Toward an SAP Center of Excellence or SAP Competency Center – PART 1

By |July 26th, 2010|

Part 1 of 3 Is There a Difference Between an SAP Center of Excellence, SAP Competency Center, or SAP Expertise Center? A while back, Michael Done and I were talking about his SAP Green Book-- thriving after going live with SAP [FN1]. As the conversation progressed, it was obvious to both of us that although he has been advocating for an SAP Center of Excellence for quite some time, few companies had succeeded in creating one.Our conversation started a lengthy thought process about our careers wi [...]

Series on SAP Competency Center or SAP Center of Excellence

By |July 21st, 2010|

  THREE-PART SERIES ON DEVELOPING AN SAP CENTER OF EXCELLENCE. You probably already knew that a "Competency center" is focused on SAP application support such as help desk functions, system stabilization, troubleshooting, etc. But did you know that a true "Center of Excellence" is focused on the business and business drivers? The key goal of a "Center of Excellence" is to integrate not just the application, but the application support staff into the business. Business Transformation from [...]

Where do you Start with SAP Return on Investment or SAP ROI?

By |July 19th, 2010|

See Part 1 - SAP Implementation Is an Investment Not an Event How much is it going to cost, and how long is it going to take? That is the classic approach to SAP implementations. However, this approach is not enough today, as the marketplace is demanding more from their IT dollars. Now the marketplace has questions about measuring cost reductions, process improvements, and customer retention/acquisition. These are all important discussions. Your money has to work for you in your business-- and [...]

SAP Implementation is an Investment NOT an Event

By |July 12th, 2010|

A while back, I talked to a pair of executives who were trying to determine whether or not their SAP implementation cost was higher or lower than their competitors. They wanted benchmarks or some other way to know if they were in line with the marketplace. The CFO was worried that they might have paid way too much for their SAP implementation. After talking for a few minutes, they realized that they were looking at the question the wrong way. While they were asking about how their expenditure c [...]

Certainly Certifiable – SAP System Integrators Not Just Consultants

By |July 5th, 2010|

That hardy perennial “SAP consultant certification” is blooming again but this time in regard to independent consultants as opposed to those in systems integration firms.http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=761Below is a link to Jon Reed’s excellent...

More on Vendor Selection Criteria and Methods for ERP Project Success

By |June 29th, 2010|

Using the RFI and RFP Process for your ERP or SAP Education During the vendor selection process, you should use the RFI (Request for Information) and RFP (Request for Proposal) processes to solicit comments, methods, tools, and resource examples of how knowledge transfer will be handled. In other words, be sure to actively engage in the RFI and RFP processes rather than simply using them as some kind of a checklist or scorecard for the correct vendor. This is your first and best chance to gain [...]