Quarterly Crunch Q3 15/16

Posted on April 2016 By Judy Cole
Quarterly Crunch 15 16 Q3

​It’s that time again… the end of another quarter and now pushing towards the end of financial year. So far this year, we had a cracker in Q1, a not so good Q2 – so how do you think we got on last quarter? If like me, you like a little flutter now and again then now is your chance to muster up the team and have a little wager on how we performed in Q3 and what the most placed area of SAP was for us.

So, did we have a good Quarter?

Yes, we had a belter… in fact we had our best quarter yet in the history of Speller International… it almost made up for our shocker of Q2!! We hit the ground running back from Christmas in January and it stayed consistently busy through Feb and March. 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 Q2 Quarterly crunch.

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

So, let’s see how we went:

In regards to purely sales (Sales = people placed within the SAP field in either contract or permanent engagements), Speller International placed 27% more people in Quarter 3 (Jan, Feb, Mar 2016) than we did in Quarter 3 of the previous year (Jan, Feb, Mar 2015). This was also 39% better than our previous quarter (Q2 – Oct, Nov, Dec 2015)

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

  • SAP ABAP

  • SAP Trainer

  • SAP MM

  • SAP FICO (including SimpleFinance)

  • SAP SD

FYI Last quarter (Q2 FY15/16) were;

  • SAP Trainers

  • SAP Testers

  • SAP WM

  • SAP WM Super Users/SME’s

  • SAP Architects

What % were permanent vs Contract in Quarter 3?

26% of the people we placed last quarter were permanent (or fixed term) and 74% were contract. Note; 100% of the people we placed in the previous quarter (Q2) 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 151 vacant SAP job positions to fill throughout the quarter, compared to the previous quarter which was 101 vacancies. Those positions were across our 3 divisions (SAP IT, SAP Change and Training and SAP Corporate Services). 11.92% of those vacant positions were permanent or fixed term engagements and 88.08% were contract requirements.

Top 10 Requirements

  • SAP Trainers

  • SAP Change Manager/Change Analysts

  • SAP Project Manager

  • SAP BO (including BODS)

  • SAP Payroll Officer (Super User)

  • SAP ABAP

  • SAP CRM (Tech & Functional)

  • SAP SuccessFactors

  • SAP PI/PO

  • SAP Tester

FYI – the top 5 requirements from Q2 were;

  • SAP ABAP (a lot required BRF+)

  • SAP Trainer

  • SAP Project Manager

  • SAP BW/BO

  • SAP Tester

Most difficult skill set to find for Quarter 3 (In no particular order)

  • SAP TM (Transport Management)

  • SAP HANA

  • SAP BRIM

  • SAP SuccessFactors (Functional Consultants)

  • SAP WPB

  • SAP Design Studio

So that was our Quarter 3; our top placed SAP area, SAP skills most required and permanent vs contract data – all without a conclusion from me! It was a much needed quarter for Speller International, especially on the back of our quarter 2

This year I introduced a new section to my Quarterly Crunch reports:

New Roles/Skills Emerging

This Quarter, we saw continued hype around SAP SimpleFinance but unfortunately not a lot of movement, a few projects waiting in the wings I hear though. Due to growing demand in the PO/PI world we are still hearing talk around SAP HCI (Hana Cloud Integration). SAP TM (Transport Management) has been talked about a fair amount this quarter. We also found that customers were looking for SAP BI/BO Consultants who specifically have QlikView and/or Tableau.

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?