Read the full ASUG 2024 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research here.

As ASUG pre­pares to unveil the full results of its sig­na­ture 2024 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research sur­vey, insights already abound as to the atti­tudes, pref­er­ences, and plans of ASUG mem­bers as they relate to their cur­rent and future invest­ments in SAP technology.

SAP cus­tomers con­tin­ue to pre­pare their orga­ni­za­tions for future trans­for­ma­tion, and a sense of urgency is tak­ing hold with regard to cloud migra­tion ini­tia­tives. Shift­ing from on-premis­es ERP envi­ron­ments to the cloud, and embrac­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), will prove com­plex and time-con­sum­ing for many intel­li­gent enterprises. 

And with SAP com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing main­stream main­te­nance for SAP Busi­ness Suite 7, which includes SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) 6, through the end of 2027, ASUG mem­bers are pro­gress­ing toward adop­tion of its suc­ces­sor, SAP S/4HANA, in increas­ing num­bers. ASUG mem­bers are also sharp­en­ing their focus on inte­gra­tion chal­lenges, seek­ing to max­i­mize their bud­gets, and turn­ing their atten­tion to upskilling their workforces.

Here are our top take­aways from the 2024 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research, to be unveiled in full at a future date:

It’s the year 20S/4.

2024 sig­ni­fies a tip­ping point in ASUG mem­bers’ imple­men­ta­tion of SAP S/4HANA. First launched in 2015, almost a decade ago, the ERP soft­ware — intend­ed to cov­er all core capa­bil­i­ties and day-to-day process­es of an intel­li­gent enter­prise — is now embraced by more SAP users than ever before. 

47% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers are either already using SAP S/4HANA or cur­rent­ly start­ing the imple­men­ta­tion process, accord­ing to ASUG’s Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research find­ings. With­in two years, 69% of sur­vey respon­dents expect to have imple­ment­ed SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA is the top focus area for ASUG mem­bers this year, with 48% of those sur­veyed call­ing it ​“most impor­tant” to their orga­ni­za­tions in 2024 (com­pared to 42% in 2023). In addi­tion, mem­bers report that the top skill set miss­ing or lack­ing at their orga­ni­za­tions is SAP S/4HANA exper­tise. As the 2027 dead­line for end of main­stream main­te­nance nears, demand for imple­men­ta­tion and migra­tion resources will like­ly surge; 41% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers say they still plan to imple­ment SAP S/4HANA, point­ing to the in-progress nature of these ini­tia­tives for many in the SAP user community. 

This iden­ti­fied focus on SAP S/4HANA aligns with what ASUG mem­bers report of their readi­ness to increase SAP spend­ing. 52% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers report­ed mak­ing more invest­ments in SAP as a part of their tech­nol­o­gy stack in 2024 (as opposed to 46% in 2023), with SAP S/4HANA cit­ed as the lead­ing rea­son for mem­bers to expand their exist­ing SAP invest­ments. Oth­er rea­sons for increased SAP invest­ments, as report­ed by sur­vey respon­dents, includ­ed busi­ness growth, increased func­tion­al­i­ty, and inte­grat­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing more sys­tems into SAP. 

Accord­ing to one SAP cus­tomer and ASUG sur­vey respon­dent, addi­tion­al invest­ments are being made in con­sult­ing, software/​services acqui­si­tion, migra­tion, inte­gra­tion, and edu­ca­tion as their com­pa­ny pur­sues SAP S/4HANA migra­tion. Anoth­er not­ed that their company’s expand­ed glob­al use of SAP is cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to upgrade its U.S. mar­ket to S/4HANA.

Cloud growth con­tin­ues to rise.

ASUG mem­bers increas­ing­ly see them­selves in the cloud, but address­ing costs and secu­ri­ty con­cerns remains essential. 

57% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers view migrat­ing to the cloud as hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant impact on their orga­ni­za­tions’ over­ar­ch­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts, sec­ondary only to data analytics/​dashboards (62%).

