The State of SAP 2012: New Research for a New Age

From 1995 through 2000, I worked in SAP systems integration, helping clients to implement R/3. In 1998, I published The SAP Blue Book, A Concise Business Guide to the World of SAP. One concern I had back then was that there was no primary research at all about the best practices for implementation.

Since that time, I have been gathering primary research about implementation best practices and, even more important, about post-implementation practices and strategies. As a result, over the years, I have led fourteen major research projects and participated in dozens of others. Among the most striking lessons learned across studies relative to SAP (in no particular order):

You Get How You Pay For: Fixed-fee implementation projects are the least successful; value-based fee projects are the most successful (if you can measure).

Tell Me If You’ve Heard This One Before: The large systems integrators tend to perform fairly well in the Fortune 500 market and very poorly in all other markets.

Latch-Key Kids: In a study on end user training and supports, 76% of firms polled claimed that their end users were struggling or failing when it came to SAP competency. When compared to firms that claimed they were doing well, we found that the successful firms overwhelmingly provided more continuous training than the struggling firms.

I Said I Wanted Chicken but Now I Want Steak and Later I Will Be Happy to Have a Hot Dog: The client group mindset changes radically between the time they choose a systems integrator and the time they start a project. Then nearly everything changes again after go-live. (Moral: it is good to have an articulated long-term vision before starting down the SAP path).

My Last Confession Was during Business Blueprint (The Privacy of the Confessional): In public settings, clients blame SAP or their systems integrator for project issues. When provided an anonymous platform, they place far greater blame on themselves.

A Day at the Dentist: Measurement of business performance is deemed (incorrectly) as painful as root canal. (Fewer than 20% have tangible measures during implementations).

Unfortunately, some of the essential data is now old and therefore no longer fully credible. Further, there are a number of new subjects (Centers of Excellence, Shadow IT, and Maintaining SAP Super User Networks) where little or no primary research is available.

In order to answer myriad questions about the state of SAP 2012, we have launched a survey with hopes of having final data and analysis in time for SAPPHIRE.

Survey link:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N9JWXBZ

Survey completion should be about 15 minutesIn return for your contribution, we will provide you with a study based on the survey results -- “The State of SAP 2012: SAP Installed Base Survey Results” -- and/or any of the following white papers:

• We Do It Themselves - Outsourcing SAP Support Services
• Your Users Are Stumbling and Your Business Is Suffering, How cutting SAP Training could make bad times worse
• SAP as the Engine to Measurable Business Benefit

 White papers will be delivered via e-mail, in pdf format, within seven days of your survey completion.

  

In the survey, we ask for your e-mail address. This address will not be used for any purpose at any time other than for returning requested material to you.

Survey completion should be about 15 minutes as the questions are fairly straightforward and responses are mostly “multiple choice” or “check all that apply”.

Example:

Survey Sections include:

Intro Demographics of Respondents

1 Current State

• SAP maturity
• Strengths & weaknesses
• Center of Excellence status

2 Current Organization

•  Business process organization/success rates
• Super user/end user status
• Organizational change management

 3 Forward Planning

• HANA
• Business Intelligence
• Mobility

4 Center of Expertise status

5 Working Preferences

• Service preferences
• Information sources
• Preferred Events
• Preferred Workshops

The first and most important benefit to having this information is to see where you fit across the SAP installed base market. You will gain an understanding of what issues are being faced by others as well as what they are doing to evolve.

The data has extra credibility in that is derived from your peers. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions:

Survey link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N9JWXBZ


michael.doane@cgi.com         michael@michaeldoane.com

It's Cloud's Illusions I Recall: 2012 SAP Client Trends

As is customary this time of year, we have had a plethora of “lists” either of nostalgia (looking back at 2011) or with anticipation (looking ahead to 2012). Prominent on these lists for SAP are: HANA, mobility, Bob J, and Solution Manager (the four horsemen of the Sapocalypse). I fully expect SAP to keep the horns blowing hard for these subjects, though I would truly welcome something new that isn’t techy-wonkish.


In that light, I continue to believe that neither The Cloud nor SaaS are particularly relevant to SAP clients in the installed base with revenues > $500M. No client of major size is going to use cloud in more than a lab environment as they will be loath to consign the heart of their IP to a cloud environment. And although SaaS solutions continue to evolve, they do not lend themselves to continuous business process improvement (to say the least).

The trends that I list here (in no particular order) are clearly not part of the mainstream with analysts whose eyes are turned to the technology but should be trends that clients themselves will follow.

Shadow IT is on the Rise: While I do not have any primary research in this regard, I have noted a serious increase in the frequency of IT systems and solutions used outside of official IT and without official approval. The vast majority of shadow IT is business intelligence (with a concentration upon executive dashboards). This rise is probably due to a) IT leadership not tuned to business needs and/or b) corporate dictates to IT to reduce costs, leaving IT unable to serve business.

The dwindling of the SAP consulting eco-system gives clients less choice than ever: Twelve years ago, there were 300 North American SAP practices. The large practices, often referred to as ‘the usual suspects’ included Price Waterhouse, Coopers & Lybrand, Anderson Consulting (later Accenture), CSC, Deloitte, KPMG (later BearingPoint) , Ernst & Young, IBM, and SAP Consulting. That’s nine firms. Today, we are down to SAP Consulting, IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, and CSC. That’s six firms. And the count of North American SAP practices is less than 100 with almost no second tier. This is the result of aggressive provider consolidation, vastly increased global delivery, and mass growth of SAP Consulting and the IBM and Accenture SAP practices.

Centers of Expertise will continue to give way to Centers of Excellence. Centers of Expertise are intended to get the most out of SAP software. Lots of clients have them. Centers of Excellence are intended to drive continuous measurable business improvements. Few clients have them. So what’s the trend? 2010 and 2011 saw a rise in client maturity regarding the distinction between the two CoE meanings and substance. A rise, I said, not a tsunami. The vast majority of firms with SAP will still be looking in the wrong direction (towards technology) to improve their maturity.

Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForcedotcom (that’s right, they are still mis-named and still use dotcom in the moniker) will continue to embarrass himself with loudmouth declarations about his firm toppling SAP, Oracle, et al. He’s been doing so for about five years now and should be getting hoarse even as the vision of “toppling” grows ever distant. Waves of analysts, however, will buy in to this delusion.

The definition of a business process expert will continue to be refined. To date, the definers have come from the ranks of IT (read=techie) analysts and more technical-minded consultants. If you go to the BPX Community pages at SDN, you get the impression that business process expertise is about “tools” and “modeling” and, oh my, SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration. Just as construction is not defined by hammers and nails, we need to remember that business process expertise is supposed to be the nexus between business and IT. The blur. BizIT. Fellow definition refiners are welcome here.

Super user networks will be more common and more effective. 2010 heralded the beginning of the end of the dreadful neglect of SAP end users as we continue to find ways to prove the cost of such neglect and thus gain client mindshare around the issues.