By Rafi Katanasho
The average SAP performance problem takes one full person day’s labour to resolve, according to new data from Compuware.
Leading organisations have spent hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars implementing SAP to benefit from world’s best practice in business process automation. SAP can only deliver the intended return on investment, however, if end users are able to effectively perform their work. Lack of SAP availability or poor performance can lead to productivity losses and even process delays as users revert to manual processes.
Seeking to better understand organisations’ experiences in managing the performance of their SAP applications, Compuware surveyed 101 senior Australian IT executives from medium and large organisations attending last year’s SAP Australian User Group (SAUG) Summit in Sydney and the SAUG Plenary in Brisbane earlier this year.
When respondents were asked how often their organisations experience SAP performance issues affecting end users, the Compuware Australian SAP Performance Survey revealed a broad range of experiences.
Responses ranged from almost daily (21 per cent), to weekly (20 per cent), monthly (25 per cent), quarterly (17 per cent) and never (17 per cent). Altogether, 83 per cent of respondents experience regular SAP performance issues and among 66 per cent of respondents, these issues occur at least once a month. Among 41 per cent of organisations, issues occur weekly or almost daily.
Multiple staff involved in fixing SAP performance issues
When asked how many people on average are involved in the troubleshooting, diagnosis and resolution process when an SAP performance issue occurs, a large majority of respondents (69 per cent) indicated that two to five people are involved, with just 10 per cent saying only one person is involved. Not all organisations, however, are so fortunate. At 5 per cent of organisations, on average six to nine people are involved in addressing SAP performance issues. At another 5 per cent of organisations, 10 to 14 people are involved and, at 3 per cent of organisations, 15 or more people are involved.
Averaging these figures across all organisations, the survey reveals that, on average, 4.3 people are involved in the troubleshooting, diagnosis and resolution process. This goes some way to explain why SAP performance issues result in a loss of productivity for the business at so many organisations. When asked about the cost of poor SAP performance, around three-quarters of respondents (74 per cent) reported that it impacts customer satisfaction, while a significant majority (60 per cent) said it results in a loss of productivity for the business. Other impacts to organisations were ‘SLA penalties’ (15 per cent of respondents) and ‘loss of revenue’ (13 per cent).
SAP performance problems identified too late to help end users
The survey revealed a certain degree of complacency when it came to organisations being aware of performance issues. On average, across all organisations surveyed, IT staff only become aware of performance issues before SAP end users do 38 per cent of the time. Many organisations have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in IT infrastructure tools, yet most of the time they are not identifying performance issues before they affect SAP end users. Little wonder that the impact on customer satisfaction is the most commonly cited cost of poor SAP performance.
Fixing SAP performance issues: a full-time job
When it came to how long organisations take to identify the cause of SAP performance issues, respondents revealed a fairly consistent experience. At most organisations (53 per cent), the time taken to identify the cause of issue is counted in ‘hours’. Nonetheless, it is worrying that 29 per cent of organisations count the time taken to identify the cause of SAP performance issues in days (20 per cent), weeks (5 per cent) or longer (4 per cent).
With a few assumptions, the average time taken to identify the cause of issues can be conservatively estimated at around two hours. Combining this with the average number of people involved in the troubleshooting, diagnosis and resolution process (4.3 people), the average SAP performance issue can be estimated to consume around one person day of labour.
While organisations display widely divergent frequencies of SAP performance issues, it can be estimated that for the 21 per cent of organisations which experience almost daily issues, the labour required to address them is equivalent to a full-time staff position.
Rafi Katanasho is solutions director, application performance management for Compuware.
This article was first published in Inside SAP Winter 2011.
