SAPinsider 2024 Research Agenda

AI/Automation and Data Analytics

Data Management Strategies

April 2024

The focus on enterprise data management will intensify with the proliferation of 5G, IoT, AI/ML and other transformative technologies. SAP customers are increasingly looking for new data management models for the storage, migration, integration, governance, protection, transformation, and processing of all kinds of data ranging from transactional to analytical. This research will examine the drivers, the challenges, the approaches and the technologies SAP customers are taking for data on both SAP HANA and other data solutions.

Evolving Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics to Create the Intelligent Enterprise

June 2024

As the volume of data that organizations generate and capture explodes and the need to draw real time insights for business resilience becomes imperative, there is a pressing need for a new breed of data and analytics tools that are scalable, agile, flexible and can integrate seamlessly with other applications. Cloud-based data and analytics platforms provide a plethora of these desired advantages like agility, elasticity, quick deployment and rapid innovation, in addition to cost savings.

AI State of Adoption 2024

July 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all its forms is impacting productivity in nearly every function in every industry. Analysts are estimating that Generative AI will become a $1.3 trillion market by 2032. AI has rapidly graduated from scientific exploration to business imperative. This research initiative will delve into what underpins an AI business case, what are the technology prerequisites for AI, and how do you make the decision between build, buy, or both. It will explore the skillsets required to operationalize AI and how your organizational structure could change. It will also uncover how leading companies are leveraging a combination of SAP, hyperscalers, ISVs, consultants and integrators to deliver AI projects. Data is the lifeblood of AI so we will also look at how to prepare, validate, and organize your enterprise data to be ready for AI. And we will all learn from the first movers what it takes to deliver tangible business value with AI.

Process Automation and Intelligence

August 2024

SAPinsiders have consistently indicated that leveraging process automation and process intelligence platforms will enable them to digitalize, discover, understand, and manage business process execution more effectively. While many of them may already have built a foundation in terms of process automation, process intelligence capabilities will allow them to leverage AI, ML and advanced algorithms to model specific events across their processes, visualize these models to identify deviations, find process bottlenecks and perform root cause analyses of process failures.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Threats and Challenges for SAP Systems

June 2024

For the last two years ransomware and malware attacks were identified as the two biggest threats for SAP systems. But the biggest challenge in securing SAP systems is unpatched systems. With the ever-increasing frequency of cyberattacks, keeping systems up to date is crucial to preventing cyberattacks and keeping systems available. 2023 also saw increased adoption of technologies that provided information about new threats or helped reveal attacks in progress. This research will explore the year over year trends in the cybersecurity space, what organizations perceive as the biggest threats to their systems, the challenges they face addressing those threats, and examining trends over the last three years of similar research.

Generative AI’s Impact on Cybersecurity

October 2024

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used in enterprise applications for many years, generative AI (GenAI) has now become a major focus for many companies. But while GenAI offers new capabilities for analysis, it has the potential to increase risk as threat actors also explore ways of leveraging GenAI. In this report we will explore how GenAI is impacting organizations from a cybersecurity perspective. Are organizations exploring cybersecurity tools that leverage GenAI? What are their plans for protecting vital data that might be utilized by GenAI capabilities? And how do they plan on managing the cybersecurity implications of having GenAI tools within their organizations?

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) State of the Market

June 2024

Enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions have been leveraged to maintain and control operational assets and equipment for decades now. With increasing business complexity and sustainability now woven into core business strategies, companies are pursuing additional digital capabilities in EAM. Organizations must understand the critical imperative to optimize the quality, carbon intensity and utilization of assets throughout their lifecycle, increase productive uptime and reduce operational costs.

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Part II

November 2024

The drive for improved asset performance is moving Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) from maintenance (response to defects) toward Asset Performance Management (APM) (understand your asset and avoid the defects). The outcome is higher return on assets, lower costs and improved asset performance, more planned work and less inefficient unplanned or emergency work.

