When Is the Right Time to Start Recruiting for an SAP Project?
- September 14, 2026
One of the most important SAP project decisions happens right from the jump: Who needs to be on the team, and when do you need them?
Organizations sometimes approach staffing sequentially. First, define the transformation, the establish the timeline, select partners, and secure funding. Once those pieces are in place, start filling the open roles. But for many SAP programs, that can be too late.
SAP transformations require a combination of functional expertise, technical capabilities, business-process knowledge, data experience, integration skills, project leadership, security expertise, and change management. And the people with the right combination of those skills aren’t necessarily available exactly when a project needs them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Start workforce planning alongside SAP project planning. Identify required capabilities, timing, and ownership as the transformation scope and roadmap take shape rather than waiting for vacancies to become urgent.
- Recruit backward from when expertise needs to be productive. Account for sourcing, interviews, notice periods, onboarding, and project ramp-up when determining when recruiting should begin.
- Prioritize roles that influence foundational decisions. Program leaders, architects, process leads, data leaders, integration specialists, security leaders, and other critical resources may need to contribute well before execution ramps up.
- Don’t assume talent will be available on demand. Specialized SAP skills can take time to find, making recruiting lead time an important part of the overall project plan.
Recent ASUG research illustrates the challenge. In its 2025 Pulse of the SAP Customer Research Report, 56% of respondents identified SAP S/4HANA expertise as an important skill for their organization, making it the top skillset in the survey. Another 35% identified finding employees with the internal skills necessary to manage new technology as a top organizational challenge.
The question is whether the right expertise can be identified, recruited, onboarded, and made productive before the project depends on it. That means the best time to start recruiting for an SAP project is often earlier than leaders expect.
START RECRUITING WITH THE WORKFORCE PLAN IN MIND
Before writing a job description, understand the work. Is the organization pursuing a greenfield implementation, system conversion, selective data transition, cloud migration, or broader business transformation? Which functions are in scope? How complex is the existing landscape? Which processes will change? What data, integrations, extensions, and applications will be affected? Those decisions determine the capabilities the organization needs.
A technically focused conversion, for example, may require a different team from a greenfield implementation involving extensive process redesign. An SAP S/4HANA Cloud transformation may create demand for capabilities around BAIP, cloud architecture, integration, data, clean core, security, and extensibility that aren’t as prevalent on the organization’s current SAP team.
Recruiting should be an output of the transformation strategy, not a separate activity that begins afterward.
HOW EARLY SHOULD YOU START RECRUITING FOR AN SAP PROJECT?
There isn’t one universal number of months that works for every SAP role. Instead, work backward from the date when each capability needs to be fully productive. Suppose an integration architect needs to establish design principles before build begins. That person shouldn’t start the week development kicks off. They need enough time to understand the current landscape, business requirements, future architecture, dependencies, and project standards before those decisions are finalized. The same applies to data, security, functional, and business-process roles.
A staffing plan also needs to account for the full recruiting cycle. Finding a candidate isn’t the same as having someone ready to contribute. Sourcing, screening, interviews, stakeholder availability, offer negotiations, notice periods, background checks, onboarding, and project orientation all consume time.
In fact, 2025 technology recruiting benchmarks found a 48-day median time to hire among technology organizations—26% slower than the global median. The research also found that only 77% of technology candidates accepted offers. For organizations recruiting niche SAP expertise, those numbers reinforce that a vacancy identified six weeks before a critical project phase can quickly become a project constraint. Build recruiting lead time into the plan rather than assuming talent will be available on demand.
WHICH SAP ROLES SHOULD YOU RECRUIT FIRST?
Not every member of an SAP project needs to arrive simultaneously. The highest recruiting priority should generally go to people whose knowledge and decisions influence downstream work. Program leadership, enterprise and solution architects, functional leads, data leaders, integration architects, security leaders, and key process owners can all shape foundational decisions.
They help answer questions such as: Which processes should be standardized? Which extensions are actually necessary? What is the data strategy? How will systems integrate? What belongs inside or outside the core? How should security be designed? What capabilities will the organization need after go-live?
Bringing those people into the project after major decisions have been made limits their ability to influence the outcome. It can also create rework if newly hired experts identify issues that earlier teams overlooked.
LEARN MORE IN PART TWO
Recruiting for an SAP project shouldn’t begin when open roles become urgent. By connecting workforce planning to the transformation roadmap, accounting for recruiting and onboarding lead time, and prioritizing roles that influence foundational decisions, organizations can have critical expertise in place before the project depends on it.
But starting early doesn’t mean hiring everyone at once or that every capability needs to come from a permanent hire. The next step is building a staffing strategy that aligns talent with each phase of the transformation while creating flexibility around how critical skills are sourced.