The independent magazine for SAP professionals

SAP NATION: QUANTIFYING THE SAP ECONOMY

Issue 28 | Summer 2014/15

USER EXPERIENCE MORE THAN JUST A PRETTY (INTER)FACE

EDUCATIONCREATING AN SAP LEARNING MAP FOR 2015

BEST&LESSEMBRACING E-COMMERCE WITH HYBRIS

www.insidesap.com.au

Mobility special- making mobile simple- how to build the

business case- key consumer

trends to watch

SAUG Canberra Conference 2015Wednesday 18th March National Convention Centre Canberra

With a dedicated HR Stream as well as two general streams featuring various SAP solutions, find out how you can use new and updated software to change the way you do business.

Add value to your SAUG membership by attending this one-day event. To register, or for more information on joining SAUG, head to our website: www.saug.com.au

We look forward to seeing you in Canberra!

4 Editor’s note

5 News in focus: SAP unveils its next-generation business suite

Hot Topics

Mobility special

8 Making mobile simple: SAP’s Rick Costanzo

10 Making the mobile business case: Adam Sivell

14 Mobility trends to watch in 2015

15 What’s hot in mobile – the Australian perspective: Rocio Bustinza

18 Quantifying the SAP economy with Vinnie Mirchandani

SAP Leaders

20 Bringing a start-up mindset to emerging mobility markets: Steve Medeiros

22 On the Move

Case Studies

24 Refreshing a brand with a new customer experience: Best&Less

Technology

28 User experience – More than just a pretty (inter)face

31 Mobility – Why we are steering clear of SAP UI5: Greg Donaldson

32 Business intelligence –Building an analytics powerhouse: 7 steps to success

35 Change management – Focusing on training success: Dr Susan Foster

37 Finance – Tracking the health of your accounts payable process: Christophe du Monet

Careers

40 Creating an SAP learning map

42 Vendor spotlight

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24

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CONTENTS

SAP unveils its next-generation business suite

“When Hasso Plattner invented SAP HANA, we knew the day would come for SAP Business Suite to be reinvented for the digital age. At a moment when businesses around the world need to enter new markets and engage with their customers in any channel, there’s now an innovation platform designed to drive their growth. This is an historic day and we believe it marks the beginning of the end for the 20th century IT stack and all the complexity that came with it,” McDermott said.

SAP S/4HANA, as it is known, is a new product built natively up on the SAP HANA platform to take full advantage of its real-time, in-memory capabilities and incorporate the SAP Fiori user experience design principles.

Available via cloud, on-premise and hybrid deployment options, S4/HANA’s first available module will be Simple Finance, followed by Simple Logistics later in 2015, and others to follow.

According to an FAQ on S/4HANA, written by John Appleby, SAP Mentor and global head of HANA at Bluefin Solutions, one of the most significant aspects of the launch is that it will only run on the HANA platform – a departure from SAP’s previous approach, under which SAP products where designed to run on database platforms from other vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. SAP has also said that innovation will be focused on HANA-based solutions. (John Appleby’s blog can be found at http://www.bluefinsolutions.com/Blogs/John-Appleby/February-2015/The-SAP-Business-Suite-4-SAP-HANA-%28SAP-S4-HANA%29/, and is very much worth a read, both for the content and the discussion in the comments.)

SAP will be reselling S/4HANA via the partner ecosystem, with pre-defined migration and deployment packages. Its early adopter partners include Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte Consulting, EY and PwC – a selection which suggests large enterprises will be the key target market for this new offering.

Clarifying key information for customersFollowing the launch, Irfan Khan, CTO for global customer operations, sought to answer some key customer questions in a blog post, ‘Are you ready for SAP S/4HANA?’ in a blog post on the SAP Community Network.

On the critical question of how much effort it will take IT and the business to make the transition to “the great simplifier”, Khan said one of the design goals of the project was to make migration to SAP S/4HANA as non-intrusive as possible.

