Sap And Enterprise Trends Podcasts From Jon Reed (@jonerp) Of Diginomica.com

For this pre-Sapphire return of our semi-regular SAP BI podcast series, fellow SAP Mentor and co-host Vijay Vijayasankar and I talked with special guest James Taylor of Decision Management Solutions about some of the tougher BI questions SAP - or any other vendor for that matter - must tackle. During the 50 minute podcast, we move from a look at 4.0 to a discussion of the importance of business rules and the issues SAP needs to address with separate rules engines for operations and analytics (including two for operations, BRF Plus and NetWeaver BRM). We talk about why predictive analytics matter to companies, and why vendors struggle to deliver meaningful predictive analytics solutions. A lively discussion of the importance of unstructured data catches the three of us jousting a bit on the relative importance of text analytics versus other BI priorities. We veer into a HANA discussion before wisely saving most of that one for a different podcast down the road.

To get a better handle on the issues with breaking into SAP in today's market, I had the chance to tape a unique podcast with Tom Michael of Michael Management. The podcast includes two "students" from Michael Management's Pay it Forward SAP Training Program (PDF), which sponsored SAP training for five job seekers to help them move into SAP during a challenging SAP job market. We begin the podcast with Tom posing some questions to me about breaking into SAP in today's market. Then we enter into a free flowing discussion, with Tom and I taking any and all questions from the two aspiring SAP professionals who joined us on the call and shared their stories with us.

Since I had SAP Mentor Leonardo De Araujo of Beyond Technologies on the line, I figured we should go ahead and tape a spontaneous podcast on some topics of interest. The end result is a very informal chat that covers a series of topics, most of them SAP SME related. During the 20 minute podcast, Leo and I discuss his pending attendance as a Mentor at SAP DKOM, what he's learning about Business ByDesign as a potential future Canadian partner, and his take on the SME market and SAP All-in-One.  

For several years, SAP professionals have looked forward to SAP Mentor Vijay Vijayasankar's annual blog post, "The Road Ahead for SAP Consultants." In honor of this always-provocative blog post, Jon pulled together fellow SAP Mentors Vijayasankar and Leonardo De Araujo for an in-depth discussion/debate about Vijay's skills rankings for 2011 and beyond. The result? An hour long talk that goes into detail on emerging skills in BusinessObjects, HANA and Business ByDesign, as well as how core skills like ABAP development are evolving.

Few events in the SAP space take me by total surprise. The launch of ASUGNews.com, with Thomas Wailgum and Courtney Bjorlin at the helm, was one of those rare exceptions, forcing me to set aside those "industry assumptions" and take a fresh look at a new player in the ecosystem. To get at the editorial motivations behind ASUGNews.com, I got on the phone with Tom and Courtney for this 24 minute podcast. My goals? To ask them a few questions that had been bugging me, to get a better handle on what they have in mind for the site, and to get their takes on SAP in 2011

Podcast Structure: I. Intro chatter, II. (2:40) SolBros reader questions, III. (21:55) SolMan - "A mile wide and an inch deep?" - discuss! IV. (36:05) Individual updates: Jim Spath - SolMan and ASUG, Phil Avelar - CHARM lessons learned, Tony D - SolMan consulting, customer value and learning tools.

What is SAP's hottest, sexiest new technology? No, it's not HANA, it's not ByDesign. In this humorous-turned-serious podcast, Jon Reed and special guest and SAP Mentor Thorsten Franz talk about a hype-worthy technology known to insiders as "SAP Business Workflow." After 11 minutes of satirical riffing, Jon and Thorsten turn their attention to more serious matters as Thorsten talks about the overlooked power of SAP Business Workflow and what the Workflow Influence Team is doing to impact SAP Workflow's production direction

What did we learn from the SAP Influencer Summit that we can apply to SAP in 2011? Why is the meaning of "Influencer" changing and what was the controversy around that definition? How are Mentors impacting the definition of Influencer and the blurring of lines between bloggers, analysts, and SAP experts? What did we make of SAP's on-demand, mobility, and StreamWork strategies? To get at these questions and more, I pulled together fellow SAP Mentors John Appleby of Bluefin Solutions and Dick Hirsch of Siemens IT Solutions and Services. We taped an end-of-year/new year kickoff podcast that spanned 60 minutes. We balanced some funny conference anecdotes with more serious talk on how SAP is banking its future on these new initiatives. Since Skype was down, we reverted to a backup taping option that impacted sound quality. If you missed any comments on the audio, check the detailed podcast highlights on JonERP.com.

