What is Clean Core? (plain language)
What you'll learn
Clean Core means keeping SAP standard untouched and putting custom needs beside it on supported connection points, so the system stays easy to upgrade.
- Keep the SAP standard core untouched.
- Put custom needs beside it, on supported, stable connection points.
- This keeps the system easy to upgrade.
Clean Core means keeping the standard SAP system — the 'core' — untouched, and placing any custom needs beside it on supported connection points that SAP publishes and promises to keep stable. The core stays standard; your special requirements live next to it, plugged in through official sockets rather than wired into the internal machinery.
The reason this matters is upgrades. When the custom parts only ever attach at supported, stable points, SAP can improve and update the core without breaking them. That keeps the whole system easy to upgrade — which is the entire point of the approach.
Crucially, Clean Core does not mean 'no customisation.' Organisations still adapt SAP to how they work. It is about where and how that adaptation attaches: beside the core on stable connections, never embedded inside the standard code.
Key points
- Keep the SAP standard core untouched.
- Put custom needs beside it, on supported, stable connection points.
- This keeps the system easy to upgrade.
- It is about where customisation attaches — not a ban on customisation.
Examples
A company needs an extra approval step. The Clean Core way adds it beside the standard process on a supported hook, so the standard order process underneath can still be upgraded freely.
Source notes: clean-core-curriculum (business synthesis)
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