“Moving to SAP S/4HANA for a typical existing SAP ERP 6.0 customer will require a database migration from any database to SAP HANA, combined with a move to the latest enhancement package and the deployment of the exchange innovation, meaning the current code is replaced by the new one,” Khan wrote. “Moving to SAP S/4HANA for an existing SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customer will be even faster as only the deployment of the exchange innovation is required where current code is replaced with the new one.”

He recommended taking an incremental approach to ensure a successful transition to the new system.

“First, a feasible technical migration will move you into SAP S/4 HANA as a foundation to consume key innovations, and then you can innovate on top of re-invented core processes… A net new implementation of an SAP S/4HANA system is even simpler thanks to guided configuration and easy onboarding from the discovery of the solution via cloud trials to the deployment with preconfigured best practices,” Khan wrote.

Response to the launchProviding the customer perspective, several SAP user groups around the world issued statements on the launch of S/4 HANA. Geoff Scott, CEO of the Americas SAP User Group (ASUG), said what SAP promised with S/4HANA “is a new suite of applications, a new user experience and a new offering of deployment models, all the things that we, as SAP customers, have been clamouring for for so long”, and

SAP chose the New York Stock Exchange as the venue to launch SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, which CEO Bill McDermott said is the company’s most important release in two decades, and redefines the concept of enterprise resource planning for the 21st century. Freya Purnell reports.

NEWS IN FOCUSS/4HANA

described it as a “critical next step to keep us relevant and engaged in the future technology landscape”.

While both the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) and the UK and Ireland SAP User Group both said it represented a logical progression in the evolution of the Business Suite, they were more circumspect about the pathway.

Philip Adams, chairman of the UK and Ireland SAP User Group said, “For existing customers, the migration path to S/4HANA will be important; they will need the time and resources to be comfortable with the business case (and potential disruption) before migrating to S/4HANA. With SAP extending maintenance for ECC6.0 until 2025, there is time for customers to plan their move and carefully assess the migration options.”

The view amongst the analyst community was also mixed, with concern over the relative lack of detail in the product announcement, and an incomplete picture of what it means for customers.

Ray Wang, principal analyst, founder and chairman at Constellation Research, says SAP customers are looking at S/4 HANA because it is important for them to understand what their future roadmap is going to be.

“The drawback is you are now locked into SAP’s database where many customers are already comfortable with SQL Server or IBM DB2 or Oracle,” Wang says. “To customers,

while it’s not a bad database, it’s not a proven database.”In particular, customers want to know which industry

verticals will be supported by S/4HANA. “Some of these companies have 20 or 30 years of Oracle

experience – for example, in oil and gas and manufacturing. These folks are very deep into their functionality and capability, and SAP has a greenfield product.”

Another issue arising in Wang’s discussion with customers is some confusion about how licensing deals will be affected, and what they might have to pay to upgrade.

“[SAP] seriously need to have an upgrade plan for HANA that considers how they can migrate a customer based on what they paid for. Customer needs to know how much more they have to pay to do the upgrades,” Wang says.

“What we have been arguing for the last two years is that if they are going to do an upgrade plan for HANA, they need to cover the training for the resources. Otherwise no one is going to do this. So if they want people to move to HANA, they have got to make that shift as well.”

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

Are you interested in learning about SAP S/4HANA? open-SAP is running a MOOC to explain more, titled ‘SAP Busi-ness Suite 4 SAP HANA in a Nutshell’, starting 25 March 2015. Visit https://open.sap.com/courses/s4h1 to register.

ISAP: What are some of the key trends you have seen in enterprise mobility adoption in Australia over the last year?

Rocio Bustinza: The adoption trends have manifested in two streams; one represented by the evolution of IT offices and the other following the adoption journey of lines of business. Having said that, enterprise mobility per se is still at a maturing stage within Australian organisations.

