The results of ASUG’s 2019 State of the Com­mu­ni­ty study are in. We’ve got the lat­est SAP cus­tomer trends on soft­ware-buy­ing pow­er, what keeps IT employ­ees excit­ed about their jobs, who’s mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA (and when), and more.

I recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed my fifth anniver­sary with ASUG, and there’s no bet­ter way for me to mark that mile­stone than to share the results of our 2019 State of the Com­mu­ni­ty study.

What’s in the ASUG State of the Com­mu­ni­ty Study

ASUG’s research aims to cap­ture a unique view of what the largest group of SAP users is think­ing, doing, and plan­ning for the future. These results are a set of bench­marks for fel­low SAP cus­tomers, as well as a crit­i­cal barom­e­ter for tech­nol­o­gy deci­sion-mak­ing and practices.

Yet the results are more valu­able than that: This research also helps dri­ve ASUG’s plans for the year on edu­ca­tion, con­tent, events and cus­tomer engage­ment. The col­lec­tive voice of SAP cus­tomers tells us where infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge is need­ed most. What we learn in this study each year empow­ers ASUG to con­tin­ue to deliv­er on our mis­sion to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP technology. 

Let’s dig into some of the study’s most inter­est­ing results this year.

To see more results, down­load our detailed info­graph­ic fea­tur­ing addi­tion­al take­aways and trends.

What the ASUG Research Said: Buy­ing Tech

Accord­ing to our results, there are four main cat­e­gories of buy­ers respon­si­ble for pur­chas­ing enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy inside com­pa­nies. Sur­pris­ing­ly, it’s not just IT chiefs: 42 per­cent of respon­dents told us that C‑levels lead; 25 per­cent said that IT teams lead; 20 per­cent said buy­ing com­mit­tees lead; and 13 per­cent stat­ed that line of busi­ness depart­ments lead the process.

An inter­est­ing trend emerged when com­par­ing 2018 and 2019 sur­vey data: C‑levels and IT have seen a 12 per­cent, year-over-year decrease in being the lead for tech pur­chas­ing. Tech pur­chase lead by line of busi­ness real­ized a 2‑point increase dur­ing the same time period.

That tells me that enter­prise tech pur­chas­ing must be a team sport. Any com­pa­ny mak­ing these momen­tous deci­sions in a silo — giv­ing all the author­i­ty to one group — is like­ly to end up with a fail­ure on its hands.

The oth­er illu­mi­nat­ing data point, for me, is what the respon­dents told us about emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. In short: AI and machine learn­ing are the real deal. These two tech­nolo­gies, which we grouped togeth­er in this year’s sur­vey, jumped in both inter­est and influ­ence by an astound­ing 15 per­cent­age points ver­sus 2018 num­bers. This means AI and machine learn­ing are top-of-mind for respon­dents, who told us they expect these tech­nolo­gies to have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on their busi­ness with­in the next two years.

What the ASUG Research Said: Adopt­ing SAP S/4HANA

Every­one wants to know what every­one else is doing with SAP S/4HANA. Here’s what our mem­bers told us: 56 per­cent have plans to move to SAP S/4HANA in the future; 16 per­cent have start­ed to move; 16 per­cent are live; and 12 per­cent have no plans to migrate.

Of course, we want to know why SAP cus­tomers are wait­ing to move to SAP S/4HANA. The top rea­sons cus­tomers told us they are wait­ing 24 or more months are:

• Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion
• Lack of resources
• Wait­ing for the prod­uct to mature
• Need­ing a busi­ness case to make the move

This is crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion for ASUG and SAP. We will be delv­ing deep­er into it in 2019 to pro­vide pro­gram­ming, edu­ca­tion, and con­tent on SAP S/4HANA.

What the ASUG Research Said: Evolv­ing Tech Teams

What about the peo­ple work­ing on tech­nol­o­gy teams today — what’s on their minds?

The most inter­est­ing find­ing to me was this: As much as we’re tired of hear­ing the word inno­va­tion, it mat­ters to IT employ­ees. More than half of our respon­dents (51 per­cent) say work­ing for a com­pa­ny that’s an inno­va­tor affects their job sat­is­fac­tion. And 44 per­cent say it affects how long they’ll stay with a company.

Our research also found that IT teams aren’t shrink­ing: 88 per­cent of IT teams are grow­ing or are stay­ing the same size this year.

Last­ly, I was pleased to see that 49 per­cent of com­pa­nies have IT teams ded­i­cat­ed to oth­er depart­ments. This is a great indi­ca­tor that IT is mov­ing out of the back office and into core areas of the business.

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

Find more insights in ASUG’s 2019 State of the Com­mu­ni­ty info­graph­ic.