We’ve been keep­ing up with ASUG mem­bers with the ASUG Pulse Check sur­vey, ask­ing how they are con­tin­u­ing to adjust to new work and busi­ness prac­tices dur­ing COVID-19.

Since mid-March 2020, we’ve asked (and received hun­dreds of respons­es) about a wide range of top­ics: the sta­tus of IT projects and staffing, orga­ni­za­tion­al spend­ing trends, and train­ing and devel­op­ment opportunities. 

We’ve also heard from respon­dents on how pro­duc­tive they were, and how they felt about attend­ing vir­tu­al events. (Spoil­er alert: They know they are valu­able, but atten­dees don’t uni­ver­sal­ly love them because of the wide range in the qual­i­ty of web­casts.) We also have includ­ed a dif­fer­ent ​“fun fact” ques­tion each week (e.g., the snack foods that were get­ting respon­dents through their new work­ing situations). 

We always want to know how ASUG can help. See below for break­downs of key results.

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Wave 13

Wave 13 of our ASUG Pulse Check will be the last for the remain­der of 2020. We will pick up our reg­u­lar checks again on a new sched­ule in 2021. In the mean­time, keep an eye out for our 2021 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer study out­reach to begin in October.

For Wave 13, we focused on gaug­ing SAP cus­tomers’ atti­tudes and behav­iors when it comes to attend­ing vir­tu­al events. These online oppor­tu­ni­ties have become the main way respon­dents have been net­work­ing with col­leagues and con­sum­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment opportunities.

Sta­tus of Operations

A full 63% of respon­dents report­ed their orga­ni­za­tions were oper­at­ing at nor­mal (50%) and above nor­mal (13%) lev­els. This is right in line with the aver­age rat­ings since ASUG began keep­ing track of these in Week 1.

The Most Engag­ing Events

Respon­dents indi­cat­ed that they attend­ed 13 web­casts and four vir­tu­al events dur­ing the past three months, which is an aver­age of 15.3 and 6.9 hours spent on these oppor­tu­ni­ties, respec­tive­ly. With that in mind, more than half (57%) of respon­dents said they are most inter­est­ed in pre­sen­ta­tions from thought lead­ers (sans the sales pitch), and 51% pay the most atten­tion to Q&A ses­sions where the experts answer atten­dees’ questions.

View­ing Preferences

Attend­ing vir­tu­al events while work­ing remote­ly can present some chal­lenges for our respon­dents, who note that rou­tine tasks and work still need to get accom­plished. As a result, we found that flex­i­ble offer­ings are key to help­ing respon­dents fit these events into their schedules. 

Just under half (46%) of respon­dents con­sume web­casts live, while anoth­er 44% watch some live and some on-demand. When it comes to big­ger vir­tu­al events, 46% of respon­dents also watch these live, while 40% con­sume them through a mix of live and on-demand viewing.

See the Pulse Check, Wave 13 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Wave 12

In Wave 12 of this ASUG mem­ber sur­vey, we looked to the future, focus­ing on respon­dents’ feel­ings about the out­look for their indus­try and their con­fi­dence as a mem­ber of the work­force. Here are a few of the highlights: 

Sta­tus of Operations

We’ve been track­ing oper­a­tion lev­els of respon­dents’ com­pa­nies since Week 1. More than half (53%) of the respon­dents indi­cat­ed they’re oper­at­ing at nor­mal lev­els, which is a good sign. 

The Effects of COVID-19 on Var­i­ous Industries

The out­break has been tough on many indus­tries, with only telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, high tech, and life sci­ences con­sid­ered bet­ter off because of the pan­dem­ic, accord­ing to our results. 

The good news is that most respon­dents expect cer­tain indus­tries to return to nor­mal in the next one to two years. For exam­ple, near­ly a quar­ter of the respon­dents believe sports and enter­tain­ment will bounce back in six months to a year, while about a third spec­u­late a return to nor­mal for the sports and enter­tain­ment indus­try between one and two years. 

