In 2022, ASUG and its Ger­man and Japan­ese coun­ter­parts, DSAG (the Ger­man-speak­ing SAP User Group) and JSUG (Japan SAP Users’ Group), field­ed iden­ti­cal sur­veys to understand:

• How mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions keep up with the chang­ing busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy, and social climate
• Longevi­ty and job sat­is­fac­tion of their members
• Mem­bers’ per­cep­tions on how well SAP serves orga­ni­za­tions’ busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy needs
• SAP and mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions’ sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts 

This com­men­tary, the sec­ond guest per­spec­tive on the research (fol­low­ing last week’s per­spec­tive), looks at how the mem­bers of ASUG and its fel­low user orga­ni­za­tions view the chang­ing busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy envi­ron­ments in which they operate. 

How com­pa­nies per­ceive their abil­i­ty to keep pace with change pro­vides an impor­tant lens into the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between SAP cus­tomers in the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Japan. While there’s sol­id align­ment between ASUG and DSAG on many of these issues, JSUG mem­bers report a marked­ly dif­fer­ent perspective. 

The dif­fer­ences between ASUG, DSAG, and JSUG start with their rel­a­tive strug­gles to keep up with change. When it comes to this vital func­tion, ASUG and DSAG mem­bers are rel­a­tive­ly aligned: 18% of ASUG and 14% of DSAG mem­bers are ​“com­plete­ly able to keep up,” while 69% of ASUG mem­bers and 71% of DSAG mem­bers are ​“some­what able to keep up.” Only a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber, 13% of ASUG mem­bers and 15% of DSAG mem­bers, are ​“not able to keep up.” 

Stark Dif­fer­ences

The JSUG results, on the oth­er hand, show a stark­ly dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion: only 4% of JSUG mem­bers are ​“com­plete­ly able to keep up,” and an aston­ish­ing 39% of respon­dents say they are ​“not able to keep up,” with 57% ​“some­what able to keep up.” This is par­tic­u­lar­ly remark­able, one of sev­er­al indi­ca­tors of sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences across the glob­al mar­kets SAP serves. 

While the rea­sons for this dis­par­i­ty between the dif­fer­ent user groups are seen in a num­ber of indi­ca­tors, such as orga­ni­za­tion­al adver­si­ty to change and resource con­straints, none tell the sto­ry more com­plete­ly than per­son­nel-relat­ed issues. These prob­lems stood out in data across the three user groups. All three groups see per­son­nel-relat­ed fac­tors, such as staff resources and avail­able skill lev­els, as key fac­tors in their abil­i­ty to keep up with change. But the sim­i­lar­i­ties between ASUG and DSAG large­ly out­weigh the dif­fer­ences, where­as the sit­u­a­tion in the JSUG com­mu­ni­ty stands out as appear­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly dire. 

Inno­va­tion Strat­e­gy Alignment?

Sev­er­al ques­tions in the sur­vey show­case these dis­par­i­ties. When respon­dents were asked about spe­cif­ic bar­ri­ers to inno­va­tion, staffing issues impact­ed 70% of JSUG mem­bers, 63% of DSAG mem­bers, and 50% of ASUG members. 

While inno­va­tion is a com­pli­cat­ed term that can mean many things to dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, there are some inter­est­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties in what the three user groups saw as impor­tant to their inno­va­tion strate­gies. All three groups saw cloud, dash­boards and ana­lyt­ics, and automa­tion and RPA as impor­tant inno­va­tion tech­nolo­gies to a sim­i­lar degree. 

But sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in inno­va­tion strate­gies emerged as well. Self-ser­vice tech­nol­o­gy was seen by 59% of DSAG mem­bers as impor­tant, fol­lowed by 41% of ASUG mem­bers, while only 19% of JSUG mem­bers con­sid­er self-ser­vice as impor­tant. This is curi­ous, con­sid­er­ing self-ser­vice tech­nol­o­gy is often seen as a cat­e­go­ry that can help elim­i­nate the need for human inter­ven­tion by automat­ing pre­vi­ous­ly man­u­al tasks. Inso­far as there was align­ment across the user groups relat­ed to the rel­a­tive impor­tance of automa­tion and RPA — anoth­er tech­nol­o­gy that can help dri­ve more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at the user level. 

The respons­es regard­ing the use of AI and ML also showed some inter­est­ing dif­fer­ences. ASUG users were rel­a­tive­ly luke­warm to AI/ML, with only 33% see­ing it as impor­tant. DSAG mem­bers were slight­ly more inter­est­ed, with 44% report­ing the cat­e­go­ry as impor­tant. But 60% of JSUG mem­bers saw AI/ML as impor­tant, almost dou­ble their North Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts and over a third more than DSAG members. 

Help for Automa­tion, or Not?