It all started with a blog post. After TechEd 2010, SAP Mentor John Appleby of Bluefin Solutions posted a blog on his take on SAP mobility. Natascha Thomson of SAP read the blog and some of it didn't make sense to her. It was a clear case of buzzword alert! Seeking clear answers, Natascha and John asked me to referee a discussion between them on "FAQs on SAP Enterprise Mobility." During this thirty minute podcast, Natascha grills John on SAP Enterprise Mobility. Buzzwords are defined as we dig into everything from the impact of consumer technology to Project Gateway to the implications of HTML 5. Those listeners who make it towards the end of the podcast will be treated to some comic relief as once again a cellular caller (John) drops off a podcast on Enterprise Mobility, proving once and for all that "Always Connected" is a modern myth.

Why did SAP mobility experts leave SAP TechEd (Vegas and Berlin) with more questions than answers? How has the enterprise mobility space evolved since Sapphire 2010? And what does SAP need to accomplish in mobility to win the confidence of customers and partners? To get at these questions and more, I was approached by fellow SAP Mentors John Appleby of Bluefin Solutions and Kevin Benedict of Netcentric Strategies, who asked me to DJ an open discussion on SAP moblity. The result was a forty minute podcast, which I felt was of the caliber and depth I look for in ERP Lounge podcasts, so I've added this to the series.

What went down with SAP BusinessObjects and BI at TechEd? What questions were answered from our last podcast? What is coming with BusinessObjects 4.0 - will it live up to the hype? What the heck is the new Semantic Layer anyway? And how did Vijay end up with 200 people at a BusinessObjects session? What feedback has SAP taken into account, and what burning questions still remain?

What are the burning questions about SAP BI as we head into SAP Teched season? Will the keynotes answer questions about in-memory and accelerated data access? And how do you get the most out of the show and justify your attendance when budgets are tight? As we continue our "sporadic SAP BI podcast series," which is part of the ERP Lounge podcast editions, I dig into these questions with two fellow SAP Mentors: Vijay Vijayasankar of IBM and newly-named SAP Mentor Greg Myers, who is a Senior Business Intelligence Engineer at SEI Investments in Oaks, Pennsylvania, and who is also the Chair of the ASUG BusinessObjects Security & Administration SIG.  

There are many unanswered questions about SAP Business ByDesign. Some of them can be answered by documenting the experience of the 100 or so pilot customers who have been through a ByD install and come out the other side. In my second podcast with an SAP Business ByDesign pilot customer, I talk with Judson Wickham of Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt  about their ByDesign implementation process. During this 22 minute podcast, Judson explains why Pinkberry chose ByDesign and what issues they overcame along the way. Judson is an ideal interviewee for my JonERP podcast series because of his background in on-premis ERP, in his case, PeopleSoft. During the podcast, Judson speaks to the skills transitions he needed to make and what SAP professionals interested in ByDesign work are up against in terms of skills evolution. Judson also shares his views on how SAP can improve ByDesign from here, and why the upcoming Software Development Kit (SDK) interests him from a customer's perspective.

