SAP professionals in ANZ can breathe a collective sigh of relief: after the general IT market slowdown leading up to the Federal election last September, there has been a resurgence in demand. Freya Purnell found out which SAP skill areas you should be banking on now.
One of the issues facing the local environment has been a structural shift as SAP market share matures, according to Systems and People director Leanne O’Connor.
“The number of enterprise-wide SAP implementations has decreased over the years as many blue chip organisations have already implemented SAP and those clients have matured in their project demands and ongoing support,” she says.
While the upgrade demand has diminished across core ECC, there are still plenty of organisation seeking assistance with upgrades in other areas such as CRM and BI (including BusinessObjects and Business Planning and Consolidation).
Peter Bateson, director – IT, NSW for Robert Walters, agrees that 2014 is off to a decent start, with salaries remaining relatively constant from the previous year.
The market, particularly on a contract basis, is definitely favouring niche skills.
“If you were a generic SAP candidate for modules that are easy to come by in the market, we have seen that the lower end of the rates are dropping. So for the more junior or mid-level candidates, or those candidates that are struggling for work, they’re moving their salary downwards,” says Bateson.
Salaries for specialist skill areas, such as SAP HANA, are holding up much better.
“If you have a generic skill set, you may need to be competitively salaried, but if you have a niche skill set then you can generally command the premium,” Bateson says.
Where the big bucks are: high-paying, high-demand sectors
Despite some macro issues softening activity in the mining and oil and gas sectors, they sectors still offer the highest salaries for SAP professionals. “Mining and oil and gas commodity prices coupled with the maturing of SAP IT mining projects have meant that there is less demand for project resources from Tier 1 miners. However, these industries still want the best consultants to drive productivity gains, and these companies still have the ability to pay higher salaries than other industries,” O’Connor says.
Utilities is another hotspot. After the Advanced Metering Infrastructure activity over the last couple of years, there was a brief pause in the market, but new projects have begun emerging again, including some remediation work on solutions already implemented.
“Reset periods within utilities businesses also drive IT budgeting and enterprise planning for the next five years and these differ between states,” O’Connor says.
In particular, IS-U skills are in demand, though not everyone is keen on going down that path.
“Of course IS-U is very specialised, but when we speak to the consultants about whether they have this experience or would be prepared to get experience in that area, they often say that once you do, you tend to become pigeon-holed. So there are some consultants that are staying away from IS-U for that reason,” Bateson says.
A couple of major new retail projects are drawing on specialised resources, and the FMCG sector is also showing stronger demand at present, with organisations looking to complete work that was out of the scope of original projects or not delivered during previous implementations.
“Restructuring of internal IT teams is occurring in some instances to ensure the right mix of skills and team culture,” O’Connor says. “There is also demand due to the integration of FMCG manufacturing sites onto SAP platforms.”
Other hot sectors are State and Federal Government, and financial services.
Specialised skills
Candidates with expertise in the functional and niche areas of SAP, such as SAP CRM, SAP HCM, and SAP FICO are most sought after at the moment.
“There is less demand for SAP skills that can be commoditised or outsourced offshore, such as ABAP and Basis,” O’Connor says.
To achieve maximum marketability, these skills should be matched with above average ‘soft skills’ – such as communication skills, flexibility, confidence, problem-solving and the ability to be an effective team player, according to Acheson.
O’Connor agrees, saying clients are increasingly seeking excellent communication, business-facing and influencing skills and stakeholder management skills.
To further develop and demonstrate this aspect of their capabilities, candidates should spend time understanding the business they are working in and the business drivers behind the technology requests.
“In IT, many consultants just ‘execute’ the technical outcome, without fully understanding the business need or process behind it. This is where skills can be easily offshored or commoditised,” O’Connor says.
“Candidates could consider career moves between consulting organisations versus end users, as these environments develop different soft skills and have different stakeholders’ needs and expectations.”
The next big thing
The next big growth areas, as might be expected given SAP’s focus, will be skills relating to business intelligence and analytics, SAP mobility, and cloud solutions such as SuccessFactors.
For SAP professionals now looking to specialise, O’Connor recommends backing the business analytics area of SAP, including SAP BW (on HANA), BusinessObjects and BPC. Demand in this area is driven by a need for organisations to present real-time data faster and more simply in order to facilitate decision-making.