Mobility is part of every CIO’s agenda, but firstly represented as a mobility strategy initiative. Organisations have recognised their need to develop internal Mobility Centres of Excellence to understand the competencies required to deliver and support enterprise mobility initiatives and align them to their overall IT strategy.

On the other side, many businesses across different industries have identified a range of mobile app opportunities to capitalise on. For example, retail, banking, and travel businesses have quickly released B2C applications to extend new channels for consumers so they can access their services or purchase their goods. Other industries have released mobile applications as part of marketing campaigns and to be part of the digital area. However, these initiatives are primarily tactical and not yet embedded in the organisation’s core enterprise processes and applications.

ISAP: How do you see this developing in 2015?

RB: During the course of this year, we will see more strategic mobile initiatives. Organisations will be integrating mobility to enable key business processes that already have a mobile component to them. For example, manufacturing, utilities,

mining and all asset-intensive organisations have started and will continue with B2E mobile application rollouts to enable their field workers, automate business processes and increase the data quality accessed and captured in the field. Ultimately, these benefits will enable real-time decision-making and improve bottom line operational indicators.

This trend will grow this year and will soon become ‘Mobile First’ type initiatives which are more transformational. Organisations will rethink how they operate and integrate end-to-end business processes that start with mobile or are enabled by mobile across multiple touchpoints; whether it is in their supply chain triggered by an online purchase or in the field attending to repair an electricity outage.

ISAP: How much interest are you seeing from customers regarding mobility projects in the public sector, and what is driving this interest?

RB: Public sector agencies are looking for ways to reach and connect with the public, publish important information in an effective way and most recently, create a channel for self-service access to government services online. Many government agencies are joining this initiative and it would not be a surprise if their next release is mobile enabled.

Primarily the objective is to provide citizens with the necessary channels to access public services without the need to contact a call centre or go to a branch. The public sector is adopting digital practices to attain the operation and productivity gains of mobility and its 24x7 nature of service.

Additionally, this channel will allow them to centralise and increase the quality of data collected.

At this point in time, security issues are delaying the public sector’s mobility adoption of B2E initiatives, but I see security alternatives maturing, which will address these concerns in the near future.

ISAP: Have you seen any innovative projects designed to provide better service to citizens?

Rocio Bustinza, expert in enterprise mobility – SAP solutions, Capgemini Australia and New Zealand shares her view on the maturity of the Australian mobility market, why mobile is appealing to the public sector, and how to make sure your mobility initiative delivers on its objectives.

What’s hot in mobile: the Australian perspective

HOT TOPICSMOBILITY

RB: The Department of Human Services developed their own mobile applications which they deployed in the Medicare and Centrelink branches for the use of citizens requiring services from these agencies. One of these apps, for example, allowed them to optimise the branch service levels by providing a self-service kiosk app where citizens can lodge their request without having to wait in a queue.

ISAP: In your experience, how important is user experience in delivering effective mobility initiatives? RB: Extremely important; mobility is all about the end user.

Due to the explosion of mobile apps in the everyday consumer world, the user experience expectations are very high – meaning the end-user in the enterprise will expect nothing less. Organisations need to remember mobility is all about simplicity, performance, ease of use and an engaging user interface.

We have seen some organisations trying to replicate backend functions in a mobile device to the maximum. This is a mistake. Overflowing mobile applications with too much functionality will damage the user experience and, most likely, the performance of the application.

A very simple recipe to avoid this is to engage end users during the design of the application and throughout the build. Mobile initiatives need to be designed to support a user role rather than a process; it needs to provide only the information they need in the field, which means it needs to be context-aware.

End-user adoption is a very important success metric upon

the release of an enterprise mobile application. There is no point in investing in developing or deploying an application that will not be used by the end-users because it is not user-friendly. Organisations need to remember that at all times.

ISAP: What is the best way to develop and deliver great mobile apps and platforms?

RB: We believe the only way to develop successful mobile applications is via incremental and iterative short cycles. This normally follows Agile principles. For SAP mobile applications, Capgemini has developed a suitable methodology defined as miSAP (Mobile Industrialised SAP). It is a combination of an Agile design and build with iSAP (Industrialised SAP) artefacts still required to augment the delivery.

