In December and January 2012/2013, DSAG surveyed 367 CIOs, CCC managers and company representatives from DSAG member companies in German-speaking countries online about their willingness to invest in the coming year.
According to this survey, the growth in planned expenditure on IT has almost doubled, rising to 5.9% (2012: 3.4%). Growth in the SAP area is in double figures at 11.2 percent (2012: 7.6 percent).
DSAG members plan to invest the most in traditional areas such as logistics, accounting and SAP ERP. Mobile applications are at the top of the list of innovation topics.
The prevalence of ERP 6.0 is 89% (2012: 86%). In terms of support models, Standard Support and Enterprise Support still balance each other out.
The top 3 investment areas in 2013 are logistics (almost 40 percent), accounting (24 percent) and ERP overall (almost 20 percent). The figures have remained stable compared to 2012.
"Users focus on classic SAP ERP topics. Spending is mainly on process investments, i.e. consulting. Only a small proportion is spent on licenses"
says Marco Lenck, Chairman of the DSAG Executive Board. In the NetWeaver environment, investments are being made most heavily in Business Warehouse.
The motivation for migrating to the latest version is new functionalities. In terms of innovation topics, investments in mobile applications are at the top of the list by a wide margin and have remained at a high level (2013: 62%; 2012: 59%).
Decision-makers are very interested in the mobilization of business processes. Expenditure on the associated SAP solutions is currently still low.
The topic of the cloud has caught up compared to 2012 and is becoming increasingly important (investment plans 2012: five percent). It is currently relevant for 25 percent of the DSAG members surveyed, while eleven percent intend to become more involved with cloud computing within the next twelve months.
A good third of survey participants are not concerned with this at all. A fifth of respondents also consider in-memory computing to be a relevant and increasingly important topic. However, widespread use is hardly to be expected in the current year.
There are still many unanswered questions regarding the use and operation of Hana, which SAP is working to answer. In contrast, 41 percent of the users surveyed are not involved with in-memory at all.
Marco Lenck expects a possible change in awareness here, as the investment survey was largely conducted before the announcement of the SAP Business Suite on Hana in January of this year:
"It will be interesting to see whether investment plans shift in favor of Hana over the course of the year. In any case, we expect existing customers to deal with the topic strategically. SAP is called upon to provide good examples here."
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