Solving the SAP Talent Shortage

(Long response to a SAP Recruiter)

This is actually, at its core, a problem SAP itself must solve.? I was once tasked by the SAP Board of Directors to run a project to figure out what SAP Skillsets would be needed to support the overall business strategy.? We made progress, but did not solve this, at least not back then.? ?You see, SAP has several internal conflicts when it comes to SAP consulting resources.? The first is fixed cost, or more specifically, having fixed payroll costs.? SAP consultants, at least those employed by SAP, while paid very well, must cover not just their cost, but many cost loaded onto their position.? Known as their FLC rate, this drives one of the constraints that has no clear ‘best answer’.?

Another challenge, and this is where SAP’s clients start to experience the issue, is that SAP, in order to succeed against a huge field of able competitors, relies on a large number of specialized solutions, to fill in the gaps, or white space, to differentiate themselves.? While HANA is a ‘big picture’ technology differentiator, there are many, smaller solutions that SAP ‘must’ sell to keep those competitors at bay, and keep their customer base coming back for more.? To provide just one example I happen to be familiar with, let’s take the MRO solution, or iMRO.? ?It’s one thing to understand how to configure it, and there are a lot of moving parts to it, it’s also helpful to have some background in actually fixing things, i.e., jets.?

Now SAP, in order to support this solution, aside from partnering on the further development of the solution, even outsourced the training on the solution.? While it may have solved a problem (no internal support from SAP to develop and deliver the training), it effectively limited the supply of MRO consultants to whoever happened to be able to somehow take that training.? That was a small number.? I’ve worked with a number of small niche SAP partners over the years, and their growth is limited by the availability of Senior SAP Consultants and their need to lead the sales process at the same time.? The SIs are mostly in the same boat, but their size allows them to hide this a little.

Now let’s address the challenges I’ve seen SAP customers face when it comes to having the SAP talent available (either as employees or as contractors) when they need it.? A typical greenfield implementation goes something like this - an entire sales process happens long before the implementation contract is signed, then it kicks off.? Part of the project planning includes deciding upon the approach to training the company will take.? Let’s say the customer takes the recommended route of identifying the internal team members who will receive the same training the external consultants have received, i.e., probably (not always) an SAP Academy on their SAP module.? They got lucky, they just got their ticket punched to become SAP Consultants, and at least in the past, a path toward much higher wages, on somebody’s else’s project, hopefully down the road, after Go-Live.

Another part of the SAP Implementation Methodology, skipped by many SAP customers, is the need to ‘adjust’ the compensation of these newly minted SAP Consultants, who also happen to have actual implementation experience, and within their current employer’s industry.?

There were several decisions made during this process and perhaps some bad assumptions.? The first was that this training, coupled with this project experience, would result in an internal SAP support capability.? That might be somewhat true, for a while.? But unless that company commits to continuously training and providing additional SAP experience, within that company, that newly minted SAP consultant will either move on to other roles within the company, or experience a dilution of the role, such that they’re not putting all of their newly minted SAP Skills to work.? In short, their market value will decline if they don’t take action.? Many do.

The second was that the skills they sent people to learn will be what is needed going forward.? This will hold true as long as they are rolling out functionality encompassed by the SAP Software they have acquired, but not yet deployed.? This works fine as long as the subsequent roll-outs are simply rolling out pieces of standard functionality for the core modules the company initially deployed.?? But it doesn’t work when they need one of the specialized pieces of SAP software that is needed to support the business.? Let’s take a ‘real world’ example from an airline customer I once worked on, in this case, Fuel Management and Hedging.? At the time, it turns out, that SAP standard would support the requirements of the airline, because they were fairly simple, in fact, far simpler than initially thought.? But there was only one guy in the entire SAP universe that could tell us that, and, like magic, he was almost always on a ski slope somewhere.? In other words, he made a bit more than the average SAP Consultant.? There’s no way to justify keeping a guy like him on your staff.? At least, not that I could see.?? But without him, the client was faced with buying extremely expensive 3rd party hedging software, because the knowledge required to figure this out was missing.? Here’s the kicker - core SAP module consultants, from 3 different modules, actually implemented the solution from his design inputs.

Lessons Learned:?

Specialized SAP Consultants make good money and often save many times their cost.? The only way to find them is to have a good network and know how to use the networking tools.

Core Module consultants are also in demand, and those who truly know their stuff, are invaluable.? While many get very good at configuring their module, few, in fact, none that I’ve run across, actually can develop a business case for their work.? Odd, since this is literally the first deliverable on the SAP Activate and SAP ASAP project Plans.?

SAP has an Industry Solution Focused Strategy.? This is a differentiator for SAP, but it is not without competitors.? SAP consultants who are industry solution experts are much rarer than core module consultants.? But they can be upskilled, with training and mentoring.?

Here’s an example from another Industry I have a little experience with – SAP IS-Retail.?

As it happens, I’ve been the SAP project manager for SAP IS-Retail projects and it is highly specialized, though not black magic.? But SAP has a huge number of IS-retail implementations out there, and this has created a fairly large pool of specialized SAP IS-Retail consultants.? The challenge comes when clients fail to understand that there are a multitude of sub-specialities encompassed within this solution.? This ranges from the use of the Article Master, to unique POS requirements to the CAR, to name just three that have caused me some headaches over the years.? This is also another one where SAP has largely handed the creation of new SAP IS-Retail consultants off to one or more partners.? This is where clients need to be asking questions of SAP as to what they are doing to ensure a steady supply of SAP IS-Retail Consultants.? It won’t be a huge number of them required.? But it will require some.

How do I think SAP Customers can possibly address the ever-present talent shortfall (it’s not new).? I wish I could say the answer is as simple as throwing more money at the problem (that always helps, but doesn’t provide a comprehensive solution).? And more money may not be available.

Training:? I always think back to how the USAF did it – but yet I never see it done in most SAP Customers (except, of course, the military).? The USAF created, for every single position, comprehensive training plans, sometimes called OJT records (On-the-Job Training).? At their simplest, they were simply tables, with task-by-task breakdowns, of every job.? They were further broken down into various skill levels, corresponding to various expected performance levels.? In SAP speak, it might be roughly equivalent to SAP Associate, SAP Consultant, SAP Solution Architect, SAP Project/Program Manager.? But for an end client, it would have to be developed specifically for that specific end-client.? This would typically go well beyond the end-user training delivered within SAP implementation project.?? For those with the budget, there are many technical solutions available for delivering this training, including AI tools.? But there is hard work to be done to perform task analysis, or even to get agreement on which task are actually necessary.? But I will say, from experience, SAP has and maintains a vast internal training library, of which I personally took advantage of many times, for example, to get my PDUs to renew my PMPs.? It all resides within a SAP Knowledge Management System.

I don’t have the answer to every problem I’ve seen with the Talent Shortage, but I do think the answers exist.

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