=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2581/aesp2020paper3
|storemode=property
|title=Professionalisation in ERP Selection
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2581/aesp2020paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-2581
|authors=Stefan Humpl
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/se/Humpl20
}}
==Professionalisation in ERP Selection==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2581/aesp2020paper3.pdf
Professionalisation in ERP Selection
Stefan Humpl
3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH
Wien, Österreich
stefan.humpl@3s.co.at
Abstract—The implementation of new ERP systems or the • Requirements management
adaptation of existing ERP systems is a key challenge for modern
companies, which can also be seen in the development of relevant • ERP Analyst
job advertisements. A specific analysis of relevant job
advertisements in Austria shows a professionalisation in ERP
• ERP Solution Architect
selection, but also a shift towards employing such experts instead of An explicit naming of software-specific keywords has
outsourcing this expertise. Job titles and job specific requirements been omitted, because it was assumed that there would be too
(competences) mentioned in job advertisements in 2017 and 2019 much distortion in the direction of these keywords.
show a respective development. The Austrian job market for Nevertheless, specific software packages (e.g., SAP, MS
relevant experts is characterised by a high demand and insufficient Dynamics) were mentioned several times in the
supply, which implies that the more recent job advertisements are
advertisements.
broader, showing a hope for at least somehow fitting candidates.
This first search resulted in 13,852 job advertisements in
Keywords—Austria, ERP jobs, Jobs Advertisements, ERP total, or 4,715 deduplicated job advertisements. Deduplication
selection, professionalisation, requirements is done automatically, if a job advertisement is online for more
than eight weeks, it is counted again. From these 4,715 job
I. INTRODUCTION advertisements a total number of 486 highly relevant job
The implementation of new ERP systems or the adaptation advertisements for the area of ERP decision making / ERP
of existing ERP systems through extensions, releases and implementation / further development of ERP were selected
supplementary products is a key challenge for modern by analysing all job advertisements (tasks mentioned,
companies [1]. This task is often outsourced to IT service competences required, job environments described). From
providers, who are assumed to have a good overview of the these 486 highly relevant job advertisements the 100 “oldest”
various ERP providers, the range of services and functions and ones (from November 2016 to September 2017) were selected
the possible interaction of different ERP-components. In some as well as the 100 “youngest” ones (from June 2019 to
cases, however, this task is also carried out by internal November 2019) to see differences in time.
employees within a company. The challenge for employees
with this task is to have the necessary overview of the status III. ANALYSIS
quo and further development of the ERP system and they need A. First overview - regional job market, demand for highly
to be able to make further adjustments to ERP requirements
qualified workers, demand via recruitment agencies
[2]. Is the internal demand increasing? Or is the demand for
staff in this domain growing due to a growing market of IT The keyword search in Jobfeed delivered a total of 4,715
service providers who support companies in ERP decision- deduplicated job advertisements for the mentioned period
making? And how are job titles, competences and tasks in the (total: 13,852 job advertisements with multiple entries). These
field of ERP decision-making developing in job advertisments 4,715 advertisements were first subjected to a rough analysis,
[3]? which shows the following table for the job market in Austria:
This article aims to get to the bottom of this phenomenon Share of
Number of Share of Share of Recruit-
by carrying out an analysis of job advertisements. These job Advertis- Advertis- Highly ment
advertisements include advertised positions in the area of ERP Province ments ments Qualified Agencies
decision making / ERP implementation / further development Vienna 1.975 41,89% 52,81% 41,73%
of ERP. For this purpose, online job advertisements from Upper 640 13,57% 30,63% 44,84%
November 2016 to November 2019 are used, which were Austria
recorded in “Jobfeed Austria” - a product jointly developed by Styria 595 12,62% 33,61% 55,97%
Lower 494 10,48% 30,57% 49,39%
Textkernel and 3s. Jobfeed is a web crawler that captures and
Austria
deduplicates online job advertisements from different Salzburg 359 7,61% 33,98% 37,04%
platforms. Every year, Jobfeed in Austria captures almost one Vorarl- 252 5,34% 34,52% 38,49%
million deduplicated job advertisements, so that it is assumed berg
that Jobfeed represents about 95% of all Austrian online job Tirol 201 4,26% 43,28% 30,35%
advertisements. [6] Carinthia 164 3,48% 33,54% 44,51%
Burgen- 35 0,74% 28,57% 17,14%
II. METHODOLOGY land
Total 4.715 100,00% 40,51% 46,60%
The search for relevant advertised positions included the
Tab. 1: Demand by federal provinces and proportion of highly qualified
following search strings (as keywords in the full text of the tenders (minimum requirement is a university degree) as well as proportion
advertisement): of advertisements by recruitment agencies (Source: 3s based on Jobfeed-
Analysis)
• ERP evaluation and selection
