Quarterly Crunch Q2 15/16

Posted on January 2016 By Judy Cole
Quarterly Crunch Q2 15 16

​The end of another quarter and now half way through the financial year! If you can remember; last Quarter we had an absolute corker for the first quarter of the new financial year but did it carry on in to quarter 2? Well that is what you are about to find out…

The short answer is… No!!!!

We had a very quiet October and November but a very busy December – While December’s rush did help, it just was too little too late to pull the quarter’s statistics back to achieve our target.

So, let me share some of our stats with you so that you can read into as you wish. For your own comparison here is my Quarterly Crunch from Q1 2015/16

As a recap, I give you our raw stats based on our actual sales for the quarter. I don’t share my own opinions of the reasons behind the results, nor draw my own conclusions from the data. Sometimes, especially with this online age, we hear too many opinions and it’s nice to be able to draw your own!

So, let’s see how we went…

In regards to purely sales (Sales = people placed within the SAP field in either contract of permanent engagements), Speller International placed 19.5% less people in this last Quarter (Oct, Nov, Dec 2015) than we did in Quarter 2 of the previous year (Oct, Nov, Dec 2014). This was also 24% worse than our previous quarter this year.

What are the top 5 roles we placed in the Quarter?

  • SAP Trainers

  • SAP Testers

  • SAP WM

  • SAP WM Super Users/SME’s

  • SAP Architect

FYI Last quarter (Q1 15/16) … It was;

  • SAP FICO

  • SAP ABAP

  • SAP BASIS

  • SAP Data

  • SAP BW

What % were permanent vs Contract in Quarter 1?

100% of the people we placed last quarter were contractors.

How else can we measure how busy the market was?

While the number of people we placed is a good indication, it is not always the best indication for us to gage how the market is/was performing. We also like to look at the number of requirements we received from our clients (requirements = vacant job positions which we are engaged to work).

Let’s look at number of requirements that we got in during the quarter;

Speller International received a total of 101 vacant SAP job positions to fill throughout the quarter, compared to the previous quarter with 132 vacancies. Those positions were across our 3 divisions (SAP IT, SAP Change and Training and SAP Corporate services). 5.8% of those vacant positions were permanent or fixed term engagements and 94.2% were contract requirements.

Top 10 Requirements

  • SAP ABAP (a lot required BRF+)

  • SAP Trainer

  • SAP Project Manager

  • SAP BW/BO

  • SAP Tester

  • SAP BODS (separated from BO as is becoming a standalone skill for us)

  • SAP Customer Service/SAP Helpdesk

  • SAP PMO

  • SAP SD

  • SAP CRM

FYI – the top 5 requirements from Q1 were;

  • SAP FICO

  • SAP ABAP

  • SAP CRM

  • SAP PI/PO

  • SAP Business Analyst

Most difficult skill set to find for Quarter 1 (In no particular order)

  • SAP CRM (functional and developers)

  • SAP BRF+

  • SAP HANA

  • SAP with OpenText

So there it is; our top placed SAP area, SAP skills most required and permanent vs contract data – all without a conclusion from me! While it was not a great Quarter for us, it wasn’t a disastrous one either, we were saved by our BIG December.

Last Quarter I introduced a new section to my Quarterly Crunch reports:

New Roles/Skills Emerging

This Quarter, we saw continued hype around SAP SimpleFinance, we also started to hear some whispers around SimpleLogistics and a few requirements for Cloud for Customer. We also had 1 requirement and a little bit of talk around SAP HCI (Hana Cloud Integration) (One for the SAP PI/PO Consultants to stay across!)

Another Quarterly Crunch completed but just because I keep a neutral opinion, doesn’t mean you have to!

We would love to hear your thoughts; what surprised you and what are your predictions for next quarter’s most placed and most required SAP areas?