What are SAP cus­tomers think­ing as we emerge from 2021 and forge ahead in 2022? We’ve got the answers with the release of our ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2022 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 have com­pa­ra­ble his­tor­i­cal data trends, which revealed sev­er­al insights.

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

• What SAP S/4HANA busi­ness cas­es are winning?
• What emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are ready for prime time — and which aren’t?
• Why does SAP tal­ent and train­ing con­tin­ue to chal­lenge SAP customers?
• Who’s real­ly mak­ing IT buy­ing deci­sions today?

After review­ing the results and insights from this year’s research, these five top­ics stand out to me.

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

This data shows a con­tin­u­a­tion of ASUG mem­bers mov­ing or plan­ning their move to SAP S/4HANA. Of the mem­bers who com­plet­ed the sur­vey, 44% of respon­dents told us they are already live or have start­ed to move. This is an increase of 11% com­pared to 2021 – impres­sive progress giv­en the chal­lenges of the past few years. 

What’s espe­cial­ly note­wor­thy is the focus on SAP S/4HANA skills and staffing. We asked respon­dents to tell us how they did or how they’ll find skilled tal­ent to work on their SAP S/4HANA projects. The top answer? Per­ma­nent staff who learned SAP S/4HANA on the job (54%). Addi­tion­al­ly, com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, more orga­ni­za­tions are rely­ing on imple­men­ta­tion part­ners to pro­vide the staff they need for SAP S/4HANA projects (+14%). This isn’t sur­pris­ing since SAP S/4HANA is the top skillset miss­ing or lack­ing at orga­ni­za­tions, thus the need to fill the gap.

We expect the labor mar­ket for SAP-relat­ed skills, whether brought in-house or sourced through con­sul­tants to con­tin­ue to tight­en over the next few years. For orga­ni­za­tions, this will cre­ate cost pres­sures as peo­ple costs rise. 

2. The Pulse on Improv­ing User Experiences

Orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue to seek ways to stan­dard­ize busi­ness process­es, and half of orga­ni­za­tions are focused on this in 2022. Again, through the lens of the past few tumul­tuous years, this comes as no sur­prise. Stan­dard­iz­ing busi­ness process­es will enable orga­ni­za­tions to lever­age more out-of-the-box user expe­ri­ences and automa­tion free­ing up time for more val­ue-added tasks and strate­gic initiatives. 

Orga­ni­za­tions are turn­ing to automa­tion as staffing and skill short­ages impact all facets of an orga­ni­za­tion. Stan­dard­iz­ing and automat­ing process­es address orga­ni­za­tions’ biggest chal­lenges: inte­gra­tion issues and the spread of data errors. Using automa­tion will also free up time for skilled tal­ent to stay updat­ed on mov­ing technologies. 

3. The Pulse on Oper­a­tions Dur­ing COVID-19 

Over the past two years, the ASUG research team kept tabs on the ways COVID-19 was affect­ing the day-to-day oper­a­tions of our mem­bers. In the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, our mem­bers were react­ing to the pan­dem­ic and oper­at­ing in the face of the out­break. It’s been par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful — and inter­est­ing — to learn how the pan­dem­ic has affect­ed how orga­ni­za­tions function. 

This recent data has paint­ed an encour­ag­ing pic­ture: 57% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed that they were mov­ing for­ward with their planned ini­tia­tives as nor­mal, despite the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, 29% of respon­dents are delay­ing planned ini­tia­tives, while 13% indi­cat­ed that they’re begin­ning to plan or start new ini­tia­tives. Only 6% of respon­dents have can­celled planned ini­tia­tives. The recent, rapid spread of the omi­cron vari­ant is a reminder that orga­ni­za­tions will need to learn to oper­ate with COIVD as a con­stant ver­sus a short-term chal­lenge. It’s encour­ag­ing to know that most orga­ni­za­tions are still plan­ning for the future and mov­ing for­ward with planned initiatives. 

4. The Pulse on Cloud Journeys

Anoth­er aspect of the ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2022 study that I found inter­est­ing focused on cloud adop­tion. Last year, SAP dou­bled down on the cloud. The com­pa­ny kicked off the year by announc­ing RISE with SAP, a bun­dled sub­scrip­tion offer­ing that SAP CEO Chris­t­ian Klein described as ​“busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion as a service.” 