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
AESP20: 1st Workshop on Requirement Management in Enterprise Systems Projects @ SE20, Innsbruck, Austria 14
The regional distribution of the advertisements shows a 10 IT Manager 8 System Administrator
demand focus in Vienna, followed by the industrial federal 5 SAP Consultant 6 IT Manager
provinces of Upper Austria and Styria. Vienna also dominates 5 Systems Engineer 5 Analyst
4 .NET Developer 5 Consultant
the demand for highly qualified specialists (at least university
4 Consultant MS 4 Business Administrator
degree), followed by Tyrol and Vorarlberg. The job demand Dynamics
of recruitment agencies (in comparison to direct job demand 4 BI Specialist Data 3 IT Project Manager
from companies) shows a different regional structure (high Warehouse
density of agency demand in Styria, Lower Austria, Upper 4 Project Manager 3 SAP Consultant
Austria and Carinthia), and is rather an indication of the Tab. 2: In advertisements most frequently requested job titles in
regional importance of recruitment agencies. comparison 2017 and 2019 (Top 10, Source: 3s based on Jobfeed-Analysis)
B. Detailed definition, selection of samples for a D. Variety of business sectors with specific demand
comparison over periods increases
On closer analysis of the 4,715 extracted job In 2017, the demand sector was dominated by IT services,
advertisements, it quickly becomes clear that only a small followed by industry. In 2019, the other sectors (trade,
proportion of the job advertisements actually address the consulting, energy supply, general services, etc.) dominated
intended job market for experts in ERP decision making / ERP the demand followed by IT services and industry. The
implementation / further development of ERP. In many cases, expansion of the variety of sectors is a possible indication of
ERP specialists are sought without the intention to change the the internalisation of the task bundle ERP decision making /
ERP system. Due to this reason, a manual analysis of the ERP implementation / further development of ERP. However,
advertisements was carried out, from which 486 job a certain amount of caution should be exercised in this
advertisements were finally selected that meet the specific evaluation, as there is a high number of unknown clients for
requirements mentioned above. From these 486 job advertisements due to the large number of advertisements
advertisements, in turn, two random samples were drawn placed by recruiters (see figure 1 in the appendix).
upon:
E. Demand for qualification levels - increasing demand
• Sample 1: The chronologically oldest 100 pressure
matching job advertisements covering the period
25.11.2016 to 29.09.2017 (for the sake of In comparison, the qualification level mentioned in the
simplicity, it is called "2017"). relevant advertisements shows that the demand in 2017
pointed even more decisively to university graduates.
• Sample 2: The most recent 100 matching job However, the demand pressure has increased in 2019, as
advertisements covering the period 07.06.2019 to indicated by the category "university or BHS" in the demand
20.11.2019 (for the sake of simplicity, it is called for qualifications. In 2017, this issue is irrelevant. An analysis
"2019"). of job advertisements in recent years clearly indicates that
qualification requirements are expanded as demand pressure
So, while the first 100 matching advertisements still
increases (this usually refers to an explicit shortage of skilled
required 308 calendar days, the period for the last 100
labor force) [4]. In general, the relevant positions are mainly
matching advertisements was only 166 calendar days. This
aimed at university graduates and to a lesser extent BHS
can be seen as an indication of a more intensive personnel
graduates. BHS graduates are mostly from higher technical
search in 2019 compared to 2017.
colleges (see figure 2 in the appendix).
C. Development of a professional job title or field of work?
F. Demand for competence - education and work
The next step was to analyse the job titles used in the experience dominate, professionalization?
advertisements. As already mentioned, the female form was
explicitly omitted in favor of simplicity of presentation. The The following table shows the comparison of the main
following table shows a comparison of the terms used in 2017 competences and qualifications in demand due to relevant job
and 2019. 2017 shows that there is a wider range of job titles advertisements. Whereas in 2017 relevant work experience
used in the advertisements, e.g., business analyst, software was still top of the list, the increasing pressure of demand is
developer, IT manager, or SAP consultant. The term also leading to a shift towards relevant training ("IT training"
consultant ERP systems has a comparatively low significance. as a combined competence category). The advancement of the
Nevertheless, this latter term now seems to be gaining ground terms "ERP development and implementation" and "process
in the relevant job advertisements, because in 2019 the term management and process optimisation" seems to indicate a
consultant ERP systems will be the dominant job title in the surge in professionalisation (analogous to the shift in
relevant job advertisements, followed by business analyst, occupational titles towards "consultant ERP systems"). The
system administrator, IT manager, and analyst. The terms that complete list of competence titles in the advertisements of
have been summarized under "Unknown" are sometimes very 2017 and 2019 is shown in the appendix.
