For SAP professionals, it seems the good times have returned, on the back of a wave of digital transformation. Demand for SAP skills is strong and diversifying, as Freya Purnell reports.
It’s been brewing for a while, but the last 18 months has finally seen the dawning of a new age for IT in Australian enterprises. It’s the onset of true digital transformation, and while the concept has been in the ether for some time, the past year has seen talk translated into action.
Following a period of political instability, due to the minority government, and a general air of caution amongst business as a result, Australia corporate and government organisations have realised that the world has moved on, and they are not as globally competitive as they once were, according to Peoplebank CEO Peter Acheson.
“What’s driving this extraordinary period of growth in IT at the moment is a recognition by Australian organisations that they need to be better prepared digitally,” Acheson says.
For most, that means increasing their ability to identify, communicate, and transact with their customers and citizens online. This is having a significant impact on how companies within the SAP install base are planning, prioritising and resourcing projects.
“What we are seeing is organisations using SAP are upgrading the modules that allow them to transact electronically with their customers, or allow them to do business online,” Acheson says.
For the moment, this trend seems to be specific to Australia’s east coast, with the New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and ACT markets strengthening. In the resource-rich states of Western Australia and South Australia, the downturn affecting the resources sector has weakened SAP activity.
The digital transformation-driven pick-up in demand was bubbling from April to June 2014, but truly gathered steam in July 2014, and Acheson expects to see demand for SAP professionals continue to strengthen over the next 12 months, despite overall Australian employment looking patchy.
“At the moment, there is some counter-cyclicality of IT employment, and that is fundamentally due to the recognition that Australian corporate and government organisations need to accelerate investment to get their businesses digitally transformed so that they can compete globally,” he says.
Hot spots in the SAP market
Looking for the highest salaries? Then roles in utilities (particularly energy), mining, oil and gas, FMCG, financial services, and consulting and professional services are your best bet at the moment.
Roles in high demand, according to Systems and People managing director Leanne O’Connor, include senior functional consultants and solution architects (enterprise and modular), business analysts, CRM specialists, integration/PI developers, and data migration experts.
“There has been reduced greenfield activity, and the focus has shifted to transformation projects to remediate and improve existing and outdated landscapes,” says O’Connor. “We are seeing strong demand for functional solution lead consultants to lead these transformations, along with business analysts and integration developers, and we are seeing across all modules quite a diverse range of industries doing projects.”
Recruiters are also reporting high demand for module-specific skills around SAP IS-U, SAP Process Orchestration, SAP CRM and Fiori, SAP Business Rule Framework Plus, SAP BI and Business Objects, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC), and of course SAP HANA.
Perhaps unexpectedly, there is also quite strong demand for manufacturing-related skills in SAP MM, WM, APO and QMPP.
Speller International national sales manager Judy Cole says this is being driven by significant activity across the FMCG sector in Melbourne and Sydney.
“APO is very difficult to find across term and contract, so if there is a good APO consultant, we will always have a role for them at the moment,” she says.
While there is a lot of talk about SuccessFactors, O’Connor is only seeing demand from partners in that area.
Download the 2015 Inside SAP Salary Survey figures here
Areas in decline
With the rise of cloud solutions Ariba and SuccessFactors, demand for SAP SRM and ESS/MSS has declined.
Commoditised skills such as ABAP and Basis are under pressure, but those who can combine ABAP skills with some PI and PO experience are more sought after.
“If they have unfortunately been in a company that hasn’t been up to date with their SAP technologies, it’s going to be difficult to find a role,” says Cole.
And while O’Connor believes the market is reaching maturity for straight BI/BW skills, there is still solid demand for BusinessObjects and the related front-end presentation skills.
Next level skills
We asked recruiters what the most valuable skill sets are for SAP professionals to develop, and they were united in pointing to some of the emerging technologies, particularly related to cloud and mobile technologies – including HANA, SuccessFactors, Ariba, hybris, Syclo and Fiori.
“A lot of the new technologies are still gaining momentum in terms of client implementation, so these skills are all in short supply due to the catch-up and the cost scaling required of the traditional ECC/SAP consultant. Much of that work is currently being undertaken by partners, including SAP, as these skills are not regularly available to us on the open contracting market,” says O’Connor.
That means investing in upskilling in these solutions, as well as areas such as Business Objects dashboarding, SAP PI/PO, data governance including data migration and master data, and integration (both cloud to cloud and cloud to on-premise, SAP and competitor products) will certainly be an advantage, particularly in states such as NSW which is seeing faster adoption of new technologies.
“SAP Cloud experience is hard to find, because it’s a new technology. SAP HANA skills, and SAP APO and SAP BPC are extremely challenging at the moment, because they are quite new modules as well,” says Ben Brown, associate director of IT, Robert Walters.
But it’s not all about the technology – some of the ‘softer’ skills, such as an ability to communicate with the business, consulting, stakeholder management and customer engagement, and business expertise, are also highly valued by employers at present.
And if you’re good at imparting your knowledge about SAP to others, you might want to consider training, as recruiters are constantly on the hunt for SAP trainers.
Contract vs permanent roles
With a significant number of implementation and transformation projects underway, it is most certainly a contractors’ market at present, with demand keeping contract rates quite buoyant.
According to O’Connor, the latest ICT market analysis shows that over 85 per cent of IT roles are contract-based. At Speller, while the usual breakdown of contract and permanent roles is 80/20, in the first quarter of this year, only 6 per cent of roles placed were permanent, with the balance contract positions. There is also a trend towards longer contracts.
Recruiters are also observing a trend towards longer contracts, as well as the rise of fixed-term hire arrangements, placing an end date on permanent roles rather than leaving them open-ended.
