In 2022, ASUG spear­head­ed a major research ini­tia­tive involv­ing its mem­bers togeth­er with those of the Ger­man-Speak­ing SAP User Group (DSAG) and the Japan SAP Users’ Group (JSUG). The unprece­dent­ed project, with iden­ti­cal sur­veys, was designed to help the orga­ni­za­tions and the greater SAP com­mu­ni­ty in many ways, yet espe­cial­ly to under­stand the following

• How mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions keep up with the chang­ing busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy, and social climates 
• The longevi­ty and job sat­is­fac­tion of members 
• How well SAP is serv­ing orga­ni­za­tions’ busi­ness­es and tech­nol­o­gy needs
• Details about the SAP role in their sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts

The results showed con­sid­er­able com­mon ground across the three groups’ mem­bers’ per­cep­tions and expe­ri­ences, as well as some note­wor­thy differences. 

This analy­sis, the first of two, looks at some result high­lights spe­cif­ic to ASUG mem­bers. A fol­low-on per­spec­tive will look at how the three groups con­verge and diverge on issues that sur­faced in the survey. 

Rapid and often unpre­dictable change in all aspects of life is the norm, and ASUG mem­bers, like all orga­ni­za­tions that use enter­prise soft­ware, are in a strug­gle to keep up, accord­ing to the SAP Glob­al User Group Research: The Pace of Change and Role of SAP Solu­tions. Just under 70% are ​“some­what” able to keep pace, while 13% said they are sim­ply unable to keep pace. Only 18% of respon­dents feel they can com­plete­ly stay on top of change. 

You can see how ASUG mem­bers finesse nev­er-end­ing com­plex­i­ty in how they focus on a set of rel­a­tive­ly prag­mat­ic strate­gies — the data indi­cat­ed. These strate­gies includ­ed main­tain­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty in response to the pace of change, lim­it­ing cus­tomiza­tions in IT land­scapes, and look­ing for incre­men­tal improve­ments in land­scapes, as opposed to favor­ing com­plex, ​“big bang” projects. 

This prag­ma­tism is seen more suc­cinct­ly in data relat­ed to plans for new tech­nolo­gies and offer­ings that could help orga­ni­za­tions keep pace. The three tech­nolo­gies favored by over 50% of respon­dents — cloud, dash­boards and ana­lyt­ics, and automation/​RPA — aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lead­ing-edge tech­nolo­gies. The cloud is an obvi­ous­ly rea­son­able choice, as vir­tu­al­ly all inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness prac­tices today are cloud-based. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in the SAP ecosys­tem, as inno­va­tion is focused on cloud prop­er­ties like SAP S/4HANA while on-premise ECC will reach end of life with­in five years, accord­ing to SAP’s cur­rent schedule. 

Prag­ma­tism and Incre­men­tal Improve­ments Rule

Dash­boards and ana­lyt­ics are a sim­i­lar­ly prag­mat­ic choice: whether man­ag­ing the sta­tus quo or try­ing to keep up with the pace of change, these are foun­da­tion­al, required tech­nolo­gies. Mean­while, automation/​RPA rep­re­sents a class of tech­nol­o­gy that is new­er, but still a high­ly prag­mat­ic option. Automa­tion and RPA are increas­ing­ly being used by com­pa­nies to fill in the tech­nol­o­gy gaps by automat­ing for­mer­ly unin­te­grat­ed or large­ly man­u­al process­es with­out incur­ring a mas­sive tech­nol­o­gy expense or com­pli­cat­ed change man­age­ment process. While automa­tion can be used to sup­port net-new, lead­ing-edge inno­va­tion, it’s often part of incre­men­tal improve­ment, as not­ed earlier. 

On the oth­er end of the tech­nol­o­gy spec­trum, the rel­a­tive­ly low response rate for tech­nolo­gies that are seen as lead­ing-edge, such as AI/ML, low code/​no code, IoT, and smart man­u­fac­tur­ing, reflects a sim­i­lar prag­ma­tism among the ASUG respon­dents. Each of these tech­nol­o­gy paths were rat­ed as impor­tant by one-third or less of the par­tic­i­pants. Oth­er tech­nolo­gies, name­ly composable/​modular appli­ca­tions, con­ver­sa­tion­al UI, open net­works, AR/VR, and blockchain scored even low­er, and only 8% of respon­dent see the use of dig­i­tal twins in their future. 

