While the economy has been turbulent, the SAP sector has remained resilience and performed above the market average. In the coming months, we’re expecting remaining enterprises in holding patterns to finally push forward with S/4HANA initiatives, stimulating more industry growth.
Every quarter, bluewaveSELECT publishes The SAP Report, which provides SAP and S/4HANA market growth data, as well as the most in-demand SAP skills. The full report is available here, but we’ve summarised the most in-demand SAP skills below.
Finance (12% of demand in Q2 2024)
The core component of most SAP landscapes, SAP Finance was the most sought-after skill in Q2. Outside the mainstay modules of FI and CO (which were strong throughout the quarter) more specialist areas of finance such as Banking, Treasury, Tax, FSCM, and FSCD featured highly.
Leadership (9% of demand in Q2 2024)
38% of Q2 SAP customers were new to bluewaveSELECT – this kept demand for SAP leaders high. New customers often engage with bluewave during phase zero and phase one of new SAP programmes, which require highly-skilled Transformation, Programme and Project Managers. They lead stakeholders through design and manage delivery via third party implementation partners.
Data (9% of demand in Q2 2024)
It’s no secret that the quality of data is an integral success (and failure) point of any SAP programme. The best S/4HANA solution will deliver zero business benefit if it is populated with bad data. SAP and Systems Integrators often pass the responsibility for data integrity back to the customer, which explains data taking the #3 spot. And almost all demand for data resources came from end users.
HxM (7% of demand in Q2 2024)
After three consecutive quarters at the top, HxM drops to 4th. This has more to do with demand for other skills increasing, rather than HxM dropping – it still represents 7% of total vacancies. SuccessFactors and SuccessFactors Payroll are driving continued demand. We’ve also noticed a growing trend for integration skills, as customers look outside SAP for best-in-class workforce planning solutions.
Integration (5% of demand in Q2 2024)
Integration skills have soared thanks to SAP’s complexity. Integrating an S/4HANA solution with other applications and platforms (including legacy as well as ‘new world’) requires a deep level of understanding of both S/4HANA and the systems to be integrated. And experience with cloud integration tools such as CPI leads the demand.
Conclusion
Overall, SAP (especially S/4HANA) skills continue to be highly sought after in the UK, particularly in areas of finance, leadership, data management, HxM and system integration.