Work­force Con­fi­dence Index

SAP cus­tomers have a sim­i­lar­ly opti­mistic out­look when it comes to their career, with 70% of respon­dents either strong­ly or some­what agree­ing that they have the abil­i­ty to get or hold a steady job in the cur­rent climate. 

We cal­cu­lat­ed that as a Work­force Con­fi­dence Index of +42. That opti­mism is tem­pered some­what when we asked whether their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion would improve in the next six months. A rough­ly equal per­cent­age of respon­dents agreed with this state­ment as dis­agreed (38% vs. 34%). The same was true when we asked whether respon­dents expect­ed to progress in their career this year. One-third agreed that they would (33%), and just under a third (32%) disagreed. 

See the Pulse Check, Wave 12 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 11

As many of you know, we wrapped up a suc­cess­ful ASUGFOR­WARD event in June, and are busy work­ing on our fall line­up of vir­tu­al events. (Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion from ASUG.)

With that in mind, we asked our respon­dents to tell us how they have been engag­ing with ASUG dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. (There were not huge changes in our sur­vey results on busi­ness oper­a­tions, spend­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives, so I’ll pick up those results in my next post.)

So, let’s take a look at two of the results to learn how our 54 respon­dents are con­nect­ing with ASUG and what top­ics they want to know about.

Attend­ing live web­casts is the top way respon­dents have engaged with ASUG since COVID-19. Reg­is­ter­ing for ASUGFOR­WARD was anoth­er main way respon­dents have engaged with ASUG (43%). Lis­ten­ing to a web­cast on demand or read­ing an arti­cle is how almost 40% of respon­dents have engaged with ASUG since COVID-19.

The num­ber-one top­ic respon­dents would like to hear more about from ASUG is SAP S/4HANA. Many would like to hear cus­tomer sto­ries of suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tions and how to ful­ly real­ize busi­ness out­comes. Tim­ing of upgrades, as well as train­ing, were also not­ed. SAP appli­ca­tions — HR and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, in par­tic­u­lar — were also top top­ics, fol­lowed by cloud applications.

I’ll also include the results of our ​“fun fact” ques­tion: What is your biggest work­place pet peeve (and we weren’t ask­ing about vir­tu­al ones)? 

At the top was meet­ings that could have been emails (24%), loud ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions or phone calls from cowork­ers (20%), and inabil­i­ty to con­trol the office tem­per­a­ture (9%).

Makes you kind of miss the office, right? 

See the Pulse Check, Week 11 in this info­graph­ic.

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 10

From the tenth week’s results, we can draw sev­er­al insights from our mem­ber respons­es on busi­ness oper­a­tions, spend­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives. Let me break down a few of the highlights:

1. Sta­tus of Operations

In week 10, just about half (47%) of the 136 respon­dents said they were oper­at­ing nor­mal­ly, which was a drop of 13% from the pre­vi­ous sur­vey. Yet over the 10-week peri­od, this num­ber is, on aver­age, where it’s been all along. 

2. Shifts in Spending

Unlike the big change in oper­a­tions, we found that shifts in spend­ing were no longer increas­ing, and that is actu­al­ly good news. As orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue return­ing to nor­mal lev­els of oper­a­tions, shifts in spend­ing remain con­sis­tent — in fact, just over two-thirds of orga­ni­za­tions are now (or have recent­ly) expe­ri­enced shifts in spend­ing due to COVID-19. As a ref­er­ence point, when we asked the ques­tion in week 1, just 41% said they were see­ing shifts in spend­ing as a result of COVID-19.

3. Rise of Can­cel­la­tions

In week 10, sig­nif­i­cant­ly more orga­ni­za­tions are can­cel­ing a few planned tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives right now due to COVID-19 (up 13% over week 9’s results). This increase is bal­anced by a sig­nif­i­cant drop in those not can­cel­ing any planned tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives. Both met­rics are also sig­nif­i­cant­ly out­side aver­age scores that we’ve cap­tured over time.