End-users are involved during the design. The follow-on short cycles or sprints deliver a fully working solution at the end of the iterations. An incremental solution will be released with each iteration, and a demonstration to the end users should be scheduled in between iterations to build alignment and support and to receive their feedback which is absorbed into the next cycle.

When the users help design the applications based on their role and how they will use them rather than based on a business process, they will take ownership of the same and guarantee successful adoption rates and post go-live mobility benefits realisation by the organisation.

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

150015AU - InsideSAP half page.indd 1 3/9/2015 3:50:25 PM

SAP LEADERSON THE MOVE

This is our regular round-up of who is going where in the industry. If you have changed jobs recently or hired new staff, email us at editor@insidesap.com.au.

On the Move

Michael Kleinemeier and Steve Singh, SAP SE

Michael Kleinemeier (left) and Steve Singh (right) have joined SAP SE’s Global Managing Board.

Kleinemeier was formerly the regional president, Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE), and responsible for all go-to-market activities for SAP’s product portfolio. His new tasks will include leading the worldwide version of SAP Service and Support, as well as helping lead the Global Service and Support board area, along with Executive Board Member Gerhard Oswald and head of Cloud Delivery and CIO Helen Arnold.

Formerly CEO of Concur, Singh will head up SAP’s Business Network Strategy. Singh had served as Concur’s CEO since 1996, and joined SAP during the company’s acquisition of Concur in December 2014.

Kerry Purcell, IBMKerry Purcell has been named managing director, Australia and New Zealand, for IBM, replacing Jeffrey Rhoda, who was acting in the role following the retirement of Andrew Stevens in August 2014.

Previously, Purcell served as managing partner of IBM Global Business Services in

Japan, where he led and grew IBM’s consulting systems integration and applications for more than three years. Prior to this, he held senior roles in Australia and Asia Pacific with Xchanging, HP Enterprise Services and Telstra.

“I feel very privileged and excited to be appointed the IBM lead for Australia and New Zealand,” said Purcell. “It’s clear that both Australia and New Zealand are undergoing rapid change as the forces of cloud, mobile, social, and analytics transform industries.

“Locally, we are executing a strong strategy that will meet this pace of change for our clients, and deliver the higher value solutions and services they need to grow and adapt their businesses. IBM continues to make significant investments locally that better enable our clients to take advantage of these market shifts.”

Andrew Long, Acclimation Acclimation has appointed Andrew Long as practice lead for SAP Business ByDesign following a strong pipeline of opportunities.

Long was previously national SAP practice manager at Artis Group, and has a reputation for successful delivery of large ERP implementations, BI and change

management projects. Over the past three years, Long has been involved in a

variety of ByDesign implementations, and has experience in understanding the associated business issues and culture change that are important in the successful outcome of these projects.

Long is qualified as a CPA, with more than 25 years’ business experience across a wide variety of industries.

Grahame Reynolds, SUGENThe SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN) has elected a new chairman and three new members in the leadership team, during its recent SUGEN meeting in Berlin.

Grahame Reynolds from the SAUG Executive Committee will be representing Australia on the leadership team.

The new chair of SUGEN is William Khalil from SUGMENA (Middle/North Africa), while Stein-Ove Rov, SBN (Norway), and Rob van der Marck, VNSG (Netherlands) also join the leadership team for the first time. David Ruiz Badia from AUSAPE (Spain) continues his existing term.

On his appointment, Khalil said, “This is a special time in history that we are in Berlin and commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. SUGEN and the new leadership team will look forward for a future strongly supporting its mission with the ambition to grow with new user groups under a strong commitment and engagement.”

SUGEN represents 16 independent SAP user groups globally.

Dean Kelly, PlautPlaut has appointed Dean Kelly as another SAP budgeting and planning (BPC) lead, following its success with a number of BPC projects.