The sur­vey revealed some impor­tant rea­sons for this prag­ma­tism. When asked why they are unable to keep up with the pace of change, bud­get scarci­ty, per­son­nel, and the time need­ed to effect change topped the respon­dents’ list. Per­son­nel issues are inter­est­ing in so far as respon­dents also not­ed that their depen­dence on exter­nal resources also lim­it­ed their abil­i­ty to keep pace, despite exter­nal resources typ­i­cal­ly help fill inter­nal resource gaps. If this strat­e­gy is cur­rent­ly a con­straint, it may be because SAP part­ners at times deploy tal­ent that lack skills and expe­ri­ence — a com­mon prob­lem in m any SAP projects. 

Impor­tant­ly, the ASUG research showed orga­ni­za­tion­al issues at the fore­front of the bar­ri­ers, includ­ing gen­er­al aver­si­ty to change, inter­nal process bot­tle­necks, and a lack of man­age­ment vision and strat­e­gy. On the tech­ni­cal lev­el, respon­dents said exces­sive cus­tomiza­tions in their IT envi­ron­ments also lim­it­ed deploy­ment of net-new tech­nolo­gies to meet the needs of a chang­ing environment. 

These orga­ni­za­tion­al fac­tors were mir­rored in the spe­cif­ic fac­tors hold­ing back the IT depart­ment. Respon­dents from IT report­ed that a set of issues (includ­ing cost pres­sures, land­scape com­plex­i­ty, per­son­nel issues, lega­cy tech­nolo­gies, and a depen­den­cy on exter­nal resources) rep­re­sent sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­ers to keep pace with change. To a less­er degree IT also grap­ples with data migra­tion issues and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty as it seeks to man­age change. 

The preva­lence of het­ero­gene­ity in the IT land­scape is anoth­er inter­est­ing issue com­mon across the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty. Over two-thirds of the ASUG mem­ber par­tic­i­pants report­ed the use of Microsoft solu­tions as high­ly impor­tant, while one-fifth tagged Sales​force​.com solu­tions as sim­i­lar­ly important.

Respons­es relat­ed to cloud het­ero­gene­ity show an inter­est­ing shift away from het­ero­gene­ity. While non-SAP cloud solu­tions are cur­rent­ly slight­ly more impor­tant to respon­dents, they also indi­cat­ed that future IT land­scapes will rebal­ance SAP and non-SAP cloud solu­tions in SAP’s favor. 

With the focus on per­son­nel and skills in today’s econ­o­my, it’s impor­tant to note that the sur­vey showed a high rate of job sat­is­fac­tion among ASUG mem­ber respon­dents. This augurs well for orga­ni­za­tions’ abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate man­age­ment and tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers when deliv­er­ing more prag­mat­ic solu­tions. A sol­id 75% of respon­dents were either very sat­is­fied or sat­is­fied with their jobs, where­as only 9% were either unsat­is­fied or very unsatisfied.

This rate of job sat­is­fac­tion is reflect­ed in the job tenure found in the ASUG mem­ber data set; 46% said they have been with their orga­ni­za­tion for 10 or more years. There were also strong rates in skill match­ing, with 47% of respon­dents say­ing they ​“strong­ly agree” with the state­ment ​“I am prop­er­ly skilled to do my job,” while anoth­er 38% said they ​“agree” with the statement.

The ASUG-spe­cif­ic sur­vey results indi­cate how the com­mu­ni­ty tack­les the prob­lems of com­plex­i­ty and change by lim­it­ing the use of net-new tech­nolo­gies and focus­ing on incre­men­tal improve­ments to their exist­ing SAP tech­nol­o­gy base. The good news about this strat­e­gy is that the skillsets of the respon­dents make them ide­al­ly suit­ed for this challenge.

Equal­ly impor­tant is that, despite the tal­ent, skills and hir­ing chal­lenges in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, the data shows strong job sat­is­fac­tion. This bodes well for orga­ni­za­tions’ efforts to make good on the prag­ma­tism not­ed in the sur­vey. Regard­less of whether cus­tomers are mov­ing as quick­ly into new tech­no­log­i­cal domains as SAP mar­ket­ing efforts would like, the fact remains that how­ev­er cus­tomers chose to respond to change and com­plex­i­ty, SAP remains a key strate­gic part­ner for ASUG mem­bers in times of rapid change and unwa­ver­ing busi­ness complexity.

Down­load the Research here.

Joshua Green­baum is Prin­ci­pal at Enter­prise Appli­ca­tion Consulting.