flowery job titles of the companies themselves (e.g., "ERP 2017 2019
Guru") or they are very general terms without any specific N Competences N Competences
connection to the job description (e.g., "employee" or 43 Professional Experience, 58 IT-Education
"division manager"). However, the terms have not been ERP Experience
40 IT-Education 38 Professional Experience,
manipulated. ERP Experience
2017 2019 32 Requirement analysis and 36 ERP development and
N Job Titles N Job Titles management implementation
13 Business Analyst 20 Consultant ERP Systems 31 IT project management 32 Process management and
11 Software Developer 12 Business Analyst optimisation
AESP20: 1st Workshop on Requirement Management in Enterprise Systems Projects @ SE20, Innsbruck, Austria 15
29 ERP development and 23 Requirement analysis and To get insight in the job market for ERP decision makers
implementation management in the future, further analysis of job advertisments may be
26 Business administration 22 Business Informatices required using the same set of key words and search strings or
education
23 Evaluation 21 User support, training
a slightly changing set of key word and search strings as the
18 User support, training 21 IT project management wording in job advertisments may change also. Therefore, a
18 Interface management 20 Business administration direct comparison of different sets of job advertisments should
education be conducted very carefully and with a profound
Tab. 3: In advertisements most frequently requested competences in understanding of job market and respective changes in the
comparison 2017 and 2019 (Top 10, Source: 3s based on Jobfeed-Analysis) field of ERP decision making.
IV. CONCLUSION AND A FINAL ANALYTICAL REVIEW AT THE REFERENCES
INCOME DATA [1] J. Verville, A. Halingten, A six-stage model of the buying process for
ERP software, in: Industrial Marketing Management 32 (7), 2003, 585–
The activity profile ERP decision / ERP implementation / 594
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increasingly professional in Austria in recent years. This is International Journal of Production Research 38 (17), 2000, 4507–
indicated by both the job titles used in relevant advertisements 4520.
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to have accelerated in recent years and the pressure on demand Erfolgsfaktoren und Lernerfolg, Dissertation, Leopold-Franzens-
Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck. Fakultät für Betriebswirtschaft,
is likely to increase. Whether this development is driven by Innsbruk, 2014.
the economy can only be assumed in this context based on the
[4] W. Bliem, S. Seyer-Weiss, M. Kargl, Qualitative Erhebungen zum
analysis of advertisements. Arbeitsmarktbedarf für das AMS-Qualifikations-Barometer, Institut
für Bildungsforschung der Wirtschaft, Wien, 2017,
Reviewing the employees’ income data contained in the http://www.forschungsnetzwerk.at/downloadpub/quali_Bericht_QB_i
advertisments, a minimum income is frequently mentioned, bw_3s_2017-interviews-studie.pdf, last accessed 12 January 2020.
but the variation of income data is high. After standardising [5] http://bis.ams.or.at/qualibarometer/berufsbereich.php?id=88 , last
the income data to an annual income, and not considering accessed 12 January 2020.
missing data (approx. 20%), the income figures rose from [6] C. Plaimauer, “Big Data als Informationsquelle für regionales
2017 to 2019 with an average yearly income of EUR 46,931 Arbeitsmarkt-Monitoring: Online-Stellenanzeigen analysieren mittels
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obvious pressure on demand and the shortage of skilled http://www.forschungsnetzwerk.at/downloadpub/AMS_info_339.pdf,
last accessed 12 January 2020.
employees, companies are still reluctant to disclose income
figures when recruiting staff [5].
In fact, the analysis of job titles in job advertismets is quite
challenging. Job titles and descriptions are created daily and
often created by marketing employees, so different job titles
may have the same requirements regarding education and
experience. So, the analysis of job titles must be done
including the respective description of required competences.
The combined analysis allows a careful statement as done in
this article.
V. FUTURE WORK
Especially now, in times of a flourishing job market in IT
and ERP, the development of job advertisements may show
relevant developments of the professional field itself and the
relevant job environment. It is of interest to analyse job
advertisements after 2 years again to find out, if the ongoing
developments remain or may be changed due to external
effects. As experts do expect on the one hand a higher demand
connected to digitalisation in the next years, the overall job
market may lose some of its recent dynamic on the other hand.
These counteracting trends may influence job advertisements
for relevant experts for ERP decision making in the future.