Kelly is a lead consultant with extensive experience in enterprise performance management (EPM) and financial accounting system implementations.

For the past nine years, Kelly has specialised in implementing SAP Business Planning and Consolidation software, seven of which were spent with SAP as a principal consultant.

Kelly is a CPA-qualified accountant with hands-on and senior management experience in government, financial, management, and systems accounting.

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

TECHNOLOGYMOBILITY

While plenty of people might be embracing UI5 for mobile apps, Greg Donaldson from 10seconds software isn’t one of them. He explains why here.

In many ways, we are the perfect fit to adopt SAPUI5. We have been building mobile SAP solutions for a number of years and have six packaged SAP approval solutions that work on any mobile, tablet, or desktop browser. We love responsive design and HTML5, but we have decided to stay clear of SAPUI5 as our strategic direction.

The general consensus in the SAP community is if you are building a web application, you would use SAPUI5. But why? Is there something special in the enterprise space that requires this? Should all enterprise systems like Oracle also adopt their own JavaScript framework? We are not so sure.

SAPUI5’s architecture allows you to extract data from any data source (via JSON or oData) and is not solely limited to SAP. Therefore can we simply compare SAPUI5 against all other data agnostic frameworks to decide what is the best JavaScript libraries available to achieve your goal? Or do we believe the control library, theming and easy integration with the Gateway oData services is the best in the marketplace? These questions are not designed to be confrontational or anti-SAPUI5, but to challenge architects’ assumption that SAPUI5 is always the right component in your toolbox for SAP web applications.

Below are the main reasons we are not moving to SAPUI5: 1. Proprietary framework – no thanks

We love industry standards and the problem is SAPUI5 will simply never be one. Alternate mainstream frameworks such as AngularJS, Ember, or Knockout have huge communities behind them. Innovation is rampant in the UX space and SAPUI5 with its proprietary licensing, small community, and SAP quirks will always be playing catch-up. Take a quick look at the number of contributors/commits on GitHub between OPENUI5 and other JavaScript frameworks, and you will quickly see a vast gap.

2. SAP back-end upgrade? How can we ask our customers to perform an expensive

SAP upgrade or to install the Gateway so we can serve up some pretty HTML? Our strategy is to take advantage of the tens of thousands of remote-enabled functions SAP exposes, which allows us to integrate with SAP instantly from Version 4.0b onwards.

3. Browser support Nothing gets an end-user more disappointed than when we can’t support their browser or device of choice. We have invested a huge amount of time being compatible with as many types of mobiles/tablets/browsers as possible because this is important for our customers’ needs. We simply would be too restricted using SAPUI5 and fail to deliver our true ‘bring your own device’ offering.

4. Front-end developers don’t care The best front-end UX developers are worth their weight in gold – they can take something complicated and make it simple and intuitive for the end-user. That is the end goal. Our experience has shown the best front-end developers are not from an ABAP background, and generally know little or nothing about SAP. These people we hire have never heard of or care little for SAPUI5. What are we going to achieve investing in them learning this framework?

In conclusion, we did find SAPUI5 to be a pretty solid offering. Its foundations are built on the excellent JQuery framework, and in some cases can allow you to integrate quickly with SAP. SAPUI5 will be right for some companies, however for us and our SAP customers today, we strongly believe we have made the right decision.

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

Greg Donaldson is director of 10seconds software.

Why we are steering clear of SAPUI5

TECHNOLOGYCHANGE MANAGEMENT

Dr Susan Foster discusses how SAP User Experience Management Software by Knoa can be used to ensure users are effectively trained and using the system correctly.

Enterprise systems are in a constant state of flux from upgrades, enhancement packs, and business process changes designed to add new functionalities and additional features or optimise business processes by increasing efficiency, effectiveness and agility.

With all these changes, how do you ensure users are effectively trained and using the system correctly?

