Steering Committee Governance for an SAP Center of Excellence

By |July 11th, 2011|

This post is based on information from my ASUG presentation in Atlanta: Beyond Technology Alignment – Building a Center of Excellence (http://bit.ly/jJefxP). ------------------------- At the intersection of business and IT, you have convergence. At the place of convergence is where the Center of Excellence exists. ------------------------- One of the key SAP project success factors is to use a steering committee made up of key business stakeholders. They can meet once a week or once a month, bu [...]

3 Keys to Reduce SAP TCO & Move to SAP ROI

By |June 26th, 2011|

I only have a couple more posts in my series on overcoming vendor sales tactics, so I wanted to provide a brief distraction and look at a few key areas for SAP organizations to move to excellence. This post focuses on some of the considerations for SAP Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and SAP Return on Investment (ROI). One key to achieving SAP ROI is through convergence or integration of the SAP staff into the business. I have started down this path as part of a follow-up to the recent ASUG Atlan [...]

Overcome SAP-ERP System Integrator Sales Tactics 7

By |June 20th, 2011|

As we get close to wrapping up this series, we will take a short look at ERP and business software licensing. Fortunately, you have a number of strategies available to negotiate your licenses. One thing to keep in mind here is that there are two revenue streams for the software provider. The first is the license sale, and the second is the maintenance agreement. ERP – SAP – Business Software Licensing Negotiations One negotiating tip I learned a long time ago is to always ask for more than you [...]

Overcome SAP-ERP System Integrator Sales Tactics 6

By |June 13th, 2011|

This week’s post in the series deals more directly with the software selection rather than vendor selections. As we move toward the completion of this series, we need to consider a few more issues. Picking the wrong ERP business software package can be one of the factors that contribute to ERP project failure. Aside from evaluating the product fit to your business processes, you also need to carefully consider hardware, third-party software, development tools, scalability, and other factors tha [...]

Overcome SAP-ERP System Integrator Sales Tactics 5

By |June 6th, 2011|

You have made it through the RFP and vendor presentations, and you have narrowed your final selection down to the final two or three SAP or ERP vendors that you will hire for the engagement. What are the important things to verify that will help you understand if you will achieve benefit? Every integrator who has been in business for any period of time will have a few great references. However, just because they have a few customers who will give them a glowing reference does not mean they will [...]

Overcome SAP-ERP System Integrator Sales Tactics 4

By |May 31st, 2011|

This week, we will take a “mid-point” check and do a brief review of the sales tactics and scams used by some ERP or SAP system integrator salespeople. After this short overview, we will address some additional ways to ensure you get the most from your SAP RFP efforts. After this short review of the sales tactics and some additional techniques for dealing with them, we will continue this series. The next posts will cover the following topics: Qualifying vendors, Final considerations, Negotiatio [...]