Today’s Manufacturing Hiring Storm: Shortage of SAP Professionals & Resources and Increasing Reliance on SAP

The shortage of SAP professionals is a significant challenge for manufacturers. SAP software plays a critical role in managing production and supply chain operations, but finding and hiring qualified professionals has become increasingly difficult. According to a survey conducted by SAPinsider in 2021, 80% of the 291 organizations surveyed reported difficulty in finding and hiring qualified SAP professionals. Additionally, 56% of the respondents stated that the shortage of SAP talent was the biggest challenge they faced in managing their SAP systems.

Resources shortages are hitting hard outside of IT as well with finance, operations, and procurement teams (just to name a few) grappling with smaller teams and increasing workloads. A clear solution across the board is to look to business process automation (BPA) to eliminate manual data lookup, processing, and updating. A key outcome of process automation in SAP is accuracy and scalability–critical when departments are trying to do more with less resources.

Integrating Asset Management solutions, like ServiceNow, or your CRM, field service, or quoting system directly with SAP ensure employees across your entire organization are able to focus on the most value added, revenue-generating tasks and projects.

Overcoming the Shortage of SAP Professionals

So how can manufacturers overcome the SAP talent shortage? One strategy is to invest in employee training and development programs to upskill existing staff. By training employees on SAP software and related technologies, manufacturers can create a pipeline of internal talent that can help fill the skills gap. This, however, is a mid- to long-term play and won’t protect current SAP projects.

Another option is to partner with SAP consultancies to access skilled professionals–although they too are experiencing SAP expertise shortages. By partnering with a consultancy, manufacturers can access a team of skilled SAP professionals that can help them overcome the shortage of talent and achieve their business objectives.

A third option is to leverage PIPs–Packaged Integration Processes–that offer basically no-code SAP integration solutions. PIPs are so easy to work with that even citizen integrators can quickly and successfully create SAP integrations–even for complex lead-to-cash processes or asset management and procurement. PIPs are pre-configured and pre-tested to speed time-to-revenue for projects while simultaneously being customizable.

Quantifying the Challenges

• Unemployment rates remain at record lows–3.5% in the US and just 6% in Europe as of April 2023.

• According to a report by Gartner, “The global talent shortage is now the top emerging risk facing organizations, with 54% of respondents indicating that it has grown in the past year.” The report notes that talent shortages can impede the implementation of strategic initiatives, such as digital transformation.

• According to another Gartner survey of around 18,000 employees conducted in November and December 2022, 86 percent of CIOs reported more competition for qualified candidates and 73 percent worried about IT talent attrition.

These statistics highlight the urgent need for manufacturers to address the shortage of SAP talent and develop the necessary digital skills to remain competitive in the industry. By investing in employee training and partnering with SAP consultancies, and leveraging PIPs, manufacturers can ensure that they have the skills and resources needed to successfully implement and manage SAP software for optimal business outcomes. Want to learn more about how enosix PIPs make real-time SAP data integration a cinch? Check out this blog post.

The Impact of SAP Integration Outside IT

As reliance on SAP as your single data source increases, more teams across your organization need access to the data that’s inside SAP either directly, or to feed automations and processes in other front-end systems. Eliminating manual tasks doesn’t just make employees more productive, it drives improved employee satisfaction because they are focused on the higher-value functions within their departments–driving revenue, profitability, loyalty, and more. Happier employees and processes that are automated, scalable, and accurate are possible.

Process automation–especially for manufacturers and organizations that run a complex SAP ERP–is critical to address staffing challenges and resource shortages. IT departments and look to PIPs and citizen integrators to drive efficiency and lower coding demands. Other departments can virtualize SAP-based data directly into their front-end solutions and automate processes while improving accuracy. To learn more about how automation can help your organization, read about how using SAP process automation increases manufacturing agility or let’s talk.