AESP20: 1st Workshop on Requirement Management in Enterprise Systems Projects @ SE20, Innsbruck, Austria 16
VI. APENDIX
Building & Construction
3% Outer Circle: 2017
Other
20%
Administration
6% Industry
15% Industry
30%
Logistics
3%
Other Inner Circle:
40% 2019
IT Services
35%
Agriculture
2%
Logistics
2%
IT Services
44%
Fig. 1: Demand sectors for ERP decision making job
advertisments in 2017 and 2019 (Source: 3s based on Jobfeed-
Analysis)
Other
10%
Univ / College / Other Other
2% 4%
Outer Circle:
College / Other 2017
1%
Univ / College / Other
College 4%
19%
Inner Circle: University
46%
2019
College University
31% 55%
University or College
26%
University or College
2%
Fig. 2: Demand comparison of the highest completed training
in 2017 and 2019 (Source: 3s based on Jobfeed-Analysis)
AESP20: 1st Workshop on Requirement Management in Enterprise Systems Projects @ SE20, Innsbruck, Austria 17
2019 2017 4 Compliance 5 Microsoft .Net Framework
58 IT-Ausbildung 43 Berufserfahrung, ERP 4 Kommunikative 4 ERP Transformation
Erfahrung Fertigkeiten
38 Berufserfahrung, ERP 40 IT-Ausbildung 4 Warenwirtschaft, Handel 4 ERP Systemkenntnisse
Erfahrung
36 ERP Entwicklung und 32 Anforderungsanalyse und - 3 Cloudtechnologie 4 IT-Sicherheit
Implementierung management 3 Datenbanken 4 Kommunikative
32 Prozessmanagement und 31 IT-Projektsteuerung, IT- Fertigkeiten
Prozessoptimierung Projektmanagement 3 Engineering 4 Lastenheft
23 Anforderungsanalyse und - 29 ERP Entwicklung und
management Implementierung 3 Lastenheft 4 Qualitätssicherung,
22 Wirtschaftsinformatik 26 Betriebswirtschaftliche Continuous Improvement
Ausbildung 3 Produktionsprozesse 4 System Analyse
21 Anwenderbetreuung, - 23 Evaluierung
schulung 3 Reporting 3 Anwendungs-
programmierung
21 IT-Projektsteuerung, IT- 18 Anwenderbetreuung, -
Projektmanagement schulung 3 Software-Entwicklung 3 Führungserfahrung
20 Betriebswirtschaftliche 18 Schnittstellenmanagement, 3 SQL 3 Integration verschiedener
Ausbildung Schnittstellen- Systeme
anforderungen 2 Anwendungs- 3 CRM
15 Evaluierung 17 Dokumentation programmierung
13 Kunden- und 17 Technische Ausbildung 2 ERP-Typologie 3 Monitoring Plug-Ins
Partnerbetreuung allgemein 2 Führungserfahrung 3 Kundenworkshops
13 MS Dynamics 17 Wirtschaftsinformatik
2 IT Audits 3 Migrationsplanung
12 Business Analyse 15 Prozessmanagement und
Prozessoptimierung 2 IT Systembetreuung 3 Document Management
11 Technische Ausbildung 14 Business Analyse System
allgemein 2 IT-Sicherheit 2 Big Data Analysen
9 Dokumentation 13 Testkonzeption und
2 Rechnungswesen, 2 Business Solutions
Testung
Finanzen
8 Kostenkalkulation, 12 Lieferantenmonitoring und
2 Rs2 2 Datenbanken
Budgetplanung, -betreuung
Controlling 2 Verhandlungen 2 Modellierung
8 Qualitätssicherung, 11 Teamführung, MA-
Continuous Improvement Betreuung 2 Warenwirtschaft, Handel
7 Internationale 10 Reporting
2 Lifecycle Management
Implementierung (roll-out)
7 Requirements Engineering 9 Kunden- und 2 Sharepoint
Partnerbetreuung
7 SAP 7 SAP 2 ERP-Support
7 Testung 7 IT-Infrastruktur 2 Objektorientierte
Programmierung
6 ERP Consulting 6 IT-Systemarchitektur 2 HTML
6 IT-Systemarchitektur 6 Kostenkalkulation, 2 CSS
Budgetplanung,
Controlling 2 UNIX / LINUX OS
6 Logistik 6 MS Dynamics 2 Verkauf,
6 Teamführung, MA- 6 Software-Entwicklung Verhandlungsführung
Betreuung 2 ERP Roll Out
5 ERP Systemkenntnisse 6 2nd, 3rd level support von 2 C#
Applikationen
5 Integration verschiedener 5 Applikationsbetreuung 2 Direct Marketing
Systeme
5 System Analyse 5 SQL (Server) 2 Barcodesysteme
5 System- und 5 System- und Tab. 4: Competences in demand in advertisements in comparison 2017 to
Releaseplanung Releaseplanung 2019 (list without individual references – in german, Source: 3s based on
4 Applikationsbetreuung 5 IT-Strategie Jobfeed Analysis)
4 Beschaffung 5 Java (Enterprise)
AESP20: 1st Workshop on Requirement Management in Enterprise Systems Projects @ SE20, Innsbruck, Austria 18