40% of organisations using SAP are reluctant to run software updates, fearing it might disrupt business.
The global survey, conducted by Original Software on IT professionals running SAP applications, found that more than a quarter of updates exceed budget by 25%, while one third of update projects overrun by five months.
The study also found that testing and validation was the most burdensome in terms of man days.
The challenges faced during testing and validation are quality/quantity of test scripts, availability of SAP users and communication among members of the update team.
Original Software CEO Colin Armitage said, "The reason many IT teams are afraid of frequent SAP updates is not only the amount of time, effort and money necessary for testing and validating updates, but the risk of disruption to business operations."
"For example, the last thing a company needs is to suddenly become incapable of collecting debts, which, sadly, is a scenario we have seen when companies have sub-standard testing processes."
The online survey was conducted for a period of 60 days during the second quarter of 2014, among IT professionals involved in software testing and quality assurance at large and small companies.
The survey sampled responses from 15 countries, with more than half coming from the US and a fifth coming from the UK.
