Quarterly Crunch Q2 17/18
Posted on January 2018 By Judy Cole
Quarter 2 done and dusted! This quarter is the one full of Christmas Parties, eating too much and lots of entertainment! While it was busy in our social calendars; did it flow through to our Sales results?
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 (FY17/18) Quarterly crunch and here is Q2 for last year (financial year 16/17) just for fun!
As a recap, we give you Speller International’s actual sales for the quarter. I don’t share my own opinions (or excuses!) or what we 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 our 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 40% less people in Quarter 2 this year (Oct/ Nov/ Dec 2017) than we did in the previous Quarter (Jul/ Aug/ Sept 2017). By comparison, it was 33% less than the same Quarter the previous year (Oct/ Nov/ Dec 2016).
So not a great quarter for our actual results!
What are the top 5 roles we placed in the Quarter?
SAP ABAP
SAP Change Management
SAP Business Analyst
SAP Project Manager
SAP SuccessFactors
FYI Last quarter (Q1 FY17/18) … It was;
SAP ABAP
SAP Data (inc Master Data)
SAP Project Manager
SAP Training and Documentation
SAP BO
What % were permanent vs Contract in Quarter 2?
14.8% of the people we placed last Quarter were permanent (or fixed term) and 85.2% were contract. Note; 15.4% 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 the number of requirements we received in during the Quarter;
Speller International received a total of 114 vacant SAP job positions to fill throughout the Quarter, compared to the previous Quarter which was 103 vacancies (and 118 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, 9.7% were permanent or fixed term engagements and 90.3% were contract requirements.
Top 10 Requirements
SAP ABAP
SAP UX/Fiori
SAP Project/Program Manager
SAP Change Manager
SAP Training and Documentation
SAP Business Analyst
SAP APO
SAP CRM
SAP Data (Migration/Master Data/Governance)
SAP SuccessFactors/HCM
FYI – the top 5 requirements from Q1 were;
SAP Project Manager
SAP ABAP
SAP Data
SAP Business Analyst
SAP BO
Most difficult skill set to find for Quarter 2 (in no particular order)
SAP APO/IBP
SAP Solution Manager
Business Partner
SAP Hybris
SAP Enterprise Architect
SAP Fiori (Functional)
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 us!
New Roles/Skills Emerging
Continuing on from last Quarter, we are still seeing strong need for general skillsets; “Business Analyst” and “Project Managers” who hold both SAP and other broader technologies experience. Although it is not a “new” skill, requests for the Fiori/UX skillset is still very busy and it is still a challenge to find the “functional/front end skillset.
Average Contract Length
Last Quarter we continued our extremely good average initial contract length of 19.95 weeks (this does not take into account extensions), which is pretty much on par with Quarter 1’s average of 20.6 weeks