ERP/S4/Cloud

SAP Infrastructure and Landscape Trends

February 2024

SAP workloads continue to move to the cloud at an accelerating pace. Related to this move a significant proportion of SAP organizations have indicated that they are planning on updating the infrastructure on which their SAP landscape is running. This report will examine the infrastructure and landscape trends during 2023 and into 2024. Are organizations moving more workloads to the public cloud? Are they staying with their usual hosting partners? How much are operational expenditure based internal landscapes being adopted? How is SAP’s focus on RISE with SAP impacting the traditional on-premise landscape that has been the foundation of the organization’s success over the last 30 years? And what role is sustainability playing in these plans?

SAP S/4HANA Migration

March 2024

Around a third of SAP’s existing enterprise ERP base has now licensed SAP S/4HANA, though many are still undecided about what their plans will be. Most existing customers are concerned about the complexity of the move and have a desire to remain with perpetual licenses, but SAP is pushing their cloud ERP strategy that focuses on RISE with SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This report will examine the adoption trends for SAP S/4HANA over the last five years, the version of the solution that organizations are deploying, the challenges that they are encountering with the move, as well as the benefits that those whthat have already moved to SAP S/4HANA are experiencing.

Deployment Approaches for SAP S/4HANA

April 2024

The steady adoption of SAP S/4HANA continues and, as an increasing number of existing customers start to plan for their deployment more are planning for selective data transitions that involve a scaled-up deployment. This is especially relevant as many organizations look to create a single, centralized SAP S/4HANA instance. This report will continue to track the deployment plans for those moving to SAP S/4HANA, what they intend to use for infrastructure, how much RISE with SAP is impacting those plans, how long respondents expect their move to take, and the factors impacting those timelines.

Enterprise Cloud

July 2024

Even though organizations started the move to the cloud more than ten years ago, most are still in the process of moving their core enterprise workloads to the cloud even though they are already leveraging the environment for some solutions. But as these workloads move to the cloud there is an increased need to ensure that they are properly protected and connected to other critical systems. In this year’s report we will continue to track where key SAP workloads are running, how they are moving to the cloud, the timeline for those changes, and the most important factors behind that move.

Driving Transformation with ERP

August 2024

ERP systems are the cornerstone of business operations. Due to the nature and complexity of both the systems and their implementation, it is common for these systems to have multi-year lifecycles. But, for many organizations, there is a pressing need to update these systems over the next few years due to upcoming end of maintenance of either the solutions or their underlying databases and infrastructure. As these updates progress, they create a perfect opportunity for organizations to drive transformation around infrastructure and business processes. This report will explore how organizations are leveraging their ERP systems to drive transformation within the organization, the capabilities they need to support that transformation, and how they are measuring success.

RISE with SAP

November 2024

RISE with SAP remains the primary method for organizations to engage with SAP’s cloud ERP strategy and is seeing increasing engagement as organizations look to move to SAP S/4HANA before the 2027 deadline. But, while more organizations are looking at RISE with SAP, there are still areas where SAP can continue to educate their audience. This research will examine the ongoing interest in RISE with SAP, adoption trends, hosting partners being selected by those planning on using the solution, as well as identifying challenges that organizations have with the solution and how they plan to measure the success of their RISE with SAP initiatives.

Financial Management

AI and Automation in Finance

March 2024

The 2024 SAPinsider report on AI and Automation in Finance builds on the previous year’s insights, highlighting the increased demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation capabilities across finance and accounting (F&A) operations. The study focuses on how SAPinsider organizations are leveraging these technologies to improve operational efficiency, accuracy, and strategic decision-making. The report also examines the role of AI solutions in advancing the automation of the finance function. The research provides insight into the benefits realized by organizations that have implemented these AI-driven technologies.

