What are SAP cus­tomers think­ing as we emerge from 2020 and forge ahead in 2021? We’ve got the answers, once again, with the release of our ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2021 study.

We sought crit­i­cal pieces of infor­ma­tion from our mem­bers in North Amer­i­ca to cre­ate a pic­ture of the state of the SAP cus­tomer base: their atti­tudes and pref­er­ences, their suc­cess­es and chal­lenges, and their thoughts and plans on vital SAP tech­nol­o­gy deci­sions. (We are able to com­pare his­toric data trends, which revealed a num­ber of insight­ful trends.)

For the last four years, we were able to cap­ture the pulse of SAP’s North Amer­i­can cus­tomer base and answer these questions: 

• Who is real­ly mak­ing IT buy­ing deci­sions today?
• What is the sta­tus of ​“best-of-breed” ver­sus ​“best-of-suite” strategies?
• What SAP S/4HANA busi­ness cas­es are win­ning out?
• What emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are ready for prime time — and which aren’t?
• Why does SAP tal­ent and train­ing con­tin­ue to chal­lenge SAP customers?

After look­ing at the data from this year’s results, I picked three top­ics that I believe are rel­e­vant to all SAP customers. 

1. The Pulse on IT Buy­ing Committees

This is a trend that we’ve been watch­ing for the past few years, and it’s clear that tech­nol­o­gy buy­ing com­mit­tees are all the rage. Near­ly half (45%) of respon­dents, which was the top answer, are tap­ping C‑levels, IT staff, and line-of-busi­ness staff when decid­ing to pur­chase new technology. 

What’s inter­est­ing to note is since 2019, use of buy­ing com­mit­tees has more than doubled.

Of course, a buy­ing com­mit­tee brings with it a mix of peers and opin­ions who are now weigh­ing in on crit­i­cal deci­sions. It’s impor­tant to under­stand the var­i­ous opin­ions on, say, best-of-breed ver­sus best-in-suite, or whose goals devi­ate from the group’s objec­tives, or who may have a bias about a cer­tain soft­ware, which can com­pli­cate an already com­plex deci­sion-mak­ing process.

2. The Pulse on SAP S/4HANA Imple­men­ta­tions and Staffing

This year’s data shows a con­tin­u­a­tion of ASUG mem­bers mov­ing to or plan­ning their move to SAP S/4HANA. A full 22% of respon­dents told us they are already live.

What’s note­wor­thy is the top­ic of SAP S/4HANA skills and staffing. We asked respon­dents to tell us how they did or how they will find skilled tal­ent to work on their SAP S/4HANA projects. The top answer? Per­ma­nent staff who learned SAP S/4HANA on the job (57%).

We know that our mem­bers will need help with SAP S/4HANA pre- and post-go-live, so please be sure to check out and reg­is­ter for ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence, kick­ing off on March 2 and run­ning through the month. 

3. The Pulse on End-User Adoption

“Change man­age­ment” is a pret­ty fun­da­men­tal and well-known con­cept, right? But so often we get caught up in the tech­nol­o­gy aspect of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and we neglect to con­sid­er the end users and why they should adopt new technology.

Respon­dents this year told us that they most need help with train­ing (25%), lack of adoption/​user accep­tance (25%), and get­ting a bet­ter han­dle on change man­age­ment prac­tices (10%).

With users, you real­ly have to make sure they under­stand how the changes being made to their ​“day jobs” will help the com­pa­ny over­all — typ­i­cal­ly, an answer to ​“the why” ques­tion. What is the real ben­e­fit to them using the new soft­ware and chang­ing their busi­ness process­es? With­out that expla­na­tion and con­nec­tion in their minds, you’re bound to get resis­tance — no mat­ter how cool the new soft­ware is.

As always, I’m eager to hear your thoughts on the results, so please email me your ques­tions and com­ments, and also see the list of ASUG resources below.

ASUG Resources for SAP Customers

Web­cast Replay: ASUG mem­bers can lis­ten to a replay of the Jan. 19 web­cast in which myself and Car­olyn Szczurek, ASUG’s mar­ket research man­ag­er, break down the results and share with you how ASUG is help­ing SAP cus­tomers over­come their chal­lenges in 2021.

Study Info­graph­ic: Be sure to down­load the ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2021 info­graph­ic with an overview of the study results.

SAP S/4HANA Event: Join us online through­out the month of March for ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence, an event that will give you the tools you need for a fric­tion­less end-to-end SAP S/4HANA implementation.