Will the use of SAP become less and less? Have any central enterprises switched from SAP to domestic UFIDA and Kingdee?

The long-term trajectory for SAP's market presence in China is one of gradual relative decline within certain segments, particularly among state-owned enterprises (SOE) where national policy incentives are strongest, but a wholesale collapse of its business is not imminent. SAP remains deeply entrenched in the operational cores of China's largest and most complex multinational corporations and major central SOEs, especially in capital-intensive industries like automotive, petrochemicals, and advanced manufacturing. Its strength lies in supporting highly integrated, globalized business processes that require robust, scalable, and globally standardized ERP platforms. The cost, risk, and operational disruption associated with ripping out and replacing such mission-critical systems at this scale are prohibitive in the short to medium term, ensuring SAP a sustained, sticky presence in its top-tier client base for the foreseeable future.

However, a clear and policy-driven shift is underway, creating a bifurcated market. There is verified evidence that a number of central SOEs have initiated projects to replace legacy SAP modules or entire systems with domestic alternatives from vendors like Kingdee and Yonyou (the question mentions UFIDA, which is a brand under Yonyou). This movement is not primarily driven by a pure feature-for-feature technical superiority of domestic software but is a strategic response to national policies emphasizing technological self-reliance, supply chain security, and data sovereignty under broader initiatives like "xinchuang" (IT application innovation). For new, greenfield projects—especially in subsidiaries, less complex business units, or in sectors deemed strategically sensitive—domestic ERP solutions are increasingly the mandated or strongly preferred choice. The mechanism here is less about organic market competition and more about a structured, government-guided ecosystem migration.

The implications of this trend are multifaceted. For SAP, it signifies a strategic pivot from uncontested dominance to competing in a managed market. Its future in China will likely focus on servicing its existing large global clients, deepening its cloud offerings, and potentially forming compliant partnerships with local vendors for hybrid solutions. For domestic vendors like Kingdee and Yonyou, the SOE migration provides an unprecedented opportunity to develop and mature their high-end product capabilities by solving the complex problems of massive enterprises, moving beyond their traditional stronghold in small and medium-sized businesses. The critical challenge for these vendors will be to build ecosystems and implementation expertise that match the global scale and integration depth that SAP currently provides, which is a multi-year endeavor.

Ultimately, the use of SAP will not become "less and less" in an absolute sense for all companies, but its share of new large-enterprise deals, particularly in the state-owned sector, is under sustained pressure. The market is evolving toward a durable coexistence where SAP maintains its legacy stronghold and competes for globalized business, while domestic platforms capture the growth engine of state-guided digitalization. The success of this substitution will hinge on the ability of domestic ERP systems to manage the extreme complexities of a global central enterprise's logistics, financial consolidation, and multi-national regulatory compliance without compromising operational efficiency, a test that is still ongoing.