ASUG mem­bers are start­ing to shift away from on-premis­es ERP envi­ron­ments in increas­ing num­bers, con­sis­tent with the move­ment of over­all SAP instances out­side of SAP S/4HANA. Still, SAP S/4HANA migra­tion is a prin­ci­pal dri­ver for mem­bers mov­ing to the cloud. In 2024, the major­i­ty of ASUG’s Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer sur­vey respon­dents (62%) run or will run SAP S/4HANA in the cloud — more specif­i­cal­ly in a pri­vate cloud (40%), man­aged cloud (16%), and pub­lic cloud (6%). 

2024 SAP S/4HANA Cloud Envi­ron­ments

2024 SAP S/4HANA Cloud Envi­ron­ments. Amer­i­c­as’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) con­duct­ed its annu­al Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer study in October/​November 2023. The results are based on respons­es from 766 par­tic­i­pants who are mem­bers of ASUG, the world’s largest inde­pen­dent SAP user group.

Mul­ti­ple cloud solu­tions are on the radar for SAP cus­tomers’ future use — and with SAP focus­ing on deliv­er­ing inno­va­tions specif­i­cal­ly to its cloud cus­tomers, adop­tion of its cloud solu­tions is expect­ed to increase. Across the board, more ASUG sur­vey respon­dents are con­sid­er­ing future use of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, RISE with SAP, SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, SAP HANA Enter­prise Cloud, and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, com­pared to 2023. 

Among sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers cur­rent­ly run­ning on-premis­es SAP instances, costs or resources, secu­ri­ty, and com­pli­ance were not­ed as the top hur­dles pre­vent­ing them from migrat­ing to the cloud. Address­ing these con­cerns would move the nee­dle for these cus­tomers in terms of accel­er­at­ing their embrace of cloud ERP. Some ASUG sur­vey respon­dents in on-premis­es envi­ron­ments sig­naled that they are cur­rent­ly migrat­ing or plan­ning to migrate to the cloud.

It’s busi­ness as usu­al, in a post-pan­dem­ic world.

Pan­dem­ic-induced busi­ness dis­rup­tions are no longer top of mind for ASUG mem­bers, and orga­ni­za­tions are mov­ing for­ward with their tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives, with bud­get, inte­gra­tion, and mas­ter data main­te­nance cit­ed as lead­ing chal­lenges orga­ni­za­tions face this year. 

Main­tain­ing knowl­edge­able staff/​turnover and sup­ply chain issues (two chal­lenges exac­er­bat­ed by the pan­dem­ic) decreased by 8% and 11% respec­tive­ly in 2024, accord­ing to sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers. Though main­tain­ing knowl­edge­able staff/​turnover is still a notable chal­lenge for orga­ni­za­tions, it is no longer the lead­ing challenge. 

This year, sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers report­ed that bud­get issues are the top chal­lenge for orga­ni­za­tions, and fur­ther indi­cat­ed that cost reduc­tion, rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, and increas­ing process effi­cien­cies are all ways in which they are mov­ing to address this chal­lenge. ​“We are grow­ing as an orga­ni­za­tion both organ­i­cal­ly and through acqui­si­tions,” one respon­dent stat­ed. ​“We need to spend mon­ey on tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port the growth.” 

Pre-pan­dem­ic real­i­ty is re-emerg­ing, and with it so are inte­gra­tion chal­lenges relat­ed to merg­ers and acqui­si­tions (M&A), accord­ing to ASUG sur­vey respon­dents. As inter­est rates rose across the last two years, com­pa­nies regained some of their tra­di­tion­al lever­age in M&A deals, com­pared with the peri­od of low inter­est rates seen dur­ing the pan­dem­ic that favored finan­cial buy­ers. With inte­gra­tion a top focus area for orga­ni­za­tions in 2024, as well as a lead­ing chal­lenge, an increase in M&As is like­ly to com­plex­i­fy inte­gra­tion ini­tia­tives in the com­ing year.

It is prime time for the great reskilling.