For more results from this week, please see the Pulse Check, Week 10 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 9

Last week, I shared the results on two new ques­tions we asked: steps respon­dents want­ed their orga­ni­za­tions to take in order to safe­ly return to an office, and con­verse­ly, steps respon­dents didn’t want their orga­ni­za­tions to take. (See week 8 for those results.)

As those of us in the U.S. cel­e­brate Memo­r­i­al Day week­end, I’d like to present some inter­est­ing results from this gen­er­al ques­tion we asked in week 9: What does our respon­dents’ intent and readi­ness to return to life out­side their homes look like?

Let me high­light three data points from the 100 respon­dents who took the survey:

1. Inter­est in Pro­fes­sion­al Activities

If social and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing restric­tions were lift­ed, if there were lim­it­ed access to test­ing, or if rapid and accu­rate test­ing for COVID-19 were avail­able tomor­row, the bulk of respon­dents told us they are both most like­ly to start work­ing on-site at the office and are least like­ly to attend conventions. 

2. Inter­est in Pub­lic Activ­i­ties in Crowd­ed Places

When things open up, more than half of respon­dents will avoid tak­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion, going to crowd­ed places, or trav­el­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly. Respon­dents express more will­ing­ness to trav­el domes­ti­cal­ly, with only 1 in3 indi­cat­ing they will avoid this activ­i­ty alto­geth­er. (See below.)

3. Inter­est in Recre­ation­al Activities

Respon­dents are least like­ly to avoid activ­i­ties that last for a short­er dura­tion and that like­ly allow for more per­son­al space, for exam­ple, shop­ping in-per­son at nonessen­tial busi­ness­es. Going to a con­cert is the top recre­ation­al activ­i­ty respon­dents do plan to avoid when things open back up.

(Note: We will be mov­ing the ASUG Pulse Check sur­vey to a biweek­ly cadence start­ing May 25, 2020. Thanks to all of you who have respond­ed. It has helped shape our plans to serve you better.)

See the Pulse Check, Week 9 data in this info­graph­ic.

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 8

“What’s it going to be like in the office if and when we go back?” It’s a ques­tion on many people’s minds these days. I’ll share with you sev­er­al data points from this past week’s sur­vey, but first let’s take a look at two changes we saw in can­cel­la­tion and post­pone­ment of tech­nol­o­gy projects.

In week 8, our 90 respon­dents told us they are shift­ing away from can­celling most planned tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives. Instead they report that they are can­cel­ing only a few — or not can­cel­ing any — planned tech­nol­o­gy initiatives.

Regard­ing post­pone­ments, that num­ber declined 11% week over week, with near­ly half of orga­ni­za­tions say­ing they are not post­pon­ing any planned tech­nol­o­gy initiatives.

In both cas­es, respon­dents are can­celling or post­pon­ing planned tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives because they are con­sid­ered unnec­es­sary to core busi­ness oper­a­tions. We’re see­ing that many of these ​“nonessen­tial projects” have been put on hold in order to allow orga­ni­za­tions to focus on COVID-19 ini­tia­tives, which is not sur­pris­ing giv­en the grav­i­ty of its impact on cer­tain orga­ni­za­tions and industries.

Now, to the top­ic of when — and, in some cas­es — if employ­ees start return­ing to their offices. Let’s look at the results of two provoca­tive ques­tions we asked: What steps, if any, do you wish your orga­ni­za­tion would take right now or before open­ing back up, to stay safe amid COVID-19? And the fol­low-up ques­tion: What steps, if any, do you wish your orga­ni­za­tion would not take?

