This is the “Summit”? That’s the “Dream”?

Last week saw parallel vendor events. In one corner, SAP Summit 2010 and in another corner Dreamforce 2010 (Salesforce.com). With good friends in attendance at both and the confidence that I’d get special briefings, I had only to follow along on my Tweet Deck and for two days I was treated to ever more annoying reminders of how IT technology will be the death of the English language.

There was a time when business stakeholders could actually get something out of attending the SAP Summit. How about this year? Here is what was described as a keystone slide from the event:

Yup.

No mention in two days of “business process improvement” or “measurable business benefit” or the old saw of “agile business”. As a matter of fact, as best I can tell neither event ever included the term “business” over the equivalent of four event days (two each). In recent years, SAP has made great strides in offering services like Business Transformation Services and tools such as Value Engineering intended to help clients in this regard, there was not a single mention of them, let alone any particular recognition that there’s more to SAP success than wonkiness. By the end of the first day, various Tweets reflected my own frustration. Even an SAP employee noted that there had not been a single mention of SAP’s enterprise support (which normally is mentioned in every third SAP account exec’s breath).

Salesforce’s “Dream” event was an endless parade of merging and emerging technological patches to technological gaps into a technological universe quite far removed from orders to cash, procure to pay, business intelligence, or strategic positioning. Steve Wonder was there. Former president Bill Clinton made an appearance. So how business interested was the content?

Dennis Howlett pretty much sums it up:

“Salesforce on the other hand is not handling a single business critical process. Shocked? Go figure. It is parsing pieces of the pie but it cannot legitimately claim ownership of entire processes.”

These firms only compete in the small to mid-sized market. Much of SAP's event was given over to its emerging Business ByDesign offering which will compete head to head with Salesforce. My sense is that all the Salesforce features and functionality stacked together will not ever compare with SAP’s ability to drive multiple and integrated critical business processes. The question is whether either firm will have the consulting agility (and patience) to efficiently serve the mid-sized market.

While a number of the more technically-minded IT analysts and journalists were over the moon, two recent articles reflected a more grounded reaction.

Contrasting the two vendors is Dennis Howlett in ZDnet: ZDnet  http://ht.ly/3nhQt

“Salesforce throws a memorable frat party, SAP offers fine dining. Each has its place but in the enterprise world one has to wonder which represents the ultimate preference of those who sign checks for IT vendors.”

As for innovation, Thomas Wailgum wrote before these events: “The Fallacy of Vendor-Driven IT Innovation” http://snipurl.com/1ne79i

“The term innovative itself is on the precipice of falling into the abyss of meaningless marketing rhetoric: When every new product, every technology iteration, every small step is termed "innovative," then what you have is a collective, irritating din that, conversely, makes anything new and notable exactly the same as everything else.

Let's be honest with each other: Outside of the Internet's impact on businesses (which, by the way, occurred in the mid-1990s), has business really changed that much? “

In the case of Salesforce, the event was totally in line with what we’ve long come to expect from them. In the case of SAP, I admit to disappointment. Going back to Dennis Howlett’s comparison, I do believe that SAP offers fine dining, but this event was far too over-cooked for my taste and the background music was grating.

Just for sake of perspective, let’s remember that in countless surveys, the need for business and IT alignment is at or near the top of the wish list. We can set aside the Salesforce offering which is an “eat it and smile” proposition since clients can’t customize the software and critical business processes are not satisfied. In the case of SAP, however, such alignment is not only possible but, when attained, can yield incredible business benefit.

My hope is that future SAP Summits will be meant to scale the business mountain rather than the range of technical foothills that surround it.

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.