One way is to establish a set of metrics – more specifically, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs can help you focus on specific problem areas and are useful in defining and measuring performance in terms of meeting operational or strategic goals. In other words, KPIs are a business metric used to demonstrate how effectively a company meets its operational objectives, and to evaluate its success at reaching targets. Framing KPIs in the form of questions that focus on the problem areas at hand is a critical factor. However, KPIs need to be constructed with a clear understanding of the issues and the desired outcomes. One approach might be to brainstorm an area of concern such as user errors, identify the top five key issues, and focus on these initially. For example, you may have errors occurring with a system or users in a particular department. Some examples of questions might include:

y What is the type and duration of system error occurring in the (production area)?

y What is the average percentage of user error in the (production area)?

y What is the average percentage of business process error in the (production area)?

If you want to know what issues are being experienced by users and their frequency and location of the issue in a

specific application, then the question might be framed:

y What user errors are being experienced in xxx application?

y What is the frequency and location of user errors in xxx application?

y How long does it take users to navigate around xxx application?

y Are users executing transactions in the best compliant way in xxx application?

Once you obtain and accumulate the statistics, you can establish benchmarks upon which to address actionable metrics. However, this is not so easy. How do you obtain the necessary metrics? Most often, analysing help desk calls is the only way to track and trace issues end-users are experiencing. This is certainly a valid approach and works well to a point, but it takes time and can be a costly exercise to exactly pinpoint the problem. As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

How User Experience Management (UEM) software can improve resultsA support tool referred to as the SAP User Experience Management (UEM) Software created by Knoa is designed to optimise the performance of SAP applications and of the people who use them. Knoa software is the leading provider of user experience management and workforce optimisation software. You can assess how an application performs for each user – separating real usability issues from opinions – and take corrective action to ensure value delivery you should expect from your SAP software.

Focusing on training success

UEM software provides a comprehensive workflow

monitoring approach to enable drill-down to data on

specific user interactions within SAP systems.

Dr Susan Foster, Monash University

Jesse Bernal, a senior solution engineer at Knoa, is certainly passionate about the product and what it can do. Bernal originally worked for Johns Manville, a building industry company in Denver, Colorado, who implemented UEM software to 2000 SAP software users. The company’s main objectives behind the implementation were to increase employee productivity and satisfaction; improve IT response to potential end-user errors before they were reported; install a solution that would immediately notify IT as errors occurred in order to proactively correct them before they impacted operations; and to achieve a better understanding of performance issues providing an opportunity to address them.The top benefits they obtained were:

y 17 per cent increase in user satisfaction and improved productivity through accurately assessing and targeting training requirements,

y 27 per cent decrease in user errors, and

y 100 per cent reduction in system errors by pinpointing network performance issues.

Amongst other things, UEM software provides a comprehensive workflow monitoring approach to enable drill-down to data on specific user interactions within SAP systems. For example, which fields and buttons were used, when and what was the system response.

One critical factor to the success of the uptake of this software solution is the identification of the end-users. Apparently in Germany, this functionality has been disabled. The fact that individual end-users are being monitored is likely to leave them feeling threatened and vulnerable. To overcome this issue, policies and procedures should be established which outline how interactions with users should be conducted. One way to establish user involvement and buy-in is to ensure end-users are part of the process to establish such policies and procedures. If UEM solutions are going to be fully utilised and adopted, then the establishment of accepted policies and procedures which are viewed as supportive are critical to their success.If you are interested in:

y Promoting excellence in the execution of critical business processes,

y Reducing the overall cost of user training and of IT and support services,

y Establishing an opportunity for executive-level insight into application usage and policy compliance,

y Providing a comprehensive workflow monitoring approach so that you can drill down to data on specific user interactions within SAP systems – for example, which fields and buttons were used, when and what was the system response,

y Lowering end user support costs and reduce help desk calls, and

y Monitoring user performance,

then SAP User Experience Software by Knoa is for you.

