Strengthening the Foundation: Why SAP BTP and Analytics Dominate Q2 2026

Core SAP ERP consumes the lion’s share of technology budgets. Therefore, how executives allocate their remaining capital reveals their true strategic intent. The SAPinsider Benchmark Report: Technology Leaders’ Strategic Agenda for 2026 reveals that in Q2 2026, the focus has shifted from monolithic applications to composable platforms and data intelligence.

Additionally, SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) services for integration, extensions, and data have emerged as the number one investment priority for respondents beyond core ERP, capturing 48% of executive mindshare.

The Shift Toward Platform Capabilities

The report shows that 53% of leaders identify SAP BTP development and integration as the most critical skill set to acquire or strengthen in 2026, as this platform plays a foundational role in the SAP Business Suite.

Without this connective tissue, organizations cannot effectively deploy advanced extensions, integrate third-party tools, or adopt the AI models hosted in the SAP BTP AI Foundation.

Elevating Data-Driven Decisions

Clean data also remains paramount alongside integration with the benchmark report, indicating that 43% of leaders’ SAP investments are focused on analytics, including SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud. This directly supports the 36% of executives who cited improving data-driven decision-making as a top business priority for the year.

“Leaders are realizing that modernizing their reporting infrastructure is the only way to ensure that they have the right data to make the right decisions at the right time,” says Robert Holland, Chief Research Officer at SAPinsider and author of the report.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Focus on creating an environment that allows for effective, real-time decision-making. The need has never been greater to make the best possible decisions with the most accurate, up-to-date information. With organizations collecting more data than ever before, understanding which data is relevant and making it available to decision-makers is crucial. Bringing together the most valuable data across the enterprise and making it available in real-time will be a huge win for technology leaders.

Master the strategic governance of data exchange. APIs have become the lifeblood of the enterprise as organizations adopt a combination of SAP and non-SAP systems. However, unmanaged point-to-point integrations create severe security vulnerabilities and maintenance nightmares. Thus, professionals who can secure and govern these digital connection points are the ones who ultimately control the enterprise architecture.

Architect unified, hybrid data ecosystems that blend SAP and non-SAP data for predictive, enterprise-wide insights. Executive leaders need to understand how external market data impacts internal planning. This requires a hybrid analytics architecture that connects live SAP S/4HANA data via SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) to external data warehouses such as SAP Datasphere and third-party tools such as Power BI. To achieve this, IT leaders should champion a pilot project that virtualizes and harmonizes data without replication and build a unified dashboard that provides the CFO with a real-time, cross-platform view of organizational health.