3 Development Phases for SAP Center of Excellence Maturity

By |May 14th, 2012|

Before we get into the substance of how to build a next-generation IT organization that is integrated with business, we need to take a quick review. Last week’s post on SAP Service Provider to Business Peer Through Center of Excellence Maturity proposed the direct maturity of the SAP IT organization. Here, we discussed the three stages of Organizational Change Management Inside the SAP IT Support Organization. These stages create clear distinctions between SAP Service Delivery versus Value Deli [...]

The SAP User Experience

By |April 9th, 2012|

Over a decade ago SAP embarked on a journey to revamp their outdated user interface.  Enter "nJoy" SAP with all of the new "N" transactions.  But it has been over a decade now and other than some nice refinements to the GUI not much has changed.  A decade in the technology space is like a century in other areas.  Isn't it time to take a hard look at the application suite again? So you have the cute "Netweaver Business Client" but there hasn't been a lot done to chan [...]

Why Use the SAP ASAP Methodology?

By |January 16th, 2012|

ASAP Methodology Background In the mid 1990’s, SAP had gained significant bad press and publicity around several high-profile project disasters that the company knew were completely avoidable. At that time Oracle, Baan, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft all had salespeople making the case that SAP was too expensive, too complicated, and too time-consuming to implement. In response, SAP released the ASAP Methodology in the mid-late 90’s (around 1996 or 1997). R&D resources and efforts have since re [...]

SAP IT Governance, SAP Program Management, SAP PMO Metrics

By |January 9th, 2012|

On this forum, the most frequent response from the project and program managers was a call for independence. However, when I raised the issue of project or program manager accountability, metrics, performance, and avoidance of project messes, no one addressed the problem. Is it any wonder so many business application projects and programs get into trouble, go over budget, and exceed the allotted time when the individuals responsible for coordinating and evaluating them don't want clear accounta [...]

SAP System Vendor Project Success Criteria & Factors 5

By |November 29th, 2010|

This is the final post in the series on SAP project shared success criteria. Doing this entire topic justice has been more of a challenge than I had originally anticipated. At some point, I will put it all together in a PDF e-book. This series leaves you with a lot to digest but over the years these items generally make up the foundations for a very successful project that is able to transform your business. This series has been challenging but interesting and I am glad it is complete. In a few [...]