What it the future of SAP BI consulting? Why is there still lingering confusion over the SAP BusinessObjects tools amongst SAP users? And why is BI strategy an afterthought when it should really be incorporated into the core ERP implementation? To get a fresh take on these questions, I taped a podcast with Vijay Vijayasankar of IBM and Kevin McManus of McManus Consulting. Both these guys have deep SAP BI experience, and Kevin brings hands-on expertise in BusinessObjects tools into the conversation.  During the 55 minute podcast, we take a close look at which SAP BI skills are in demand. I ask the guys what separates a mediocre SAP BI consultant from an outstanding one. We talk about whether there are functional BI roles emerging, and why BI is becoming a skill that all SAP professionals need to reckon with. Is BI the "holy grail" of value realization for ERP projects? And is in-memory for real? Vijay and Kevin have answers to all these questions.

The SAP consulting market is primed for change. Staffing layers with questionable value place obstacles between enterprise buyers and the best SAP consultants. While "big box" consulting models still have their place, SAP customers want to see alternatives that allow them to source subject matter experts directly, even sourcing them "on demand" for short term engagements. Internet technology and SaaS-influenced approaches create a fertile ground for SAP staffing innovation. To better understand the problems with the current SAP consulting model and the changes that are afoot, in this edition of The ERP Lounge, I invited three pioneers of new models to join me in a frank discussion. The result of our international teleconference was a 70 minute podcast that takes a hard look at the problems and offers up solutions that forge new ground for both consultants and SAP customers.

During this 20 minute podcast, Jim Link of Forest City gives me the project-tested scoop on many key BPX topics, including: how does a BPXer justify their value to the business, who do they report to, what role do process modeling tools play, and what SAP technical and functional skills do they need to succeed in the SAP Business Process Expert role. Obviously, there are no universal answers to these questions - they are still being sorted out on a company to company basis. But for those listeners who want to understand how the pure BPX role can fit into the existing SAP personnel structure, and interact with Enterprise Architects, I trust you'll find this conversation as interesting as I did.

Recently I taped a two-way discussion on careers in SAP sustainability with fellow SAP Mentor Jim Spath. Although Jim does not work in sustainability on a day to day basis, he's one of the most influential community voices in this area and has a 20 year background as an environmental engineer in his pre-SAP life. When we taped this thirty minute discussion, Jim and I were fresh off an SAP Mentor session on SAP's sustainabilty strategy with Jeremiah Stone of SAP. We wanted to react to that session - though some of it was "not bloggable" and we kept that content out. There were other SAP sustainability events to react to also, but mostly, we wanted to riff on SAP careers in sustainability and talk about the skills and the impact we can have by greening our SAP careers.

With the release of his book - one of the most important business books in recent years (see my review on Amazon) - and with the reverberations of SAPPHIRENOW/ASUG Orlando still lingering, the timing was right to have Vinnie Mirchandani in The ERP Lounge to talk about his blogs on enterprise software and innovation. I wanted to dig into his opinionated takes on SAP and his critique of what he has dubbed the SAP "egosystem." I was especially looking forward to asking Vinnie about how the "polymath" practices he describes in his book can be emulated by individuals in their own skills development. I wanted to ask Vinnie how you reconcile the need to have broad expertise with the problem of becoming a "jack of alll trades, master of none."

I reported on the PAC Feeding the Ecosystem blog that the SAP Business ByDesign (ByD) conversation has shifted from technology debates to product rollout. A key part of that shift is taking a closer look at the skills needed to support ByDesign implementations and the different economics of SaaS consulting. One emerging voice in that conversation is Ray Tetlow of Skyytek. Ray spoke as an early ByD partner at SAPPHIRENOW Orlando. During this forty-seven minute podcast, Ray hits me with some rapid-fire answers to a slew of key ByD questions, such as how he intends to train ByD professionals, why SaaS consultants are easier to bring up to speed in ByD than "on-premise" SAP consultants, and the appeals and drawbacks of the SaaS consulting model.

In this thirty-five minute podcast, Jon Reed and Andy Klee have their second two-way conversation. Andy starts by putting Jon on the JonERP hot seat and getting his conference reactions to SaaS/Business ByDesign, Sybase, and certification, then Jon returns the favor with questions to Andy on his conference takeways. Jon also surprises Andy with a question about how Oracle/JDE and SAP consultants compare.