Work­force needs con­tin­ue to shift. While sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers still cite main­tain­ing knowl­edge­able staff/​turnover as a top chal­lenge, it has dropped from 37% in 2023 to 29% in 2024. ASUG mem­bers increas­ing­ly are turn­ing their atten­tion to upskilling and reor­ga­ni­za­tion, so that they are bet­ter equipped to imple­ment new technologies. 

29% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers plan to imple­ment new tech­nol­o­gy this year, and almost as many (27%) report­ed that they are strug­gling to keep up with the pace of change relat­ed to tech­nol­o­gy. Fur­ther high­light­ing the need to focus on tal­ent align­ment, 28% of orga­ni­za­tions strug­gle to find the right inter­nal can­di­dates with the skills to man­age new projects. 

ASUG mem­bers are also artic­u­lat­ing the need for more train­ing to tack­le this chal­lenge. Skills and train­ing con­tin­ue to be a pri­or­i­ty at orga­ni­za­tions, and can­di­dates with SAP S/4HANA skills are most in demand, fol­lowed by AI, opti­miz­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, and busi­ness process management. 

Amer­i­c­as’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) con­duct­ed its annu­al Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer study in October/​November 2023. The results are based on respons­es from 766 par­tic­i­pants who are mem­bers of ASUG, the world’s largest inde­pen­dent SAP user group.

ASUG Mem­bers’ Insights on AI

Exam­in­ing ASUG sur­vey respon­dents’ atti­tudes toward arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sug­gests that many tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als believe AI will help their orga­ni­za­tions over­come press­ing busi­ness issues. Asked what chal­lenges they’d ide­al­ly want to solve with AI, 45% of sur­vey respon­dents select­ed ​“dash­boards and ana­lyt­ics,” while 22% select­ed ​“cus­tomer experience.” 

Tran­si­tion­ing from man­u­al to dig­i­tal process­es and inte­gra­tion between SAP and non-SAP sys­tems, mean­while, each reg­is­tered with 21% of sur­vey respon­dents as a poten­tial chal­lenge for AI to sup­port. Con­cerns over data con­tin­ue to hold back orga­ni­za­tions, with only 13% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers stat­ing that they’re cur­rent­ly will­ing to load data into a gen­er­a­tive AI model.

SAP cus­tomers’ choic­es for the top tech­nolo­gies impact­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts are data analytics/​dashboards (62%), cloud (57%), and automa­tion (43%), con­sis­tent with those report­ed in 2023, in both share and rank­ing. This year, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)/machine learn­ing (ML) surged as one of these tech­nolo­gies, with 38% of sur­veyed ASUG mem­bers select­ing these tech­nolo­gies as impact­ful for their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives (as opposed to 23% in 2023).

Read the full report!

SAP cus­tomers con­tin­ue to pre­pare their orga­ni­za­tions for future trans­for­ma­tion, and a sense of urgency is tak­ing hold with regard to cloud migra­tion ini­tia­tives. Shift­ing from on-premis­es ERP envi­ron­ments to the cloud and embrac­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, will prove com­plex and time-con­sum­ing for many intel­li­gent enterprises. 

Indeed, SAP S/4HANA is the top focus area for ASUG Mem­bers this year, with 48% of those sur­veyed call­ing it ​“most impor­tant” to their orga­ni­za­tions in 2024 (com­pared to 42% in 2023). Our research also reveals that the skills gap con­tin­ues to be a grow­ing chal­lenge for com­pa­nies. Explore the issues, chal­lenges, and oppor­tu­ni­ties SAP cus­tomers expe­ri­ence in the ASUG 2024 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research.

Explore the insights in the ASUG 2024 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research.

ASUG will con­tin­ue to share more 2024 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research through­out this year on ASUG dig­i­tal chan­nels and in-per­son at ASUG expe­ri­ences. Join ASUG on LinkedIn; we would love to hear your thoughts on this year’s results. 

Amer­i­c­as’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) con­duct­ed its annu­al Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer study in October/​November 2023. The results are based on respons­es from 766 par­tic­i­pants who are mem­bers of ASUG, the world’s largest inde­pen­dent SAP user group.