Demand for specialized SAP S/4HANA expertise has steadily grown throughout 2024, and all signs are pointing toward a hyper-accelerated market in 2025. Just 37% of SAP’s customers worldwide have bought licenses to migrate to S/4HANA according to Gartner, and we’re seeing massive RFP activity in both the public and private sectors. The momentum in either sector is enough to cause labor compression, but the parallel investment by both sectors is unprecedented.
To get a better understanding what expertise is in greatest demand, I mined our Baer data.
At 22% of total SAP job volume, S/4HANA Finance expertise is in greater demand than any other skill. This tracks—the vast majority of transformations begin with modernization of the finance core. Technology expertise is also consistently in demand, particularly as it relates to integrations, and represents 15% of our 2024 SAP placements. Requests are for a broad range of skills, including Fiori UI enablement, Full Stack Development and BASIS/Security Infrastructure.
Earlier this year, we noticed an uptick in demand for HCM expertise and that has continued to grow. Currently HCM accounts for 12% of our SAP placements, with the majority focused on Success Factors and more specifically payroll modernization. We attribute this expanding trend to several factors including the desire to insource payroll to provide data for AI applications, as well as SAP’s end of support for ECC Payroll. Previously, both our systems integrator and direct clients told us that despite the long-term value of HCM transformation, it wasn't a priority due to complexity and risk. It’s interesting to see more organizations putting it on tier roadmaps, and if the trend continues, I anticipate we will see some labor compression.
Read Baer’s evaluation of the pros and cons of prioritizing HCM.
Supply Chain and Manufacturing (SCM) represent nearly a quarter (24%) of Baer’s SAP 2024 service requests this year. Interestingly, demand is slightly lower than it was earlier this year. Just six months ago, SCM skills represented a full third of SAP our portfolio demand. Digging deeper into the trend, supply chain skills are in far greater demand than manufacturing at 18% vs. 6% respectively. And digging still deeper, we’re seeing a good deal of traction around extended warehouse management (EWM), transportation management (TM), advanced available to promise (aATP), and production engineering and optimization (PEO), specifically.
Read Baer’s in-depth analysis of SCM expertise trends.
Two other notable areas where we are seeing strong demand for expertise, although to a lesser degree than the areas I have already mentioned, are in data-focused roles such as data architects and data migration consultants coming in at 9% and order to cash architects and consultants at 7%. The remaining 11% of our SAP focused jobs are in a broad range of areas, with Cloud Edge roles (C4C, ARIBA, IBP, Concur) coming in at 4% and the historically underfunded areas PMO and training and change management each garnering 2% of volume.
At Baer, our SAP practice is primarily focused on finding specialized S/4HANA expertise, and the data here reflects that. ECC skills continue to be in demand for the 63% of SAP customers who have not yet migrated and are doing preparatory divestiture work and ECC instance unification in advance of migrations and/or sustaining their instances. However, these skill sets are more institutionally available and not reflected in this data.
As demand increases, it’s infinitely more challenging to find the talent you need, when you need it. That’s why it pays to partner early with an enterprise performance partner like Baer vs. a traditional IT staffing agency. At Baer, we understand the SAP S/4HANA space, we’re always mining our data to identify trends and proactively identifying in-demand talent. That means, when the time comes, we can place the experts you need with precision, saving you valuable time and supporting the stability of your program.
Unlike typical technology staffing companies, Baer is a true enterprise performance partner. We have a deep understanding of the scope of enterprise digital transformation and the highly specialized skillsets you will need at different stages of the process.
To learn more about how Baer can make a positive impact on your enterprise transformation, please reach out to Brian Trout, Executive Vice President, Sales, at btrout@baergroup.com, or John Wilson, Vice President of Strategic Accounts, at jwilson@baergroup.com.