Will SAP HANA Lead to a Big Data Revolution?

By |December 17th, 2012|

Many people focus on HANA as a competitor to Oracle, and it is. Even if HANA adoption and sales were to completely devastate SAP's biggest competitor (Oracle), that would not be HANA's biggest impact. The HANA product has the potential to disrupt entire industries in the context of Big Data. Unlike Big Data, I have been skeptical about the benefits and use of social media in the enterprise, writing about it in Why Social Media Marketing Success Is Elusive for Business and Social Media Fads and [...]

Being an Expert Witness in an SAP System Integrator or Consultant Fraud Trial

By |May 29th, 2012|

Those who have followed this site for any period of time are probably aware that one of my passions is to see the whole business application space “cleaned up.” A recent group of comments and private messages I have received about consultants who knowingly commit fraud really got me aggravated.  I've actually received e-mails through my site from these “freshers” who would brag about having their fake resume ready and they were excited about actually conning their first customer.  Enou [...]

Why Social Media Marketing Success Is Elusive for Business

By |May 21st, 2012|

In several social media channels I participate in, one item continues to surface again and again: "How do you ensure business benefit from social media?" Underlying that question is a basic issue: How do you ensure some kind of financial return? Although some social media folks genuinely understand the need for measurable business results, especially in difficult economic times, others insist that you must pay for something that is unproven and may never produce any real results. They seem offe [...]

Creating a Knowledge-Centered Learning Organization

By |April 16th, 2012|

This post is a continuation of Business Transformation for IT Leadership and is part of a journey around Organizational Change Management Inside the IT Support Organization. To achieve an active, vibrant, knowledge-sharing learning organization, you need some baseline understanding of what your goals are. You need a culture that produces, organizes, disseminates, applies, and then refines information (see the image to the left). This leads me to the next key point that few people who call thems [...]

Organizational Change Management Inside the SAP IT Support Organization

By |April 2nd, 2012|

The last few weeks have focused on the path for IT leaders to become strategic business partners. Academic research shows that to gain Sustained Business Value from SAP Business Software, you must focus technology implementation efforts on business benefits. This includes using metrics to determine if business goals were achieved by the software implementation effort. Achieving Business Value from SAP Investment was about case studies that evaluated organizations with a business benefits approa [...]

How To Navigate the SAP Business Transformation Journey

By |March 19th, 2012|

One driver for this continuing Series on SAP Competency Center or SAP Center of Excellence is the desire for so many senior IT leaders to become future-state business strategist CIOs. The last post provided the introduction of SAP Enabled Business Transformation for IT Leadership, a key requirement for senior IT leaders to become strategic business peers. Additionally, that post introduced the three key milestones on the journey to the future-state business strategist IT leader-- especially if [...]