How are you finding the SAP Market?
How are you finding the Market? We asked Gary Temple - Managing Director of James Goodman Consulting – one of the longest established SAP resourcing companies in the UK - he’s thoughts on the current market and how you can make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Having just under 20 years working the SAP market space, this is the third time I have experienced a major down turn, saying that each one seems worst than the last. Much media attention across the globe recently has highlighted amongst other things, tightening of the employment markets, material shifts in exchange rate conversions and postponement or cancellation of pending Business & IT initiatives.
SAP Consultants can’t sit back and wait for the next opportunity to arise, they have to increase their activity of promoting themselves in an intelligent fashion. Companies, as a rule, when faced with a recession (did I use that word), will naturally ‘tighten their belts’ which will normally consist of making across the board job cuts, postponement of pending IT initiatives and trying to extract more value from less resources.
This doesn’t necessarily add up to completely negative news for the SAP Consultant/Contractor. Companies who shed staff will still have to maintain their existing systems and in certain cases will proceed with IT initiatives which affect a company’s competiveness, legal/ fiscal compliance or ability to function etc.
If a company in this situation has to resource an initiative or maintain existing service levels but are restricted by a hiring freeze then they are left with two choices, one would be to outsource the function to a consultancy company (a costly option) or engage with a SAP Contractor and manage the initiative themselves.
Whilst engaging a contractor a client can be faced with several professionals all with identical skills and rate requirements. Usually in these situations the client will elect the best person based on their soft skills, namely personality, personal presentation etc.
So my advice would be to always work on your soft skills and make sure you are either better value for money or have better market awareness and presence. Utilize your time by improving your SAP Knowledge and promoting yourself to the wider SAP community.
I believe the key points to remember are;
- Only try and control the things you can control i.e. skill set, character, self promotion, presentation etc
- Be aware of the issues that affect you in your contracting career i.e. market rates, economic conditions, currency fluctuations etc.
- Should a client wish to re-negotiate rates at contract renewal, don’t take it personally, and look at the prevailing conditions at renewal time.
- Conversely, should you find yourself on the positive side of a movement, consider reflecting that at rate renewal time.
- Self promotion (by blogging, writing white papers etc) is a proactive activity which should be aggressively pursued in good and bad economic times alike.
In all you need to adjust to the market, be flexible and wait/look at each opportunity on its own merits.
Were interested in hearing about how your finding the market?
Any comments/suggestions are welcomed.