Surviving the SAP Talent Crunch

 

By Sam Sliman
President, Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

 

SAP’s recent suggestion that a global shortage of 30,000 - 50,000 skilled SAP professionals is expected in coming years should come as no surprise. In April of 2007, Leo Apotheker warned of a potential SAP consultant deficit in the neighborhood of 50,000. AMR analyst Bruce Richardson, keeping things real, put the number closer to 70,000. Regardless of the exact figure, an SAP talent crunch is upon us, and all signs indicate that the situation will most likely worsen over the next several years.

 

Key drivers of today’s SAP talent crunch include a wave of baby boomer retirements, fewer college students majoring in computer sciences, and SAP’s unabated growth. The latter poses what is perhaps the greatest challenge to SAP-customer IT directors tasked with attracting and retaining the SAP staff needed to implement and maintain their implementations.

 

According to David Foote, president and chief research officer of Foote Partners LLC, a research firm that follows IT skills and pay trends, "SAP’s aggressive selling of its newer products has outmatched the availability of skills to successfully implement many of those deployments." Putting a finer point on the issue, Foote observes that when a CFO or executive puts his job on the line by signing off on an SAP project, the last thing he wants is "to get stuck because there isn't enough talent available to implement the technology."

 

According to an Economic Intelligence Unit report sponsored by SAP and released in May, two-thirds of IT directors expect it to become more difficult to attract and retain SAP talent in the coming years. In addition to the talent shortage, the rising price tag of those with high-demand SAP skills such as NetWeaver BI and NetWeaver XI (among others) is posing a significant obstacle to finding and keeping in-house SAP resources.

 

According to Foote, pay has jumped 10% in the past year for professionals with SAP MDM, SAP ERP and SAP HCM experience. Moreover, in-house employees with NetWeaver BI skills are commanding six-figure salaries, while outside consultants with hot SAP skills are fetching anywhere from $135 to $200/hour.

 

For its part, SAP is working mightily to address the present and future SAP skills shortage, ramping up to add 30,000 new consultants to its team of approximately 11,000 consulting and education employees (plus approx. 6,000 service and support partners); quadrupling participants in its University Alliance Program from 900 to 4,000 universities over the next few years; and providing unprecedented digital access to SAP education and certification programs.

 

More than anything else, SAP is relying heavily on its partner ecosystem to ensure there is enough SAP talent to accommodate upgrades, maintenance and, of course, SAP’s aggressive growth plans for doubling its customer count by 2010. SAP expects its largest 20 services partners to recruit, train or retrain more than 23,000 SAP pros in 2008. The company also has high SAP talent recruiting and development expectations for its network of 3,000+ tier two consulting partners, many of whom are well positioned to cultivate and grow SAP talent in vital geographic regions and vertical industries.

 

Given the shortage of skilled SAP consultants, SAP customers must be realistic, which means being proactive and creative with their initiatives to secure access to the skilled, external SAP professionals needed to ensure their SAP projects stay on track and their organizations realize the maximum value from their SAP investment.