challenges and successes of the journey.

The upgrade from the city’s on-prem SAP enterprise resource planning system to the company’s S/4HANA Cloud and ERP started in July 2024, before going live in September 2025.

Charlottesville cycled through “five or six city managers” in a short period, leading to difficulties securing funding and approval, Hawkes said.

He also said that some city leaders didn’t really understand what an ERP was or what SAP offered, and questioned the idea of running an ERP in local government.

But with the new ERP, Hawkes said the city now benefits from a modern, user‑friendly front end with room to grow into artificial intelligence capabilities.