What is IT Strategy?

By |July 7th, 2014|

  We hear it almost every day: IT Strategy, Business Strategy, strategic customer accounts, strategic widgets, etc. Strategy is applied to so many areas with so little understanding that the word has almost become meaningless. I decided to build my own research-based model around strategy because of all of the buzz and the lack of clarity or simplicity. I wanted to answer a key question: How do you determine if you are being strategic or just using tactics you are calling a strategy? Wha [...]

Building an Effective SAP ERP Delivery Organization

By |November 5th, 2012|

There are generally three major components for improving SAP delivery. These three components can improve SAP and technology delivery in general while impacting corporate business performance and marketplace success. Delivery Approach Delivery Methodology IT Organizational Development The following content is written with a focus on SAP; however, it can be completely generalized to virtually any IT organization. You need a careful focus on the delivery approach. Here there are two key paradigms [...]

Achieve Business Benefit Through SAP Prototype Demonstrations

By |July 16th, 2012|

SAP Conference Room Proof of Concept Pilots Proof of Concepts with frequent early prototyping drive project costs down. Consider the old saying: “an ounce of prevention can avoid a pound of cure.” Proof of concept pilots during the project are a rarely mentioned SAP critical success factor. Early in my SAP career, the disruption these prototype sessions, conference room pilots, etc. would cause used to frustrate me. My thought was, "I have a job to do and don't have time for this." No one ever [...]

Guest Worker IT Firms Crash Then Burn When Investigating Visa Fraud

By |June 11th, 2012|

Several years ago, a gentleman by the name of Jack Palmer blew the lid on the entire Guest Worker scam at InfoSys. Anyone who has worked hard to establish their career in SAP (or other IT areas) the old-fashioned way, through hard work and perseverance, owes this man a huge debt of gratitude. He exposed how the whole guest worker program can be abused as he presented evidence on how one of the biggest guest worker companies routinely committed fraud. His complaint even alleges how the company b [...]

SAP Customer Responsibility for SAP Project Success

By |April 23rd, 2012|

Some time ago, I put together a synthesis of SAP success criteria based on academic literature and my own personal experience. The table below is part of the list of SAP Success Factors for Vender Selection – Responsibility Matrix. For a more detailed explanation of each of the vendor-related items, see the posts listed in the Series on SAP ERP Project Success Factors. In the prior series, we went through SAP success factors with shared responsibilities between the company adopting the SAP appl [...]

SAP Enabled Business Transformation for IT Leadership

By |March 12th, 2012|

Continuing the Journey to the Business-Converged SAP Center of Excellence After many years researching and living through IT and business convergence for IT leadership, I ran into a study that brought more clarity to the key dividing concepts. Some interesting approaches and maturity models are available for senior executives, but little direction for the delivery organization (for detailed development, see 3 Development Phases for SAP Center of Excellence Maturity). CIO magazine established a [...]