Configure It Out: Why Business Should Own SAP Configuration

The Fallacy of SAP Configuration as the Realm of IT

Your firm is implementing SAP applications software and it’s time to form an internal project team. You have two candidates for a configuration position in the orders to cash sub-team:

Candidate A:

SKILLS:

• Experience of more than 7 years in the software technology.
• Worked on around 20 projects for 3 different companies and every project is successful.
• In-depth knowledge of software and current technologies.
• Different technologies known are: C, C++, Java, COBOL, Turbo Pascal, Python, C#, VB6.

EDUCATION:

University of Vermont, Bachelor degree in Information Technology
Ohio State University, Master Degree in Computer Software

Candidate B:

Core Competencies:

• Extensive knowledge of integrated logistic management
• In-depth knowledge of testing and functions of system and equipment
• Ability to read computerized reports and have extensive knowledge of computer applications processing
• Good knowledge of budgeting and finance systems
• Ability to adhere with the standard and practices of the organization
• Effective command over written and spoken English language
• Good time management and organizational skills

Educational Summary:

Master's degree in Logistic Management, Management College, IL 1995

What we find most often in the field is that clients opted for candidate A on the mistaken premise that SAP applications configuration is an IT domain and that configuration is a task similar to programming.

In years long past, business managers and directors wrote their memos in longhand or spoke them into dictation machines and the raw material of these efforts was handed over to a secretary or, worse, the typing pool for what only later became known as “word processing”. The reason these managers and directors could not be expected to learn how to type is commingled with the mythic (“typing is not a managerial skill”) and the cultural (“typing is beneath me”). Maybe it had to do with the complexity of changing a ribbon (clearly a task for female fingers!).

We long since gave up on the typing pool and few secretaries these days have to put up with dictation. With e-mail, texting, Twitter, and untold other communications platforms that require a letters-based “word processing”, business people can serve themselves when it comes to written communications.

Beyond the democratization of word processing, we have moved well beyond the scheduled IT distribution of ‘computer listings’ as the primary source of business information. For the past twenty years, business managers have learned basic dashboard and query programs by which business information can be obtained without requests to the IT department and reports can be more and more complex and customized.

However, since the dramatic emergence of SAP as an enterprise applications software giant in the early to mid 90’s, the function known as application configuration has chronically been the realm of IT. For most clients, the basic logic applied is that programmers are the logical inheritors since configuration largely replaces programming. In point of fact, configuration largely eliminates the need for programming. All the same, the majority of SAP clients still assign this task to people with coding skills rather than business process skills.

The Tyranny of Programming

For too long, business has been largely at the mercy of IT primarily because of the necessity of programming. For over forty years, business people needing changes to business processes have been required to pass by IT because those changes could only be effected via changes to the programs. Business people do not speak COBOL or Basic or RPG3 or ABAP.

Think of when you play touch football. In the huddle, the captain says: OK, Bobby, you go straight up the field and cut right toward the tree. Lynnette, just slant left a little bit. Rick and Jose, you block. I’ll hit whoever is open first.

This is a football process design intended to result in a touchdown. Each participant knows his or her role in the process since it was expressed in clear English.

A similar football play may be applied for a high school or college team, but the quarterback’s call to the players will be something like “Right Flank. Blue Dog North on 8”. And if you don’t know the playbook, you can’t run the play because the play book is in code.

Bear in mind:

Programming is the creation of codes that direct the order, path, disposition, and destination of information.


Configuring is the setting of business tables that direct the order, path, disposition, and destination of information.

Eliminating Business & IT “Alignment”

Today, business people routinely use iPads or laptops, a smart phone, GPS, and other “user programmable” devices and yet too often have to pass by IT for even the simplest changes to a business process. This leaves them stuck in a 1972 business model of request-negotiate-check-approve that is slow, irritating, and costly (and does more to fray “business-IT alignment” than any other element in the relationship).

Clients often assign “business analysts” to partner up with mod configurators (FI-CO, SD, MM, et al) which is a little like having someone in the passenger seat tell the driver exactly where to go and at what speed but not having the basic ability to turn a steering wheel, apply the gas, or apply the brakes.

SAP configuration is not that hard for business people to learn. This is often far easier than to teach business process design principles to a former programmer who is now an SAP configuration specialist. The advantage to business accomplishing its own configurations is the near total elimination of that horrid loop of negotiation and approval. Thus:

Clearly, we do not leave it up business staff to complete the necessary IT testing (integration testing, stress testing, etc.) or to place configuration changes into production. All the same, we have vastly streamlined the process and made it fully business-centric.

Step on the Gas

The ultimate goal is business process expertise (BPX) by which the configuring agent can cover an entire business process while being fully versant in business process modeling and business process design. The combination of an authorized business process owner and BPX support provides accelerated business process improvement that will drive measurable benefit.

When I ask clients why they are moving to SAP, I seldom receive a satisfactory response. However, one of the very best responses I got was from Charlie, a CEO in the oil industry, who said he was moving his firm to SAP because “today, when I step on the gas, nothing happens.”

The velocity of business change requires business ownership of configuration so that when your business leadership steps on the gas your firm will immediately move forward. It cannot do so unless business people are firmly behind the configuration wheel.