The largest share of respon­dents wish that their orga­ni­za­tions would extend the work from home pol­i­cy. Many respon­dents note feel­ing safer and more pro­duc­tive at home. Pro­vid­ing free COVID-19 or anti­body test­ing, not man­dat­ing returns to the office, and reduc­ing the num­ber of staff in-office are oth­er key steps respon­dents wish their orga­ni­za­tions would take (see below). 

Regard­ing steps respon­dents don’t want their orga­ni­za­tions to take, it appears most respon­dents’ orga­ni­za­tions are doing a good job antic­i­pat­ing what their employ­ees need right now to feel safe. To wit: 84% don’t feel their orga­ni­za­tion is tak­ing any unwar­rant­ed or unnec­es­sary steps. That’s great to hear.

The few respon­dents who note unwar­rant­ed steps men­tion orga­ni­za­tions that are over-com­mu­ni­cat­ing, pro­vid­ing hand-wash­ing instruc­tions, requir­ing staff on-site, and tak­ing tem­per­a­tures to allow entry to the workplace.\

See the Pulse Check, Week 8 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 7

Up to this point, most of our sur­vey ques­tions have focused on the respons­es of indi­vid­u­als and their orga­ni­za­tions to COVID-19. 

In week 7, we began ask­ing ques­tions focused on the next phase of COVID-19: the rebound and return to pub­lic places. I’ll get to those fas­ci­nat­ing respons­es short­ly, but let me first present the results on the core set of data points we’ve been track­ing for the past sev­en weeks:

Per­son­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty: In week 7, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dipped slight­ly among the 92 respon­dents, with sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er rat­ing over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as extreme­ly or very pro­duc­tive than in pre­vi­ous weeks (includ­ing a 11% drop ver­sus week 6).

Sta­tus of Oper­a­tions: At 51%, week 7 sur­vey respon­dents make up the largest share of orga­ni­za­tions oper­at­ing nor­mal­ly since the Pulse Check research ini­tia­tive began.

Spend­ing on Tech­nol­o­gy Ini­tia­tives: The can­cel­la­tion and post­pone­ment respons­es relat­ed to IT projects con­tin­ue to paint a vari­able pic­ture. For exam­ple, near­ly half of the respon­dents (47%) said their orga­ni­za­tions are not can­cel­ing any planned ini­tia­tives. That’s good news. How­ev­er, a near­ly equal amount (45%) shared that they are post­pon­ing a few planned ini­tia­tives. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the top rea­son giv­en for project post­pone­ment was that they are not con­sid­ered core (a.k.a. ​“nice to have” initiatives).

Next, we asked if orga­ni­za­tions have plans in place to reopen and then what that will look like. The graph­ic (below) shows the break­down of the answers as well as the dis­cus­sions cur­rent­ly happening.

Last­ly, we asked about respon­dents’ plans for return­ing to their cor­po­rate offices. Most antic­i­pate return­ing to the office to attend meet­ings in-per­son in the third quar­ter (44%) fol­lowed by the sec­ond quar­ter (30%) of 2020. More than 1 in 7 indi­cate some­thing oth­er than time is dri­ving their readi­ness to return to nor­mal activities.

See the Pulse Check, Week 7 data in this infographic.

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 6

For this week, we asked about the effects COVID-19 was hav­ing on our mem­bers’ atti­tudes and behav­iors, their busi­ness oper­a­tions and spend­ing, as well as tech­nol­o­gy implementations.

I’m hap­py to report that, over­all, the respon­dents for week 6 con­tin­ue to feel pos­i­tive, with just a few slight vari­a­tions in how they are feel­ing both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. But the gen­er­al sen­ti­ment is that everyone’s still hang­ing in there.

Respon­dents say their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is back up to or exceed­ing lev­els expe­ri­enced in weeks 2 and 3 of the Pulse Check sur­vey, with 74% (of the 61 respon­dents) report­ing being extreme­ly or very pro­duc­tive dur­ing the past week. 