Bateson agrees, saying there is a real buzz in the BI space at the moment, as companies seek to leverage investments in technology from a BI perspective to generate additional profits.
“Consultants in these areas need strong technical skills as well as business-facing and business analysis skills. These products encompass user presentation and usability and integrate closely with other functional areas of SAP,” says O’Connor.
SuccessFactors is a newer area where demand for skilled resources is surging.
“Due to the smaller number of SuccessFactors implementations integrated in an SAP environment, skills are in short supply, and consultants have only worked on one implementation, not several. As the uptake of this technology emerges, so will the availability of skills. The challenge will be for the traditional HR/PY functional consultants to cross-skill in SuccessFactors,” O’Connor says.
Inevitably, where resources are hard to find in the Australian market, recruiters must look further afield, particularly to Europe, which has had earlier access to some of the newer solutions.
“Australia is not necessarily the first place a new technology and new project is rolled out, so the consultants that have done projects elsewhere bring valuable experience,” Bateson says.
For SAP professionals looking to break into some of these emerging areas, such as HANA, the first step is to complete a specialised course.
“We’ve seen that those consultants who have completed a SAP HANA course are generally able to command higher daily rates than those who haven’t, because there are so few with real, relevant experience in the market right now,” says Bateson.
However O’Connor says with increasing numbers of consultants with courses under their belts but little or no practical experience, education itself isn’t enough for employers.
“Having practical experience on the latest version of these applications – for example, BusinessObjects 4.1 – is important to clients,” she says. “If you don’t have recent experience on a product, it helps to be able to articulate the differences between versions and functionality.”
For consultants, Bateson also recommends taking a permanent role in an organisation implementing the solution that you are looking to upskill in.
“If you are a trusted consultant for the company on a permanent basis, and they are implementing new modules in SAP or upgrading a SAP system, you will obviously stand the best chance of getting that experience. You are then able to potentially utilise that experience to move into other companies or even go into contracting,” Bateson says.
Otherwise nabbing a job in a new skill area can be a tough ask, he adds.
“That’s where you’ve got to be very experienced. It’s not just having that SAP experience, it’s also having that domain knowledge that would effectively enable you to get up to speed at a very fast pace.”
Inside SAP would like to thank Systems and People, Peoplebank and Robert Walters for participation in this year’s SAP salary survey.
Around the world
Each year, Panaya conducts a global survey of salaries and general job confidence of people working for SAP customers and partners. Here are some of the global insights from the most recent survey, released in October 2013.
Globally, 67 per cent of respondents are expecting an increase in their salaries this year.
42 per cent of respondents are somewhat concerned about their job stability, and 11 per cent are very concerned. In APAC, 48 per cent are somewhat concerned, and 13 per cent are very concerned.
Overall, the median salary for employees of SAP customers is 11 per cent higher (at $96,100) than those working for SAP partners/integrators ($86,400).
The median salary of those working for companies in North America was $110,000, compared with $100,00 in Europe and $70,000 in APAC.
The top median salaries go, as you might expect, to CIOs ($175,000), while at the bottom are SAP trainers ($66,025). Median salary for a functional SAP specialist is $85,000, for a project manager $99,275, and ERP or application director $125,000.
Median salaries are the highest for those working for aerospace and defence, professional services, healthcare, and financial services companies.
Survey respondents expect to see their salaries continue to rise next year, projecting very similar rates of change for the coming year. 67 per cent expect to see higher salaries in 2014, with 33 per cent saying they expect <5 per cent, 19 per cent are expecting increases of 5-10 per cent, 9 per cent expect it will be 10-20 per cent higher, and 7 per cent hope they will receive increases of more than 20 per cent.
This year, the two most common job changes were more responsibilities (54 per cent) and having to do more with fewer resources (50 per cent).
The general skills believed to be most important for securing higher pay and additional job options are project management (48 per cent), business function expertise (35 per cent), analytical (34 per cent), and communication skills (33 per cent).
Only 17 per cent of managers, 14 per cent of directors and 15 per cent of CIOs are women.
To download a copy of Panaya’s 2013 SAP Salary Survey, visit http://panaya.com/blog/posts/2013-sap-salary-survey-stack-peers/.
This article first appeared in the Autumn 2014 edition of Inside SAP.
