While dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has intro­duced no short­age of busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy chal­lenges for orga­ni­za­tions, the strug­gle to place the right peo­ple with the right skills in the right place ranks near — if not at — the top of com­pa­nies’ crit­i­cal concerns. 

Tal­ent short­ages have affect­ed the IT indus­try for years, and they con­tin­ue. Every IT dis­ci­pline — from cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and net­work­ing to appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and infra­struc­ture — appears engaged in a bat­tle to edu­cate, entice, attract, and retain talent.

Max Wes­sel, SAP’s Chief Learn­ing Offi­cer, con­curs. ​“Cus­tomers I talk to say there is an SAP skills gap,” he said, adding that ​“we are not grad­u­at­ing enough uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in the old mod­el of alge­bra to cov­er the gap. If we look at the pipeline, we see there’s already a shortage.”

Wes­sel, who spoke at the ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Exec­u­tive Exchange Sum­mit ses­sion in Orlan­do last month, added that many com­pa­nies face this real­i­ty, regard­less of the tech­nol­o­gy sup­port­ing their busi­ness­es. ​“We’re accel­er­at­ing our shift to the cloud, which means we have more con­cur­rent projects being ser­viced by the same num­ber of part­ners, and we can’t hire enough peo­ple,” Wes­sel explained. 

The ques­tion remains, in his words, ​“How do we reskill the peo­ple who are in the IT work­force we have today, and how do we address fun­da­men­tal­ly new audi­ences to bring them into the workforce?” 

This sen­ti­ment was echoed by the ASUG Board of Direc­tors, which acknowl­edged the issue last month dur­ing SAP Sap­phire and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence. With 75% of com­pa­nies report­ing tal­ent short­ages in 2022, accord­ing to ManpowerGroup’s 2022 Tal­ent Short­age Sur­vey, it’s read­i­ly appar­ent that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts are ham­pered by tal­ent gaps. 

“We are all acute­ly aware of the skill short­ages across the SAP ecosys­tem and beyond,” the board not­ed in a pre­pared state­ment. ​“But for us, the skill chal­lenge feels par­tic­u­lar­ly acute, espe­cial­ly as we dri­ve the trans­for­ma­tion to the cloud.”

In this con­text, SAP’s just-announced career growth ini­tia­tives, includ­ing role-based cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for enter­prise archi­tects, open a new and impor­tant vec­tor for direct­ing pro­fes­sion­als at ear­ly, mid‑, and mature stages in their careers.

SAP Expands and Enhances Edu­ca­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Programs

In addi­tion to mak­ing SAP learn­ing con­tent on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, broad­ly acces­si­ble and free of charge, and unveil­ing a plan to make SAP Learn­ing Hub the gate­way to a rein­vent­ed pre­mi­um dig­i­tal learn­ing expe­ri­ence, SAP is invest­ing in expand­ed edu­ca­tion for enter­prise archi­tects, one of the most in-demand roles in the tech indus­try today.

The stat­ed goal of these ini­tia­tives is to upskill 2 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide by 2025 through an inte­grat­ed series of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams, cours­es, and enhance­ments to the SAP Learn­ing Hub. It all under­scores the crit­i­cal impor­tance of bridg­ing the skills gap with­in the SAP ecosystem. 

In an offi­cial state­ment, SAP announced that ​“the expan­sion broad­ens the base of peo­ple who can become SAP pro­fes­sion­als, giv­ing more indi­vid­u­als a chance to advance in the com­pet­i­tive tech­nol­o­gy labor mar­ket and enabling employ­ers to draw on a deep­er bench of skills to accel­er­ate dig­i­tal transformation.”

News of the ini­tia­tive was wel­comed by the ASUG Board of Direc­tors, which hailed the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for enter­prise archi­tects as a ​“real game chang­er” for tech pro­fes­sion­als. ​“Many of us in the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty have expe­ri­enced good soft­ware gone wrong due to bad deci­sions on imple­men­ta­tion,” the board not­ed in a pre­pared statement. 

“Often, this is due to a lack of knowl­edge,” the state­ment con­tin­ued. ​“We know that the right knowl­edge and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion improves results. But it’s still hard for us as lead­ers to iden­ti­fy who has the right com­pre­hen­sive skill sets to orches­trate major trans­for­ma­tions, espe­cial­ly as we shift from imple­ment­ing ECC in a data cen­ter to imple­ment­ing S/4HANA in a het­ero­ge­neous cloud environment.”

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ini­tia­tives focus­ing on EA pro­fes­sion­als will be vital in inte­grat­ing and align­ing the tech­ni­cal and busi­ness require­ments need­ed to sup­port and sus­tain ongo­ing trans­for­ma­tion initiatives.

Josh Green­baum, prin­ci­pal at Enter­prise Appli­ca­tion Con­sult­ing (EAC), rein­forced this point while express­ing excite­ment about the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. ​“This pro­gram and oth­ers like it help main­tain an appro­pri­ate lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and go a long way toward mit­i­gat­ing the ​‘wild west’ feel­ing that has exist­ed in the past, par­tic­u­lar­ly for cus­tomers try­ing to engage with reli­able partners.”

Tal­ent Trans­paren­cy Is Crit­i­cal for Ecosys­tem Engagement

SAP’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ini­tia­tive seeks to cre­ate a high­er lev­el of trans­paren­cy as enter­pris­es work with con­sul­tants, sys­tems inte­gra­tors, and oth­er ser­vice providers to devel­op, deploy, and main­tain con­stant­ly evolv­ing enter­prise appli­ca­tions and workflows. 

As Wes­sel explained to the Exec­u­tive Exchange audi­ence, this ini­tia­tive fits into the over­ar­ch­ing SAP strat­e­gy for prod­uct and con­tent inno­va­tion. ​“The last two years have been about rein­vent­ing our plat­forms so that we can reach peo­ple in the flow of work in the way they oper­ate, and rein­vent­ing con­tent so it can be con­sumed in that fash­ion,” he said. 

The dynam­ic nature of the indus­try at large, and SAP devel­op­ments in par­tic­u­lar, make it crit­i­cal for skill sets to be kept fresh and for par­ties work­ing togeth­er to be aware of the com­pe­ten­cies held by mul­ti-orga­ni­za­tion­al teammates.

“The suc­cess­ful inter­play between the part­ner’s team and the inter­nal IT team char­tered with imple­ment­ing an SAP project depends very much on the qual­i­ty of the part­ner peo­ple assigned to the project,” not­ed Greenbaum. 

“Too often, sys­tems inte­gra­tors sell [cus­tomers] the ​‘A‑team’ and deliv­er [instead] the prover­bial school bus full of trainees,” he added. ​“By broad­en­ing these pro­grams, SAP is allow­ing its part­ners to deploy more qual­i­fied con­sul­tants and, in turn, allow­ing cus­tomers to demand well-trained con­sul­tants and know that they’ve been train­ing using a con­sis­tent and well-designed program.”

The ASUG board active­ly encour­ages cur­rent and aspir­ing SAP pro­fes­sion­als to become cer­ti­fied. ​“We also ask our com­mu­ni­ty to take an addi­tion­al bold step by requir­ing your sys­tem imple­men­ta­tion part­ners to staff your projects with cer­ti­fied enter­prise archi­tects,” the board added in its state­ment. ​“ASUG believes this will deliv­er a sig­nif­i­cant step up in qual­i­ty and pre­dictable project outcomes.”