What Services Opportunities Will Be Created by Business Suite 7?

Last week, Peter Russo and I were amongst the group of reporters, analysts and bloggers who attended SAP’s Business Suite 7 event in New York City. You had to feel for SAP’s challenge: make the largest application release in the company’s history relevant during a time when most companies are worried that there is another economic shoe still to drop. I thought Peter did a good job of summarizing the potential of “BS7,” as well as the timing challenges, in his post last week. In this blog entry, I’ll take a look at some of the services and skills opportunities the Suite will eventually create.

The most compelling thing about BS7 from a cost standpoint is that once a company is running ERP 6.0, they can implement only the functionality of BS7 they need. This fits into SAP’s “no more upgrades” promise for its ERP suite. The fine print is that SAP is leaving itself an out: SAP is committed to using its enhancement package approach for the next five years for ERP 6.0. Nevertheless, the avoidance of large scale upgrades for the foreseeable future means a shift in how SAP (and its services partners) are going to do business once the customer base in on ERP 6.0.

Those who are looking to capitalize on the services opportunities in Business Suite 7 are advised to follow a similar strategy to SAP itself: start the “skills ramp up” now, but be aware that the BS7 work is not going to intensify until more customers are up and running on ERP 6.0. SAP has cited that 13,000 of its customers are on ERP 6.0 now (though Peter notes in his last post that most of those have only completed a technical upgrade to this point). No matter how you count it, that’s less than half of SAP’s current install base. The SAP reps I spoke to in New York were confident that all customers would be running ERP 6.0 by 2010. This seems a tad optimistic to me, but that gives some idea of the time frame in question.

Once SAP users are running ERP 6.0, we can expect them to take an “incremental” look at BS7 functionality, flipping the switch on the most useful pieces for their needs. This adds a twist to the skills rampup, because we can’t necessarily know which narrow areas of the suite will be the most popular with customers. I do believe, however, that while the Suite is more SOA-friendly than ever before, the first option most customers will look at when it comes to the Suite itself are basic functions pertaining to the four Suite components: SCM, SRM, PLM, and CRM.

In terms of these four areas, we can certainly do some comparisons in terms of which products are creating the most job opportunities as of today. On Sunday, I did some searches amongst the 57,000 job postings on Dice.com. I compared the amount of search results for all four Suite areas. Then, I did a narrower search that restricted the search to a job title itself. This allowed me to see which Suite products are becoming part of a broader job description, and which ones are becoming focused jobs of their own.

Here’s what I saw:


This basic data shows us that SAP CRM, has, by a wide margin, the most market acceptance to date. SRM and SCM are competing for a solid second place, with PLM remaining a niche offering. The way I translate this into a services mentality is as follows: I’d avoid a PLM skills focus unless I was part of an elite group of PLM specialists. With SRM and SCM, I’d be more comfortable investing in skills opportunities for those consultants who already have some relevant background in SAP procurement or logistics respectively. I probably wouldn’t focus only on those Suite areas though: I’d make sure I had plenty of skills in the core SAP “R/3” modules like SD, MM, and PP that integrate with the Suite in those areas.

SAP CRM is probably the only area of the four where the market footprint is broad enough to take a harder look at training less skilled SAP consultants into an SAP CRM focus, or even considering a standalone SAP CRM practice in the future. Of course, within each of these Suite products, there are areas more in demand than others. Further investigation of the consulting needs within each Suite component will be a worthy project for all of us this year.

Beyond a closer look at the Suite, there are other skills trends that bear watching. For example, in a blogger session I attended with co-CEO Leo Apotheker, he made a point of saying that the potential of BS7 could not be realized without a well-managed SAP environment via that tool we are hearing about in almost every SAP context: Solution Manager. We also know that SAP is emphasizing embedded analytics in BS 7. Business Objects/BI capabilities are going to be entwined in this release in such a way that BI needs will surely maintain their status at the top of the SAP skills demand list, even as those skills expand in BS7 to include geo-spatial analytics and customer “sentiment analysis.”

What are the other BS7-related skills trends we should be tracking? Here is a list I have compiled to date. I believe you’ll have an edge if you can:

- advise SAP users on enhancement package timeframes, functionality, and usage, including the differences between the Suite enhancement packs and the NetWeaver enhancement packs.

- know the switch framework and how to turn the lights on with BS 7 functionality.

- have expertise in the “SOA ready” aspects of BS 7, which is fully service-enabled. In particular, a familiarity with how flagship customers have actually used SOA for measurable success stories, and the challenges they had to overcome, will be valuable.

- get a head start in mastering some of the most likely “value scenarios” that SAP is pushing that track business events and end-to-end processes - even across organizational boundaries.

- know the “Harmonized UI” of the Suite and be prepared to support SAP users with the range of UI options they will have going forward, from Portals to Duet to handheld devices.

- last but certainly not least, it’s more and more difficult to separate SAP business applications from the NetWeaver stack. Those who have the SAP technical expertise to compliment the Suite’s process know-how will have the edge over the classic functional consulting background.

When we think about the consulting opportunities generated by the Suite, one interesting angle is: how much of this service business will SAP try to keep in-house, and how much will be available to SAP’s service partners? Skeptics I talked to during and after the event felt that SAP would be scooping up more of this business than ever before, partially to make up for the loss of revenue from large scale upgrades. During our blogger session with Leo Apotheker, however, he emphasized the importance he places on SAP’s service partners, at one point saying that if SAP gets overly involved on the services side, then “we’re not a software company anymore.”

Assurances aside, how the services landscape will change during the BS 7 era remains to be seen. But one thing never changes: no matter who is staffing an implementation, the edge always goes to the senior consultants armed with specialized know-how in the latest SAP apps. If the firm managing the install doesn’t have the folks they need on staff, they will be compelled to source them from the outside. That’s why cultivating SAP skills will always be just as important as cultivating client relationships.