Tricentis report reveals current trends in SAP adoption and implementation


SAP Business Assurance Report explores organisations’ preparedness for the challenges of changing SAP landscape.

Tricentis, the world’s number one continuous testing platform, today announced the release of its SAP Business Assurance Report: State of Worldwide SAP Testing, in conjunction with Capgemini and Sogeti. The report explores current SAP adoption and implementation trends and organisations’ preparedness to deal with the challenges emerging from the changing SAP landscape.

The report backed by case studies and testimonials assesses the existing methods organisations use for SAP business assurance, the departments responsible for SAP business assurance quality and the use of specialist service providers, as well as their future plans around it.

“SAP’s ERP system acts as the backbone of business processes across departments for organisations globally. While businesses continue to benefit from it, the overall SAP environment has undergone rapid disruption in recent years,” said Wolfgang Platz, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Tricentis.

“These disruptions pose new business process risks, implementation challenges, cost impact, and, most importantly, increased level of complexity for enterprises. In our latest report, we set out to explore how prepared businesses were to address these challenges, and the steps they were taking to do so.”

More than 750 respondents from organisations with revenue over 1 billion USD in 17 countries from a multitude of verticals were surveyed for the report. Its findings include:

Among the surveyed companies ECC is still the most common platform, ahead of S/4HANA, though most companies are moving or planning to do so.

  • ECC is the most popular SAP version, used by 43.2% of the surveyed organisations.

  • S/4HANA’s adoption rate is 33.1%

  • 91.9% of those organisations that have not upgraded to S/4HANA have either already begun the migration or plan to do it in the next 24 months

Data migration (43.5%) and data security (42.8%) are the two most prominent challenges that organisations face while moving to advanced versions/updates.

  • Most organisations (~91%) realise the importance of engaging a specialised service provider to overcome the challenges faced in implementing advanced SAP versions/updates

There is a strong prevalence of specialist testing service providers

  • 36.2% of respondents rely on them for SAP business assurance

  • 27.4% use a hybrid model, which includes both an in-house team and a specialist testing service provider

  • 45.1% of respondents use a specialist testing service provider for API testing/component testing

  • 43.7% use one for performance testing

The need for faster implementation, growing complexity, and lack of skilled resources have influenced organisations’ shift towards the use of automation in SAP testing.

  • Around a quarter of surveyed organisations have an automated SAP testing system in place

  • 29.9% organisations still rely on a manual approach

  • 43.5% organisations use a combination of manual and automated SAP testing

“The report reveals that many organisations are planning to increase the use of testing across all stages of project lifecycle in the coming months” says Mark Buenen, Global Leader of Digital Assurance and Quality Engineering Services at Capgemini Group. “They are also exploring the use of automation for SAP testing and agree that it can deliver more than 50% efficiency gains. Advanced technologies such as AI and ML are also likely to gain more traction in this space in the future.”

Platz commented on the report’s findings: “The changing times have created a pressing need for organisations to take a more focused and structured approach to run end-to-end SAP testing processes to reduce or eliminate any business risks that might emerge from the implementation of SAP updates.

“However, while most organisations now realise the importance of a robust business assurance process in ensuring the success and efficiency of SAP system, the study found that their level of maturity, approach, use of technology, and readiness for automation still seem to be evolving.”

For a detailed exploration of the current state of SAP adoption, the challenges faced by businesses in its implementation, and how those businesses are seeking to deliver business assurance through improved testing, you can download the full report here: https://www.tricentis.com/resources/sap-business-assurance-report/. Learn more about the key takeaways from the report by attending this webinar on July 29, 2021.

About Tricentis
Tricentis is the global leader in enterprise continuous testing, widely credited for reinventing software testing for DevOps, cloud, and enterprise applications. The Tricentis AI-powered, continuous testing platform provides a new and fundamentally different way to perform software testing. An approach that’s totally automated, fully codeless, and intelligently driven by AI. It addresses both agile development and complex enterprise apps, enabling enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation by dramatically increasing software release speed, reducing costs, and improving software quality. Tricentis has been widely recognised as the leader by all major industry analysts, including being named the leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant five years in a row. Tricentis has more than 1,800 customers, including the largest brands in the world, such as McKesson, Accenture, Nationwide Insurance, Allianz, Telstra, Moet-Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, and Vodafone. To learn more, visit https://www.tricentis.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.