The fol­low­ing arti­cle was authored by Car­olyn Szczurek, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead at ASUG.

As the SAP ecosys­tem evolves, with orga­ni­za­tions migrat­ing to the cloud, embrac­ing SAP S/4HANA, and prepar­ing to lever­age cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies like AI, empow­er­ing the new gen­er­a­tion of SAP pro­fes­sion­als has nev­er been more important. 

All over the coun­try, uni­ver­si­ties are hard at work empow­er­ing and edu­cat­ing stu­dents to enter the SAP ecosys­tem and become the enter­prise-tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als of tomor­row. I recent­ly had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend the Cen­tral Michi­gan Uni­ver­si­ty (CMU) ERP­sim Invi­ta­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion, where I wit­nessed these efforts firsthand. 

An immer­sive busi­ness sim­u­la­tion game that lever­ages SAP soft­ware, ERP­sim is designed to help stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als learn more about ERP sys­tems and their imple­men­ta­tion, focus­ing on how these enter­prise solu­tions enable busi­ness strat­e­gy. With­in the game, par­tic­i­pants form teams and man­age a vir­tu­al com­pa­ny in the Ger­man cere­al mar­ket, mak­ing strate­gic deci­sions around demand fore­cast­ing, pro­cure­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing, mar­ket­ing, pric­ing, and finan­cial man­age­ment. Each team starts with an $8 mil­lion loan and must bal­ance invest­ments, pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, and debt man­age­ment to achieve the high­est cor­po­rate valuation.

For the com­pe­ti­tion, 40 teams split into two flights, with each game con­sist­ing of four rounds of 20 sim­u­lat­ed days, in which each day last­ed just 60 sec­onds. The top teams from each flight advanced to the cham­pi­onship round, where schol­ar­ships were award­ed to the high­est-rank­ing teams.

Engag­ing the Next Gen­er­a­tion of SAP Professionals 

Attend­ing the event pro­vid­ed an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als — includ­ing men­tors and coach­es — who were there to sup­port each com­pet­ing team. It was a great plat­form to intro­duce ASUG to a new audi­ence and high­light the val­ue of ASUG membership.

Dur­ing the event, shar­ing key insights from the 2025 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research, it became clear that com­pa­nies are increas­ing­ly focused on the skills gaps they face in today’s evolv­ing SAP land­scape. ASUG­’s research con­firms orga­ni­za­tions are strug­gling to keep up with emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, with 23% cit­ing chal­lenges in main­tain­ing knowl­edge­able staff and 35% strug­gling with inter­nal skills to man­age new projects. These find­ings under­score that stu­dents study­ing SAP are in the right place at the right time, as demand for their exper­tise con­tin­ues to grow. (Stay tuned to ASUG First Five for the full results of this year’s ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research.)

So, which skill sets are most crit­i­cal for orga­ni­za­tions? ASUG research high­lights that top pri­or­i­ties for mem­bers include SAP S/4HANA, as well as gain­ing exper­tise in busi­ness process man­age­ment, inte­gra­tion and APIs, data sci­ence and ana­lyt­ics, and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. One pro­fes­sor at the event rein­forced this out­look by shar­ing his advice to stu­dents: com­ple­ment an SAP ERP degree with a sec­ondary focus, such as data ana­lyt­ics or cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, to enhance job prospects after graduation. 

I also dis­cussed key focus areas for orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing SAP S/4HANA, inte­gra­tion, stan­dard­iza­tion, and automa­tion — as well as the tech­nolo­gies dri­ving dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, such as data ana­lyt­ics, cloud, AI/ML, and automa­tion. Under­stand­ing these trends can help stu­dents and uni­ver­si­ties align their cur­ric­u­la with the evolv­ing needs of the SAP job market.

What Makes a Great SAP Professional?

To make the ses­sion inter­ac­tive, I asked atten­dees to share a skill that every SAP pro­fes­sion­al should have. I posed the same ques­tion ear­li­er this month at the ASUG New Eng­land Chap­ter Meet­ing and was curi­ous to com­pare respons­es. Com­mon themes across both groups includ­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, patience, and ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing, but CMU stu­dents also high­light­ed more tech­ni­cal skills like ABAP, busi­ness require­ments under­stand­ing, and atten­tion to detail.

To fur­ther engage stu­dents, I asked them: if you could ask an SAP pro­fes­sion­al one ques­tion about their career, what would it be? Here is what they want­ed to know:

• What do you wish you knew before start­ing your career in SAP?
• What’s the best advice for some­one look­ing to work with SAP?
• What cer­ti­fi­ca­tions or cours­es should stu­dents focus on to secure an entry-lev­el position?
• How do you nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ty of SAP?

It was excit­ing to see stu­dents active­ly pos­ing these ques­tions to men­tors and team coach­es through­out the event. Beyond the com­pe­ti­tion itself, ERP­sim pro­vid­ed an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents to devel­op their SAP knowl­edge and gain insights that will help them stand out when apply­ing for jobs.

Beyond the Com­pe­ti­tion: Career Devel­op­ment and Hiring

While the com­pe­ti­tion was intense, it was clear that stu­dents were equal­ly focused on net­work­ing and career oppor­tu­ni­ties. Two recur­ring queries were ​“how to land an SAP job as an entry-lev­el can­di­date” and ​“what com­pa­nies pri­or­i­tize when hir­ing grad­u­ates from SAP-focused programs.”

This made the keynote by Ray Russ, Direc­tor at ABeam Con­sult­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly impact­ful. He not only addressed these career con­cerns but also demon­strat­ed his com­mit­ment to hir­ing tal­ent — last year, Russ hired three stu­dents on the spot at this very event!

Attract­ing 230 stu­dents and 65 indus­try pro­fes­sion­als from 22 firms, the CMU ERP­sim Invi­ta­tion­al was a remark­able event. A lot of cred­it goes to Vishal Shah, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at CMU, and his team for orches­trat­ing such an impres­sive com­pe­ti­tion. The lev­el of engage­ment, learn­ing, and net­work­ing that took place in just one day (plus a net­work­ing event the night before) was phenomenal.

I look for­ward to attend­ing more of these com­pe­ti­tions in the future, and engag­ing with the next gen­er­a­tion of SAP professionals! 

Car­olyn Szczurek is Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead at ASUG.