Orga­ni­za­tions are always look­ing for ways to stream­line their oper­a­tions and improve effi­cien­cy. One way they are doing so is by adopt­ing SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), accord­ing to recent research from ASUG and SAP. The research found that most SAP cus­tomers either use or plan to use SAP BTP, and that they val­ue hav­ing one envi­ron­ment for data analy­sis, build­ing appli­ca­tions, automa­tion, and integration.

‘Strong’ Aware­ness of BTP

Near­ly all sur­vey respon­dents know about SAP BTP, with 35% cur­rent­ly using the plat­form. And the use of the plat­form is deliv­er­ing val­ue to orga­ni­za­tions. Cur­rent users of SAP BTP feel the plat­form is extreme­ly ben­e­fi­cial (near­ly 60%), while the bulk of those con­sid­er­ing it for future use most­ly see it as some­what beneficial. 

The research also found that, of the tech­nolo­gies that make up SAP BTP, inte­gra­tion is over­whelm­ing­ly the most impor­tant tech­nol­o­gy to orga­ni­za­tions cur­rent­ly using SAP BTP, with more than half not­ing appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and ana­lyt­ics as impor­tant fea­tures. Also, among those cur­rent­ly using SAP BTP, con­nect­ing busi­ness appli­ca­tions and data across the enter­prise is the top ben­e­fit SAP BTP users expe­ri­ence. This reflects the impor­tance of SAP BTP as an inte­gra­tion plat­form. The abil­i­ty to cus­tomize SAP appli­ca­tions while keep­ing the core clean and gain­ing access to tech­nolo­gies on one plat­form from one ven­dor is also seen as a sig­nif­i­cant benefit. 

Most respon­dents (62%) agreed that a sin­gle, uni­fied tech­nol­o­gy plat­form from one ven­dor is more ben­e­fi­cial than a best-of-breed approach. Cus­tomers also make deci­sions that align with their beliefs in a sin­gle ven­dor. Most choose to run SAP BTP with only SAP Cloud and using SAP for most of their appli­ca­tion development/​process inte­gra­tion needs.

SAP cus­tomers feel that access to more pas­sive forms of learn­ing like online tech­ni­cal tutorials/​videos and cus­tomer case sto­ries of real-use cas­es of SAP BTP would be most use­ful to bet­ter under­stand and expand their knowl­edge of SAP BTP. This sug­gests that cus­tomers want to learn hands-on infor­ma­tion at their own pace and on their own sched­ule and would ben­e­fit from hav­ing infor­ma­tion avail­able in one place.

For respon­dents not using SAP BTP, they antic­i­pat­ed few­er ben­e­fits than SAP BTP users expe­ri­enced in con­nect­ing busi­ness appli­ca­tions and data across the enter­prise. They expect­ed more ben­e­fits in automating/​optimizing busi­ness process­es and dri­ving bet­ter deci­sions with ana­lyt­ics and/​or plan­ning. More ben­e­fits were also antic­i­pat­ed than expe­ri­enced in enabling insights and vis­i­bil­i­ty into oper­a­tions and offer­ing users the free­dom to devel­op with low-code/no-code tools.

Key Take­aways

• Cus­tomers not cur­rent­ly using SAP BTP need more infor­ma­tion to man­age their expec­ta­tions of out­comes bet­ter, while cur­rent users need more guid­ance on how to opti­mize their invest­ment in cer­tain areas.
  • Spe­cial atten­tion should be paid to automat­ing and opti­miz­ing busi­ness process­es as this is the num­ber one out­come that could ide­al­ly ben­e­fit orga­ni­za­tions not cur­rent­ly using SAP BTP and was one of the least not­ed out­comes cur­rent users ben­e­fit from.
  • Dri­ving bet­ter deci­sions with ana­lyt­ics and/​or plan­ning, enabling insights and vis­i­bil­i­ty into oper­a­tions, and giv­ing the user free­dom to devel­op with low-code/no-code are all oth­er out­comes that cur­rent users expe­ri­ence the least and need more sup­port to optimize.
• Orga­ni­za­tions can bet­ter con­nect appli­ca­tions and data across their enter­prise with SAP BTP. This is the high­est ben­e­fit received by cur­rent SAP BTP users and a top ben­e­fit prospec­tive users hope to receive. 
• Cur­rent users said SAP BTP improves their ERP jour­ney to the cloud, with the seam­less inte­gra­tion of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with appli­ca­tions in their tech­nol­o­gy landscapes.

For more curat­ed con­tent, check out this SAP BTP con­tent col­lec­tion. And for all ASUG Research, log in to your ASUG​.com account.