ASUG began to roll out its sig­na­ture Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research last week, focus­ing on 2023 key themes — includ­ing inno­va­tion, trans­for­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, and knowledge/​skill gaps — and com­mit­ments to dive deep­er in future data-dri­ven conversations.

For the ini­tial research web­cast, Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO, and Maris­sa Gilbert, ASUG Research Direc­tor, high­light­ed select find­ings and tied in ASUG resources that could help mem­bers with chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties that recent­ly sur­faced or showed trends over time. The duo ref­er­enced the upcom­ing ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA and Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) Con­fer­ence, the ASUG Pathfind­er tech­nol­o­gy curat­ed con­tent offer­ing, and this First Five week­ly newsletter.

Scott said the six years of Pulse research and the 15% jump in respon­dents this year (806 par­tic­i­pants) ​“gives us a lot of data to think about,” and essen­tial, com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion ​“to under­stand what peers are doing.”

More Data Deep Dives

Scott and Gilbert not­ed addi­tion­al ​“deep dive” web­casts plan to explore Pulse results drawn from spe­cif­ic respon­dent seg­ments, such as job func­tions, details relat­ed to SAP tech­nolo­gies and solu­tions, cloud jour­neys, and inno­va­tion strategies.

In the data shared dur­ing the web­cast, Gilbert said topline data on inno­va­tion strate­gies remains rel­a­tive­ly unchanged over the last three years. In 2023, 56% of respon­dents char­ac­ter­ized inno­va­tion as ​“sus­tain­able” (mak­ing incre­men­tal improve­ments and con­tin­u­ous enhance­ments); 17% called them­selves ​“con­ser­v­a­tive” (rarely mak­ing changes); and anoth­er 7% said they are ​“rad­i­cal” (invent­ing com­plete­ly new products/​services).

Accord­ing to Scott and Gilbert, the inno­va­tion find­ings reflect con­tin­ued uncer­tain­ty in busi­ness, the eco­nom­ic out­look, and sup­ply chain issues.

“The need to inno­vate isn’t chang­ing,” and to achieve inno­va­tion, ​“dig­i­ti­za­tion is essen­tial for orga­ni­za­tions” — for SAP cus­tomers and ASUG mem­bers, Scott said. Gilbert not­ed SAP S/4HANA-BTP con­fer­ence keynote speak­er Jack Shaw will dis­cuss rad­i­cal inno­va­tion among his top­ics at the upcom­ing event.

The Rise of RISE with SAP

Pulse 2023 showed dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions con­tin­ue to advance, with few­er respon­dents oper­at­ing on ECC, a year-over-year con­sis­tent 46% of par­tic­i­pants using SAP S/4HANA, and, as Gilbert remarked, ​“RISE rose,” refer­ring to the 11% that said they imple­ment­ed RISE with SAP as a solution.

Mean­while, Scott com­ment­ed on study data high­light­ing tech­nolo­gies with the ​“most impact” on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion: 63% cit­ed data/​analytics, while 44% not­ed automa­tion. ​“Data and ana­lyt­ics are most impor­tant for trans­for­ma­tions,” Scott said, but orga­ni­za­tions may be ham­pered by tal­ent and skills gaps and jobs that go unfilled over long periods.

Main­tain­ing knowl­edge­able staff/​staff turnover (37%), specif­i­cal­ly on SAP S/4HANA; mas­ter data and gov­er­nance issues (32%); and inter­nal skills to man­age new prod­ucts (30%) hin­dered orga­ni­za­tions’ tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness progress, accord­ing to this year’s research. Along with the data gov­er­nance top­ic, Scott shared, ​“When I talk to ASUG mem­bers, I hear a LOT of orga­ni­za­tions spend a LOT of time on mas­ter data. It’s most challenging.”

Focus Areas Spread

Sur­vey respon­dents also cit­ed a bevy of focus areas for the year, includ­ing SAP and non-SAP inte­gra­tion (45%), stan­dard­iz­ing busi­ness process­es and mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA (each at 42%), dashboards/​analytics (33%), and cybersecurity/​data pro­tec­tion (30%).

Scott echoed the impor­tance of enter­prise stan­dard­iza­tion of busi­ness process­es: ​“Busi­ness process enable­ment is the heart of what we do.” 

Gilbert not­ed ASUG research that fur­ther probed cur­rent inter­est and adop­tion of SAP BTP Results showed 45% are using BTP, while anoth­er 32% said they are con­sid­er­ing the solution. 

The on-demand web­cast is available.