Quarterly Crunch Q2 16/17
Posted on January 2017 By Judy Cole
The second Quarter of the new financial year is over and we’ve hit the half way mark! Off the back of our best quarter in Speller’s history, Quarter 2 was not our best but not terrible either. With just 6 months left in the financial year, we’re exactly where we need to be in order to meet our annual target.
So let’s look at the stats – What skill did we place most of? What skill was highly sort after? Place your bets because it’s time to find out and you can analyse the raw data as you wish.
For your own comparison here is my Q1 Quarterly crunch and here is Q2 for last year (financial year 15/16) just for fun!
As a recap, I give you Speller International’s actual sales for the quarter. I don’t share my own opinions or what I believe to be the reasons behind the results. Sometimes, especially in this online age, we hear too many opinions and it’s nice to be able to draw your own! But if you want my opinion then feel free to comment and ask and/or to share your own thoughts.
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 30% less people in Quarter 2 this year (Oct / Nov / Dec 2016) than we did in the previous Quarter (July / Aug / Sept 2016). It was however 9% higher than the same Quarter the previous year (Oct / Nov / Dec 2015).
What are the top 5 roles we placed in the Quarter?
SAP CRM (Functional & Technical)
SAP Trainer
SAP Project Manager
SAP SD
SAP HCM (incl SuccessFactors)
FYI Last quarter (Q1 FY16/17) … It was:
SAP HCM (HR/PY)
SAP ABAP
SAP Tester (incl Test Lead)
SAP Data (incl Data Lead)
SAP BI/BO
What % were permanent vs Contract in Quarter 2?
5% of the people we placed last Quarter were permanent (or fixed term) and 95% were contract. Note; 8% of the people we placed in the previous Quarter (Q1) were permanent.
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 gauge 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 received in during the Quarter;
Speller International received a total of 118 vacant SAP job positions to fill throughout the Quarter, compared to the previous Quarter which was 133 vacancies (and 101 in Q2 last year). Those positions were across our 3 divisions (SAP IT, SAP Change and Training and SAP Corporate Services) as well as being across Australia and NZ.
Of those vacant positions we received, 6.7% were permanent or fixed term engagements and 93.3% were contract requirements. Interestingly, in Quarter 1 we saw an increase in “Lead role” requirements and this continued in Quarter 2 with 14.4% of the vacant positions being Lead roles (on par with 15.7% in Quarter 1).
Top 10 Requirements
SAP Tester (incl Test Lead)
SAP Change (incl Change Analyst, Change Manager & Change Lead)
SAP HCM (incl SuccessFactors)
SAP ABAP
SAP BA
SAP CRM (Functional & Technical)
SAP Project Manager
SAP Data
SAP Trainer (incl Training Lead)
SAP Architect (across all modules)
FYI – the top 5 requirements from Q1 were;
SAP HCM (HR/PY)
SAP Project Manager/Director
SAP Data (inc Data Lead)
SAP Tester (Inc Test Lead)
SAP ABAP
Most difficult skill set to find for Quarter 2 (in no particular order)
SAP SuccessFactors
SAP EWM
SAP HANA Architect
SAP WPB
SAP HCM Developer
SAP HR/PY
So that was our Quarter 2; our top placed SAP area, SAP skills most required and permanent vs contract data – all without any conclusion from me!
New Roles/Skills Emerging
This Quarter, we saw a continuation of SAP S/4HANA Architect and an emergence of the not so technical side of the “Business Partner”, which are seemingly quite senior roles within organisations. We also saw in increase in SAP Disaster Recovery roles (eek!) – I’ll let you draw your own conclusion on that one! And again we saw an increase in “Lead roles” across all modules.
Average Contract Length
Last Quarter I introduced a new fun stat on the average initial contract lengths for the Quarter.
We started the year with a very strong average initial contract length of 17 weeks and in Quarter 2 it was 13 week – down from Quarter 1 but is still a strong initial average contract length.