The new year brings new per­spec­tives, and with that, I’m proud to announce the results from the ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2020 study. We can­vassed our mem­bers in North Amer­i­ca to gath­er SAP mar­ket research so we can gauge the atti­tudes, pref­er­ences, and plans of these SAP cus­tomers as they relate to cur­rent and future SAP tech­nol­o­gy decisions. 

I love the ​“pulse” moniker, because what we do is take the vital signs of a wide assort­ment of SAP cus­tomers. This year, the top­ics include: SAP S/4HANA adop­tion, the evolv­ing roles of tech­nol­o­gy teams, which SAP prod­ucts cus­tomers are inves­ti­gat­ing or invest­ing in, and their orga­ni­za­tions’ rela­tion­ships with inno­va­tion. We com­pare data year over year, where appro­pri­ate, to track key areas of difference. 

The results, how­ev­er, are more than just a hand­ful of data points: This mar­ket research informs how ASUG plans to serve our cus­tomers and help them get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy. We use what we learn to dri­ve plan­ning around edu­ca­tion, in-per­son and vir­tu­al events, on-demand dig­i­tal resources, and our ongo­ing advo­ca­cy for members. 

In short, the col­lec­tive SAP cus­tomer voice illu­mi­nates where infor­ma­tion, knowl­edge, and advo­ca­cy are need­ed most. So, let’s have a look at three results from this year’s study.

1. The Pulse on SAP S/4HANA Adoption

This is prob­a­bly one of the ques­tions I receive most often: What’s hap­pen­ing with ASUG mem­bers on SAP S/4HANA adoption?

Well, this year’s results show that SAP S/4HANA tran­si­tions are mov­ing for­ward. All respond­ing orga­ni­za­tions have either already start­ed or are plan­ning to start future SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion projects. What’s most inter­est­ing to me is that 0% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed that they had no plans this year, ver­sus 12% in 2019 who said they weren’t mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA. Keep in mind, that data doesn’t mean they all will decide down the road to adopt SAP S/4HANA — just that, at this point in time, they are active­ly mak­ing assess­ments for their next ERP moves and that they have not ruled SAP S/4HANA out entire­ly.

As I’ve said for sev­er­al years, ASUG believes that if you’re an SAP cus­tomer who wants to grow and accel­er­ate your busi­ness, remove inef­fi­cien­cies, reduce tech­ni­cal debt, and take advan­tage of the lat­est capa­bil­i­ties of SAP soft­ware for your busi­ness, then you need to move to SAP S/4HANA — as far in advance of the 2025 dead­line as possible.

Accord­ing to the 2020 study, respon­dents rec­og­nize the val­ue and effi­cien­cies in migrat­ing to SAP S/4HANA before the 2025 retire­ment date. Enhanced func­tion­al­i­ties and quick wins — such as data ana­lyt­ics and more expan­sive tools with new capa­bil­i­ties — are also what the respon­dents told us are com­pelling rea­sons to move to SAP S/4HANA.

2. The Pulse on Invest­ments in SAP Technology

No two com­pa­nies fol­low the same IT pur­chas­ing strat­e­gy. Many pre­fer a ​“one-throat-to-choke” phi­los­o­phy with as few ven­dors as pos­si­ble in the port­fo­lio, while oth­ers adhere to a ​“best-of-breed” mantra for buy­ing enter­prise soft­ware and technologies.

Most respon­dents to the 2020 sur­vey are main­tain­ing or increas­ing their invest­ments in SAP, with SAP S/4HANA specif­i­cal­ly con­tin­u­ing to build inter­est among near­ly 60% who are new to it.

Break­ing down the num­bers a lit­tle bit more finds that 59% are mak­ing more invest­ments in SAP (ver­sus 53% in 2019), 33% are keep­ing the same (ver­sus 39% in 2019), an only 8% are mak­ing few­er invest­ments in SAP, a per­cent­age that dropped 1% from last year.

3. The Pulse on Approach­es to Innovation

Just like beau­ty, inno­va­tion is in the eye of the behold­er: What’s game-chang­ing tech to one small or medi­um enter­prise in the elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try can be table stakes to a For­tune 500 glob­al ener­gy behemoth. 

This year’s sur­vey revealed that no mat­ter your orga­ni­za­tion or indus­try, your employ­ees are more like­ly to be spend­ing time exe­cut­ing rather than inno­vat­ing: Respon­dents say their orga­ni­za­tions are spend­ing more than twice as much time exe­cut­ing on cur­rent strate­gies than on plan­ning for the future.

How are ASUG mem­bers going to over­come this inno­va­tion iner­tia? Orga­ni­za­tions say they plan to focus their inno­va­tion efforts on adding new tech­nolo­gies or sys­tems, over­haul­ing out­dat­ed busi­ness process­es, and unveil­ing new prod­ucts or services.

I’m eager to hear what you think of the results, so please email me your thoughts.

Down­load our info­graph­ic with an overview of the study results. Spe­cial note to ASUG mem­bers: Be sure to reg­is­ter to lis­ten live (or check it out on demand) to the Feb. 11 web­cast when I will join ASUG VP of Con­tent Strat­e­gy and Research Ann Marie Gray to dive deep­er into the results.