In this research, we saw increased inter­est in the cloud from our mem­bers. When ask­ing respon­dents about their SAP envi­ron­ments, 40% said they were using an on-premise land­scape. This was a siz­able drop from 2021, when 53% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed they were using an on-premise land­scape. Across the board, we saw an increase in the usage of cloud envi­ron­ments this year. Of our respon­dents, 26% are using a hybrid envi­ron­ment (an increase from 24% last year); 16% are lever­ag­ing a third-par­ty pub­lic cloud envi­ron­ment (up from 12% last year); anoth­er 16% are using a pri­vate cloud (an increase from 10% last year), and 8% are on a part­ner-man­aged cloud (an increase from 4% last year). 

Regard­ing our mem­bers’ plans for their on-premise land­scapes, more than one-third (37%) of respon­dents said that they’re plan­ning to use hybrid on-premise and cloud land­scapes, while 20% of respon­dents are mov­ing all their sys­tems to the cloud. Only 12% are keep­ing their work­loads com­plete­ly on-premise, and 30% of respon­dents are still deter­min­ing their plans. This is encour­ag­ing to learn, espe­cial­ly as SAP con­tin­ues to moti­vate its cus­tomers to become ​“intel­li­gent enter­pris­es.” Unques­tion­ing­ly, the cloud will con­tin­ue to be a hot top­ic that we’ll explore in 2022.

Tak­ing the cloud one step fur­ther, I believe that ASUG mem­bers should lever­age oppor­tu­ni­ties to take advan­tage of SAAS ver­sions of SAP’s soft­ware as well as encour­ag­ing SAP to deliv­er SAAS solu­tions. This is the best way to reduce com­plex­i­ty and cost in the soft­ware port­fo­lio which will enable greater flex­i­bil­i­ty as orga­ni­za­tions oper­ate in increas­ing dynam­ic environments. 

As always, I’m eager to hear your thoughts on the results, so please email me your ques­tions and com­ments. Addi­tion­al­ly, please view the list of ASUG resources below. Be on the look­out for a full deep dive into the results of our annu­al Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research in a web­cast in Feb­ru­ary. ASUG Direc­tor of Research Maris­sa Gilbert and I will be dis­cussing these top­ics and more. 

The Pulse on IT Pur­chas­ing Decisions 

This is a trend we’ve been track­ing for the past few years. In 2021, we report­ed that tech­nol­o­gy buy­ing com­mit­tees were vital to pur­chase deci­sion-mak­ing; how­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic and remote work­ing sit­u­a­tions may be push­ing orga­ni­za­tions back to the C‑level for pur­chas­ing deci­sions. Buy­ing deci­sions in 2022 are even­ly split between buy­ing com­mit­tees (36% of orga­ni­za­tions) and the C‑level (34% of orga­ni­za­tions) hold­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for new tech­nol­o­gy buy­ing decisions.

While the use of buy­ing com­mit­tees has declined since 2021, it still remains twice as preva­lent over buy­ing deci­sions when com­pared to 2019.

Of course, a buy­ing com­mit­tee brings a mix of peers togeth­er with more opin­ions to weigh in on crit­i­cal deci­sions, and fos­ter bet­ter align­ment and buy-in as the cho­sen solu­tion moves from imple­men­ta­tion to oper­a­tions. It’s impor­tant to under­stand the var­i­ous opin­ions and orga­ni­za­tion­al moti­va­tions. Orga­ni­za­tions mak­ing pur­chas­ing deci­sions this year should absolute­ly involve those areas of the busi­ness that are inte­gral to the suc­cess of the software.

ASUG Resources for SAP Customers

Behind the Data web­cast: ASUG mem­bers can tune in to the ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2022 web­cast on Feb­ru­ary 17, where I’ll be joined by ASUG Research Direc­tor Maris­sa Gilbert. We’ll break down some of the high­lights from this research and exam­ine some his­tor­i­cal trends we’ve been track­ing. Reg­is­ter here to join us.

Study Info­graph­ic: Be sure to down­load the ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2022 info­graph­ic, below.