The SAP landscape is shifting fast. With the 2027 ECC deadline approaching, AI embedded across applications and cloud adoption accelerating, the skills in demand today look very different to 12 months ago.
Here are five SAP skills dominating 2026 – and why they matter.
- SAP S/4HANA Migration Expertise
With *59% of companies now fully or partially live on SAP S/4HANA, up 13% from 2024, migration expertise has become critical as organisations race towards the 2027 ECC support deadline. The market is reaching a turning point, with over half of its companies largely or almost completed the changeover in 2026.
The key challenge isn’t just technical execution; organisations mention business process change, customisations and organisational resistance as the top barriers. There’s also growing demand for hybrid approaches that balance innovation with stability, allowing businesses to retain critical processes while modernising selectively. Migration specialists who can navigate clean core strategies, manage data quality issues and deliver near-zero downtime migrations are commanding premium rates. With over **60% of surveyed firms seeing migration projects exceed budget, schedule, or both, therefore professionals who can keep projects on track are highly valuable.
- SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform)
BTP adoption is accelerating rapidly. *50% of companies now use BTP services (up 10% from last year), with another 26% beginning their journey. However, there’s a catch: many organisations have committed to BTP commercially but struggle to consume it effectively, resulting in large volumes of unused cloud credits.
The primary barriers are clear: Skills gap *(46%), complexity of development (43%), and difficulty understanding capabilities (36%). This creates massive demand for BTP specialists who can turn entitlements into tangible business capability. BTP is now positioned as the backbone for extending SAP S/4HANA without disrupting the core, enabling clean core architecture and accelerating innovation through low-code tools, automation workflows and AI capabilities. Professionals who can demonstrate logical use cases delivering measurable outcomes – whether through extensions, automation, integration or analytics – are in high demand.
- Advanced Analytics and Business Intelligence
SAP’s analytics landscape is undergoing transformation with the Business Data Cloud (BDC) taking centre stage. This platform is consolidating what used to be fragmented tools into an integrated, cloud-centric, AI-supported system.
The emphasis has shifted from batch reporting to real-time analytics integrated directly into business workflows. Embedded analytics capabilities mean reporting is no longer a separate activity but woven into daily operations. Organisations need specialists who understand SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud and how to utilise the Business Data Cloud to create AI-ready data foundations. With data quality emerging as a critical challenge in migrations and AI implementations, professionals who can ensure accuracy, governance and compliance while enabling predictive analytics are essential.
- AI – SAP AI (Joule)
Joule is fundamentally reimagining the SAP user experience and in 2026, Joule will gain the ability to answer any question and will follow users everywhere with. SAP now has over *2,100 AI skills that help employees complete routine tasks up to *80% faster using natural language, with over *400 AI-driven use cases embedded across applications.
At SAP Connect 2025, 14 new Joule Agents were unveiled spanning finance, HR, procurement, supply chain and industry-specific scenarios. These aren’t just chatbots – they’re autonomous agents that execute multi-step workflows.
Organisations need professionals who understand how to implement Joule effectively, create custom agents using Joule Studio, integrate role-based AI assistants and manage the governance and adoption of AI at scale. Skills in prompt engineering, AI agent orchestration and understanding when AI should augment versus automate are increasingly valuable.
- Change Management
This might be the most underestimated skill on the list, yet arguably the most critical. Organisational resistance *(37%) is cited as a top barrier in migrations, with change management being as challenging as the technical migration itself. The data is sobering: **84% of organisations avoid making SAP changes altogether due to fear that rapid change would disrupt business operations.
Recent ***Forrester research commissioned by SAP reveals that 72% of organisations are pursuing four or more transformation initiatives annually, yet only 6% qualify as transformation leaders. The challenges are systemic: 56% of respondents struggle with poor data, 55% encounter persistent organisational silos and 52% highlight employee fatigue from continuous change.
True transformation leaders are embedding change into their organisation’s DNA through early employee involvement, dedicated change functions and digital adoption management. With AI adoption in SAP SuccessFactors and other modules, change managers need to handle not just system transitions but help employees work confidently alongside AI – reviewing outputs, validating recommendations and overriding when necessary. The message is clear: AI suggests; humans decide. Organisations that treat adoption as a product with clear outcomes, boundaries and manager-led reinforcement models will succeed in 2026.
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