SAP S/4HANA Finance

May 2024

The 2024 SAPinsider report updates the perspective on SAP S/4HANA Finance adoption in the context of ongoing business uncertainty. This year, the focus is on how organizations are navigating these complexities, particularly in choosing and deploying technologies like SAP S/4HANA Finance and SAP Central Finance. Through this research, we aim to benchmark the strategies and deployment options that SAPinsider organizations prioritize to achieve a successful SAP S/4HANA Finance implementation. By providing insights and benchmarks, we will uncover the latest trends and best practices in SAP S/4HANA Finance adoption.

Global Tax Management

June 2024

The 2024 SAPinsider Global Tax Management benchmark report focuses on the progress in automating e-invoice processing and indirect tax compliance among SAP users, addressing the challenges of adhering to diverse and evolving tax regulations in multiple jurisdictions. This report assesses new tools and technologies adopted by SAP customers, their integration into SAP systems, and the challenges and benefits associated with these implementations.

Finance Business Process Transformation

September 2024

The 2024 report on Finance Business Process Transformation focuses on the adoption of digital technologies like SAP systems, AI, and automation in financial operations. Key areas of focus include the adoption and integration of technologies for improved data accuracy and accessibility, streamlined workflows, and enhanced decision-making capabilities. The report examines challenges in finance process transformation, such as change management and poor data, while providing insights into the measurable outcomes of these transformations, including cost reduction, increased efficiency, and improved financial reporting.

Human Resources (HR)

Evolving, Automating, and Innovating HR Processes

May 2024

Process innovation is at the heart of most transformation projects and as HR Leaders and teams set a path towards cloud and innovation. In this benchmark report we will examine how organizations are breaking away from highly complex and customized processes and embracing trends like standardization, automation, and intelligence. We will examine specific HR processes SAP customers are focused on from payroll to hiring and performance management as well as the tools and solutions that are enabling success.

HCM and Payroll State of the Market (November)

HCM and Payroll State of the Market

November 2024

This benchmark report looks at where HR organizations are with their key investments and projects related to payroll, comp, hiring and retention, performance management and much more. Understand where companies are with the journeys toward the cloud. Learn how they are allocating investments when it comes to technology, tools, and human capital. Understand how they are applying emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Analytics, and others. Measure your progress against KPIs and benchmarks from your peers.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)

Automating and Integrating SAP GRC Processes

May 2024

The complexity and scope of today’s regulatory environment combined with the increasing level of scrutiny from governing bodies is posing significant challenges and opportunities for today’s compliance teams. Now more than ever it is important to apply as much automation and integration within your core GRC processes. This benchmark report examines how organizations are applying innovative technologies and solutions to simplify and automate their critical GRC functions from auditing to SoD to access and process management including leading practices and strategies being employed by the most innovative GRC teams.

SAP GRC Identity and Access Management

September 2024

The increasing complexity of typical application landscapes across both on-premise and cloud environments had made user access and identity management a tough task for most GRC and security teams. Maintaining and managing users and roles in an intelligent and automated way is now a necessity given how organizational change and complexity has significantly increased. In this benchmark report we will look at how SAP customers are improving the way they perform activities such as role management and user provisioning. Also discover new ways and technologies your peers are relying on to dynamically support user access, improve compliance, and minimize overall risks to the organization.

Platform and Tools

Data, Integration, and SAP BTP

May 2024

Few SAP organizations today are running homogeneous SAP environments with most running a combination of SAP and non-SAP systems across their enterprise. This creates challenges from a data and integration perspective, especially for business users that are demanding data from multiple sources in their analytics applications and that have workflows that span multiple applications both in the cloud and on-premise. IT departments are deploying technologies that will help enable seamless integration and harmonization, while SAP has released SAP Datasphere to maintaining the context and logic of that data. But this is only one solution in play in the data and integration space. This research will explore the drivers, actions, requirements, and technologies around data and integration in this more connected SAP world.