Low code/​no code (anoth­er tech­nol­o­gy that can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly help auto­mate peo­ple-inten­sive tasks) also skewed more favor­ably among JSUG mem­bers, though less dra­mat­i­cal­ly than for AI/ML. Like automa­tion and RPA, the impres­sion in the mar­ket that these tech­nolo­gies can help alle­vi­ate per­son­nel-relat­ed process bot­tle­necks wasn’t seen as dra­mat­i­cal­ly in North Amer­i­ca and Ger­many as expect­ed, con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance these user groups placed on per­son­nel issues. 

When asked to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the impact of per­son­nel issues at the com­pa­ny-wide ver­sus IT lev­el, the issue of whether there are suf­fi­cient staff resources was twice as impact­ful on Japan­ese mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions as it was on ASUG mem­bers, with DSAG in between the two. The staffing issue impacts 79% of JSUG mem­bers at the com­pa­ny-wide lev­el and 83% at the IT lev­el, where­as only 38% per­cent of ASUG mem­bers see skill short­ages as impact­ing them at both the com­pa­ny-wide lev­el and in the IT depart­ment. DSAG mem­bers are more impact­ed by skills issues, with 63% see­ing impacts both com­pa­ny-wide and in the IT department. 

Job Sat­is­fac­tion Responses

The most dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ence between the user groups could be seen in the job sat­is­fac­tion scores for the three respon­dent pools. When asked about job sat­is­fac­tion rel­a­tive to role and respon­si­bil­i­ties, as well as cur­rent work­load, an over­whelm­ing per­cent of ASUG and DSAG respon­dents report­ed they were either very sat­is­fied or sat­is­fied with their role, with 75% of ASUG mem­bers and 77% of DSAG respon­dents report­ing being sat­is­fied or very sat­is­fied with their role.

Work­load sat­is­fac­tion was dif­fer­ent, pri­mar­i­ly in the Ger­man mar­ket: only 57% of DSAG respon­dents were very sat­is­fied or sat­is­fied with their cur­rent work­load, com­pared to 70% of ASUG mem­bers who were sat­is­fied or very sat­is­fied with their work­load. Notably, with­in ASUG and DSAG, these results also indi­cate that user group mem­ber­ship cor­re­lates high­ly with job sat­is­fac­tion, fur­ther rein­forced by a high cor­re­la­tion between job tenure and sat­is­fac­tion with­in these two groups.

JSUG mem­bers, how­ev­er, seemed to see things very dif­fer­ent­ly. The per­cent­age of JSUG mem­bers sat­is­fied or very sat­is­fied with their roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties fell short of half at 44%. Only 39% of respon­dents were sat­is­fied or very sat­is­fied with the cur­rent work­loads. An impor­tant ​“meh” fac­tor was also at play in the JSUG results: 40% of JSUG respon­dents were ​“nei­ther sat­is­fied nor dis­sat­is­fied” with their role in the com­pa­ny, and 43% felt sim­i­lar­ly about their work­load. Impor­tant­ly, the JSUG mem­bers’ dis­sat­is­fac­tion was marked­ly high­er for employ­ees with longer job tenure (6 to greater than 15 years), the oppo­site of what the ASUG and DSAG employ­ees reported. 

Behind the Differences

There may be some inter­est­ing rea­sons for these stark dif­fer­ences between JSUG and its Amer­i­can and Ger­man coun­ter­parts that lie out­side the scope of this sur­vey. A study pub­lished in 2017 by Robert E. Cole of the Haas Busi­ness School at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, showed that Japan­ese com­pa­nies, on aver­age, place a much low­er val­ue on soft­ware in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly tend to deval­ue the poten­tial impact of IT on cor­po­rate strategy.

Pro­fes­sor Cole’s research has also shown that IT in Japan has a low sta­tus in under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion, which, cou­pled with Japan’s declin­ing youth pop­u­la­tion, fur­ther impacts enroll­ment in IT pro­grams and the pool of prospec­tive IT employ­ees. These neg­a­tive atti­tudes towards IT — not preva­lent in the Amer­i­c­as or Ger­many — may part­ly be respon­si­ble for the dif­fer­ences in over­all job sat­is­fac­tion. SAP and JSUG have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to poten­tial­ly reme­di­ate some per­son­nel-relat­ed issues in the Japan­ese mar­ket by ele­vat­ing the sta­tus of IT employ­ees in that market. 

The over­all pic­ture pre­sent­ed by this cross-cul­tur­al analy­sis is that user group mem­bers in Ger­many and the U.S., the two largest mar­kets for SAP, have sim­i­lar­ly pos­i­tive atti­tudes about a range of issues relat­ing to how well they can keep up with change and their indi­vid­ual sta­tus as employ­ees. Japan­ese SAP users, on the oth­er hand, lag sig­nif­i­cant­ly in these mea­sures rel­a­tive to the oth­er two groups. Nonethe­less, the sim­i­lar­i­ties relat­ing to per­son­nel short­ages across all three coun­tries are a clar­i­on call to user groups and SAP to step into the breach with pro­grams and solu­tions for increas­ing the pool of tal­ent in the years to come. 

Down­load the Research here.

Joshua Green­baum is Prin­ci­pal at Enter­prise Appli­ca­tion Consulting.