“We are seeing a lot more companies building flexible workforce solutions – a blend of onshore, offshore delivery with permanent and contract resources, so they can move and readily scale up and down,” O’Connor says.
Download the 2015 Inside SAP Salary Survey figures here
What employers are looking for
Perhaps not surprisingly as the range of SAP solutions grows ever-wider, employers are increasingly look for specialists in particular SAP modules.
“We see a lot of candidates come through with varied backgrounds with different modules over time, and we find those guys are harder to place than the specialists in a particular module,” Brown says.
This focus on specialisation has also changed the typical recruiting process. In the current tight market for skills, recruiters are tapping into candidate networks in more of a search-style sourcing process to find competent consultants with the right resources – so reputation and relationships are vital.
In addition to strong technical skills, having an understanding of the business, how to communicate with other stakeholders within the organisation, and articulate the benefits of a solution is fast becoming a non-negotiable for employers.
“That’s the core thing that we have seen creeping in over the last year – business acumen. Even if it’s a short contract, they have to be able to fit into the culture, communicate effectively, and be able to deal with the business directly,” Cole says.
Acheson agrees, pointing to the rise of the ‘versatilist’, a term coined by Gartner.
“Clients and customers now want their IT people to be technically competent and proficient in the technology platform, but they also want them to have business understanding and to be able to translate that to a business benefit,” Acheson says. “It is absolutely golden in the marketplace to have people who can stand in front a group of business owners in a major bank or utility and talk about how this platform will deliver these very tangible business benefits and translate that into the return on investment equation.”
And increasingly, this requirement for business expertise is also industry-specific. Brown says their clients in the manufacturing and FMCG space have been particularly vigilant about this in recent times, while Peoplebank’s banking clients specifically want resources that have prior experience in banking.
“We are increasingly seeing business people gaining SAP skills as they become almost less technical and easier to learn,” says O’Connor.
With this trend in mind, SAP consultants may be well served by choosing industries to specialise in, rather than dabbling across mining, utilities, FMCG and retail, for example.
“Instead of working for many different sectors, where it’s very difficult to be an expert across all those business processes, consultants could also develop a slightly narrower industry focus, and then really learn the challenges and solutions required in that business vertical,” she adds.
Forces shaping the SAP resourcing market over the next three years
In the short term, significant SAP investment by Australian government agencies, particularly at the federal level, is expected to keep the consulting market strong, though this may mean consultants need to be more flexible with their geographical locations, O’Connor says. She also forecasts a shift in the type of projects, from transformation to steady phase, over the next 12 to 18 months.
From a technology perspective, the importance of cloud in SAP’s strategic roadmap and the growth of cloud-based applications – both SAP and competitor products – will have an impact on the types of skills required in the market, as well as resourcing models.
“I think we are going to see some shorter implementation times and more agile programs of work,” O’Connor says. “The traditional delivery of projects will have to change as we move into cloud-type offerings, so it will be interesting to see how the partners evolve with that as well.”
Cole believes the Australian market is beginning to suffer from a lack of investment in fostering SAP talent, particularly bringing graduates through the ranks.
“After the GFC, everybody stopped taking on graduates. We can find people with 12 to 15 years’ experience, but junior to mid levels are harder to find,” says Cole. “That’s going to be the new generation coming through SAP, so it’s crucial for some of the large consulting houses and SAP to maybe look at doing bigger graduate programs again.”
Another challenge is bridging the skills gap for the new technologies and solutions emerging, when companies only want resources who have the experience to hit the ground running.
Acheson believes SAP consultants must be open to change and continual learning to keep up with the rapid pace of change in IT.
“The day you decide you don’t want to continue to learn is the day you are going to make yourself redundant,” Acheson says.
While specialisation is going to be important, having a couple of different specialist areas will future-proof your career.
“The risk in IT is you are so specialised in an area that if the market shifts on you, your specialisation is no longer required,” he says. “If SAP is piloting a new module or a new way of taking a solution to the cloud, put your hand up. Take the risk – we all know some of these pilot projects don’t come off, but you are going to learn a lot about the future.”
Advice for new graduates
With such strong demand, IT, and specifically SAP looks like a sure bet for new graduates. But actually breaking in and securing those first few roles can be tough. The good news? “Once you have worked in IT for three to five years, you are going to be fine,” Acheson says.
Of paramount importance, particularly in the development or configuration space, is working on the most advanced current technologies, not legacy products. Acheson recommends new graduates look at specialising in the areas of cloud and mobility, which are going to be hot in the coming years, as well as business analytics and data science.
Even if you’re looking to be an SAP specialist, taking a broader view, particularly in the cloud space, could improve your employability.
“I recommend developing a broader knowledge in other non-SAP products like Salesforce or e-commerce, because these products are increasingly becoming part of traditional wall-to-wall SAP environments,” says O’Connor.
Getting some business experience while studying or after graduation, for example, in a procurement or payroll function, could provide valuable experience that will pay dividends down the track.
“The most important thing is to focus on understanding the business and business processes, so you are developing strong customer-facing business analysis consulting and stakeholder management skills,” O’Connor says.
And you can even be lateral in how you gain that business experience, according to Cole.
“While you are looking for a role, you could even volunteer within organisations – some charities such as Oxfam have SAP,” she says.
This type of work also helps to build important networks, with the ability to form good relationships critical to forge a successful career in what can be a tight-knit market.
“You’ve got to recognise your job can be done by millions of people within Eastern Europe, India and Asia, and they will do it for less than you are willing to be paid,” Acheson says. “So you have got to always deliver great outcomes and exceed expectations, whoever your current manager or employer is.”