IT Automation in the Enterprise

August 2024

The increasing complexity of IT landscapes is making it more difficult for organizations to streamline administration and management of those environments. While automation projects may look to reduce manual involvement and reduce costs, the need to adapt to new administrative methodologies can make IT automation difficult to embrace. This report will explore where organizations are considering implementing automation for their SAP systems, the reasons behind those automation decisions, the goals they hope to achieve, and how they are managing the challenges that implementing IT automation can present.

SAP Integration Landscape

September 2024

SAP landscapes are becoming more complex. At least some enterprise workloads are already running in the cloud, and organizations are also embracing best of breed solutions in conjunction with their core SAP systems. This has led to a complex integration landscape, and it has become critical to both ensure that data is both available in real time and that connections are secure. Since most organizations require both cloud to on-premise integration and non-SAP to SAP integration, having the right integration tools is critical to success. This report will examine the integration challenges that organizations face today, the types of integration they are doing, requirements for success, and which tools they are leveraging to meet their integration needs.

Cloud and SAP S/4HANA DevOps

October 2024

With SAP accelerating the pace of change and cloud enabling rapid deployments, SAP customers are acclimatizing their teams and processes to deliver rapid updates and implementations. Methodologies like Agile and DevOps have been slowly percolating through non-SAP systems, but with SAP S/4HANA, more SAP teams are experimenting with these methodologies. This report will investigate the true state of new deployment methodologies, the cultural and process shifts, the challenges, and the outcomes. It will look at the impact of overall company culture and the maturity of digital transformation on these processes too.

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

Building Resilient and Agile Supply Chains with Data, Analytics, and Automation

April 2024

As supply chain challenges increase due to increasing supply chain complexities and disruptions, organizations are increasingly looking at leveraging visibility, data, analytics and automation tools & technologies to help them address their supply chain challenges better. As supply chains strive to become resilient and agile, they need to rethink how they can modify their portfolio of analytics, data and automation tools and technologies. They are looking at building a robust single-source of truth for supply chain data and then leverage analytics tools that not only provide visibility and advanced analytics capabilities but also are user friendly and low-code/no-code.

Supply Chain Planning in the Cloud

October 2024

Supply chain planning (SCP) is the process of optimizing the delivery of goods, services and information from supplier to customer, which balances supply and demand. SCP provides planning, what-if scenario analysis and real-time demand commitments. Supply Chain complexities today require both real-time data and end to end global visibility. A proper SCP strategy must encompass an integration of suppliers, production sites, commercial demand, and inventory management. Business agility is the key to keep pace with rapidly changing dynamics.

About the SAPinsider DART Methodology

SAPinsider has rewritten the rules of research to provide demonstrable insights from its fact-based approach. The DART methodology serves as the very foundation on which SAPinsider educates end users to act, creates market awareness, drives demand, empowers sales forces, and validates return on investments. It’s no wonder that organizations worldwide turn to SAPinsider for research with results. The DART methodology provides actionable insights including:

Drivers – These are macro level events that are impacting an organization. They can be both external and internal and require the implementation of strategic plans, people, processes and systems.
Actions – These are strategies that companies can implement to address the drivers impact on the business. These are the integration of people, process and technology. The should be business first but fully leverage technology enabled solutions to be relevant for our focus.
Requirements – These are business and process level requirements to support the strategies. These tend to be end-to-end for a business process.
Technology – There are technology and systems related requirements that enable the business requirements and support the overall strategies that the company is taking, they must consider the current technology architecture and provide for the adoption of new and innovative technology enabled capabilities

How SAPinsiders Participate in the Research

The SAPinsider research process is an invitation-only quantitative survey and a qualitative interview-based methodology that is focused on the voice of the more than 600,000+ global SAPinsider community members. During the course of a year, we survey and interview several thousand SAPinsiders and synthesize their insights. This peer best practices-led benchmarking research process extracts intricate knowledge of SAP and related ecosystem solutions, migration paths, roadmap and other insights in relation to the business drivers, strategic actions and requirements of end users. The ultimate objective of our research is to enable SAP users adopt and upgrade technology efficiently, based on sound decisions, performance parameters and business value.