Quarterly Crunch Q1 16/17
Posted on November 2016 By Judy Cole
The first Quarter of the new financial year is over already and so it is that time for us to review our figures and analyse the stats! So, how did the start of the year kick off for Speller International? For those of you who know us well, you may already know…
It started with a BANG… delivering us our BEST QUARTER EVER in the history of Speller International! Wahoo!!
So, let me share some of our stats with you – 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 Q4 Quarterly crunch and here is Q1 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% more people in Quarter 1 this year (July / Aug / Sept 2016) than we did in the previous quarter (April / May / June 2016). It was also 24% higher than this same Quarter last year (July / Aug / Sept 2015)
What are the top 5 roles we placed in the Quarter?
SAP HCM (HR/PY)
SAP ABAP
SAP Tester (inc Test Lead)
SAP Data (inc Data Lead)
SAP BI/BO
FYI Last quarter (Q4 FY15/16) … It was;
SAP Trainer
SAP BA
SAP Payroll Officer
SAP Project Manager/Director
SAP Training Manager
What % were permanent vs Contract in Quarter 1?
8% of the people we placed last quarter were permanent (or fixed term) and 92% were contract. Note; 10% of the people we placed in the previous quarter (Q4) 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 got in during the quarter;
Speller International received a total of 133 vacant SAP job positions to fill throughout the quarter, compared to the previous quarter which was 121 vacancies (and 132 in Q1 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. And we had our first Hong Kong placement.
Of those vacant positions we received, 9% were permanent or fixed term engagements and 91% were contract requirements.
Top 10 Requirements
SAP HCM (HR/PY)
SAP Project Manager/Director
SAP Data (inc Data Lead)
SAP Tester (Inc Test Lead)
SAP ABAP
SAP Change Manager/Analyst
SAP FICO
SAP BI/BO
SAP BA
SAP PMO
FYI – the top 5 requirements from Q4 were;
SAP Technical Writer
SAP ABAP
SAP BPC
SAP HR
SAP Payroll Officer (Super User)
Most difficult skill set to find for Quarter 1 (In no particular order)
SAP TM (Transport Management)
SAP HANA Architect
SAP EWM
SAP WPB
SAP BPC
SAP HCM Developer
So that was our Quarter 1; our top placed SAP area, SAP skills most required and permanent vs contract data – all without any conclusion from me! It was a really great Quarter for Speller International which hopefully suggests good things for the year ahead.
New Roles/Skills Emerging
This Quarter, we saw a continuation of SAP S/4HANA and SAP launched BW4HANA. We are seeing more roles and hype around SAP Hybris which I expect will be on the “difficult to find” list in the next few quarters ahead. We saw an increase in “Lead roles” in general eg FICO Lead, BW Lead etc. We are also seeing an increase in SAP skills coupled with non-SAP skills eg. SAP BW with QlikView
New Stat time!
With the new year comes a new exciting fun stat, so here goes:
Our Average initial contract length for last quarter was 17 weeks… which was up from the average of 11 weeks for the whole of last financial year!!