Want to learn more? Check out these resources. y www.sap.com/training-education/learning-software-svc/learn/solutions/user-experience-mgmt/index.html

y www.insidesap.com.au/Market-Insights/knoa-launches-new-executive-dashboards-for-sap-solutions

y Case study: Johns Manville: Improving end-user experience with SAP Knoa – www.sap.com/training-education/learning-software-svc/learn/solutions/user-experience-mgmt/index.html

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

Dr Susan Foster is SAUG Lead for Business Analyst Community and Organisational change and training, and a lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University.

There are more options than ever for engaging with SAP educational content – from formal education, to MOOCs for an overview of the very latest developments in technology, down to the SAP Community Network for answering individual task-level queries. Here are some of the methods available.

University coursesUniversities offer both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in IT or more specific areas such as ERP or Business Intelligence which cover SAP. SAP also has its University Alliances Program, which helps students gain access to technologies and experts through networking and educational activities, social media, and partner networking.

Classroom trainingIf traditional, instructor-led classroom training is your preferred learning option, SAP Education offers classes at training centres, via partner delivery ecosystems, or on-site for customers. Courses are available across the full range of solution areas.

Online learningMore education content from SAP is now available via online learning – and comes via several different modes and methods, including: y eLearning via the SAP Learning Hub: SAP’s Learning Hub is a subscription-based cloud service. This model allows users to access courses at a time convenient to them. The Learning Hub is supported by Learning Rooms, which are SAP expert-led spaces covering particularly topics, allowing users to interact and have a social learning experience. The Learning Hub Discovery edition provides free access to around 120 introductory courses, but it provides personalisation and tracking of learning activities.

y Virtual Live Classrooms: These offer the same benefits and curriculum of instructor-led classroom training. Students can interact with their instructor online, and also have access to SAP systems to undertake hands-on activities.

y eAcademy: Provides access to bundles of classroom curriculum in a self-paced eLearning environment. eAcademy training also includes access to SAP training systems.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)SAP has moved quickly to offer the ecosystem enterprise-grade learning about leading edge technologies for free via its openSAP platform. With MOOCs, learners simply register view content, and complete a weekly assignment before preparing for a final exam. Optional SAP system access is available, as is a record of achievement. Recent offerings include ‘Digital Transformation and Its Impact’, presented by SAP’s Sven Denecken and Bert Schulze, and ‘Rapid Deployment of SAP Solutions’.

CertificationCertification in a particular area is typically achieved by completing the requisite courses and sitting an exam, then maintaining the certification by completing delta enablement courses periodically. In the past, this has mostly required physical attendance at a Pearson Vue testing centre for exams, but SAP Education is introducing a new model for certification, specifically for the cloud-based solutions such as SuccessFactors, which will incorporate remote proctoring, enabling students to gain and maintain their certifications almost entirely online.

SAP Community Network (SCN)At the more informal end of the education spectrum is the SAP Community Network, which provides user-created content around areas and issues in the SAP ecosystem. While some articles are more discursive in nature, others provide detailed

Whether you are starting out in SAP, looking to upgrade your skills after a few years in the workforce, or seeking to specialise in a particular solution area, planning how to get there could save you valuable time and money.

Creating an SAP learning map

CAREERSEDUCATION

technical explanations about how to complete certain tasks. The level of interaction with other users makes it perfect for drawing on the collective wisdom of the community to answer any tricky questions.

Training mapping for some common scenariosThe big question, of course, is how to combine these various modes of education to reach the level of professional skills, accreditation, and specialisation you are seeking.

The first place to start is SAP Training and Certification (training.sap.com). This not only has a full list of all courses across the various solution and industry areas within SAP, but it also provides detailed curriculum maps, outlining the classroom training, e-learning courses and certifications you will need to undertake to achieve competency in a particular area.[See left for an example of a curriculum map – for SAP HANA Implementation and Modelling (SAP HANA SPS08).]Your first priorities for SAP education will depend on your starting point and your professional goals.