Orga­ni­za­tion­al spend­ing con­tin­ues to shift, which is not sur­pris­ing giv­en the amount of busi­ness uncer­tain­ty. The top ways include reduc­tions in costs and spend­ing to pre­serve cash, and also project repri­or­i­ti­za­tion. Con­sis­tent from week 5’s results, respon­dents report their orga­ni­za­tions are tak­ing more seri­ous mea­sures, such as addi­tion­al project delays, can­cel­la­tions, or post­pone­ment, and fur­loughs and layoffs.

So what tech­nolo­gies and IT tac­tics are respon­dent com­pa­nies employ­ing right now? Top­ping the list are: ana­lyt­ics, a focus on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX) and user expe­ri­ence (UX) tools, and a move to the pub­lic cloud. 

Look­ing for­ward, those tech­nolo­gies most respon­dents are plan­ning to use in the future include SAP S/4HANA, AI, and robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA). What’s inter­est­ing to note is that near­ly half of respon­dents are mov­ing for­ward with busi­ness as planned and not putting any planned tech­nol­o­gy imple­men­ta­tions on hold.

And last­ly, we asked about favorite games peo­ple are play­ing right now. It appears that ​“old-school” games are all the rage with our respondents.

See the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 6 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 5

How’s every­one doing? The short answer is this: Respon­dents to our sur­vey con­tin­ue to feel pos­i­tive, which is one of the most encour­ag­ing aspects to the survey. 

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is back up to lev­els expe­ri­enced in weeks 2 and 3, with 72% of the 101 respon­dents say­ing they were extreme­ly or very productive. 

The ways in which orga­ni­za­tion­al spend­ing is shift­ing con­tin­ues to grow as COVID-19 march­es onward. Changes in spend­ing include project repri­or­i­ti­za­tion, reduced or can­celed trav­el, and more dras­tic mea­sures, includ­ing fur­loughs, lay­offs, re-eval­u­at­ing ven­dors for fur­ther cost cut­ting, and addi­tion­al project delays, can­cel­la­tions, or postponements. 

We also asked how our mem­bers are giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty amid COVID-19, with the top three ways includ­ing sup­port­ing local restau­rants, donat­ing sup­plies or funds to oth­ers, and mak­ing per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) or home­made masks.

See the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 5 data in this info­graph­ic.

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 4

I was encour­aged to find that the major­i­ty of respon­dents are still feel­ing good — and some even great — as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues, though work pro­duc­tiv­i­ty took a small dip this week. The results also revealed the pandemic’s down­stream, neg­a­tive effects on planned projects, which is not sur­pris­ing. Last­ly, I was heart­ened to see that most respon­dents still have options for train­ing and development.

See the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 4 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 3

With three weeks’ worth of data we were able to gauge respon­dents’ lev­els of hap­pi­ness and per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and then we exam­ined what was hap­pen­ing with orga­ni­za­tion­al spend­ing. The results were both encour­ag­ing and illus­tra­tive of the dif­fer­ent ways com­pa­nies are bal­anc­ing short- and long-term invest­ments right now to con­tin­ue oper­a­tions and serve their customers.

See the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 3 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 2

We received anoth­er sol­id response rate, and sev­er­al of the cat­e­gories showed sig­nif­i­cant changes week over week. Please watch the short video to hear more about the results.

See the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 2 data in this infographic. 

Results of the ASUG Pulse Check, Week 1

The response rate was high, and many shared their thoughts and con­cerns, which you can learn more about in this short video.

Thank you to those who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing! We will con­tin­ue the ASUG Pulse Check each week with a new set of ques­tions. The sur­vey is open to every­one and we encour­age you to add your voice each week.

P.S. If you’re an ASUG mem­ber, please take a few min­utes to update your pref­er­ences on asug​.com so you can receive the most per­son­al­ized and up-to-date infor­ma­tion from us.

Are you ready to take the week 12 pulse check sur­vey and share how you’re adapt­ing to new work and busi­ness prac­tices? Get a head start here.