Developing initial competency in SAPLejla Seperovic, head of business development, SAP APJ, says for someone who is employed in an organisation, already has some involvement with SAP, and wants to develop their capacity, the first step is to consider what knowledge they have – whether that is in finance or HR – and what their ultimate aim is.

Undertaking free courses, such as SAP’s MOOCs, or those in

the Learning Hub Discovery edition – rather than having to ask for training budget – might be a good place to start.

“They are introductory courses which give you a flavour or an overview of a solution,” says Seperovic.

Once you have completed a ‘taster’, you might be ready for a more structured approach – which is where the Curriculum Maps come in.

“It’s a logical sequence of courses with a starting point and an end point. In a particular area, the curriculum map will actually have the end result of the SAP certification, and you can then work backwards, with preqrequisites, foundation, level one, and level two courses,” Seperovic says.

Upskilling or specialising in new areasFor an SAP professional who might be looking to specialise further or simply upgrade their skills, SAP Education recommends the SAP Learning Hub, built on the SuccessFactors platform. It’s part of a move away from one-shot training to consistent, ongoing learning, and as a subscription service providing access to more than 4000 courses in the platform.

“We went from being quite protective of IT and learning about two years ago, to opening everything we have to the customer and partner community,” Seperovic says. “This means that at any given point of time, wherever I am in my career, I can actually learn at the point of need. I can go into the platform and search for anything – from all the ERP solutions to the new front-end technologies, anything that’s out there is in the Learning Hub.”

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CAREERSEDUCATION

Within the Learning Hub, more than 60 global solution-focused Learning Rooms provide a forum for interaction and guidance on the learning content.

“SAP is not always that easy, so this is where social learning comes in,” say Seperovic. “You have peers, and you have an instructor who is a global SAP subject matter expert, and this person actually poses a schedule with homework and milestones, and you can ask questions and participate in a discussion. So now we are giving people who have learnt this theoretical knowledge the opportunity to actually socialise with their peers, 24/7, on a more informal basis.”

At this solution level, students can also utilise Live Access – a preconfigured SAP system specifically related to the course they are undertaking, which provides a safe ‘sandbox’ to practice new skills.

Having certification recognisedOnce SAP professionals are certified, making the most of this accreditation is important, particularly for consultants looking for new project opportunities. SAP has recently launched Credential Manager, which will be a freely accessible database for customers and partners to check the certification status of consultants or prospective employees they are looking at hiring.

“Customers who are more and more requesting certified people now actually have a pool to search for people, by solution and by geography,” Seperovic says.

She agrees that by making this information more accessible, Credential Manager has the potential to disrupt the SAP

recruitment sector.“We have more than 95 per cent of our global SAP

consultants certified, but we needed something more formal. You have got peace of mind now, because it is easy for anybody to search the internet for these people.”

Planning your education for the yearSo how much education should the average SAP professional be undertaking each year? It depends – if you are seeking to achieve a new SAP certification, in the traditional environment you should expect to devote around 20 days to learning, revision, and a certification exam.

Even for those who are already certified, if you want to stay up to speed in a certain area and be considered an ‘expert’, a daily or weekly commitment to education will be necessary – whether that is undertaking an eLearning course, completing a quiz, or reading some relevant articles.

“If you are planning the year ahead, look at what’s your priority, where your passion is, and where you want to move to and work backwards. Leverage what’s free out there – there’s probably more than you think. Put it in your calendar – people have the best of intentions and find a course, but they still don’t work through it. It takes a little bit of discipline to finish something,” Seperovic says.

“Also reach and out and leverage the mentors, and dare to ask questions. You can only really immerse yourself in the subject if you can be proactive and really take ownership of it.”

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

Rimini Street | Research Report

Assessing the Business Case for Independent Support of SAP

Research Findings Based on 27 In-Depth Client ROI Interviews

with Detailed SAP Client Case Studies

Published: September 2014

Foreword by Rebecca Wettemann, Vice President, Nucleus Research