Why Social Media Marketing Success Is Elusive for Business

By |May 21st, 2012|

In several social media channels I participate in, one item continues to surface again and again: "How do you ensure business benefit from social media?" Underlying that question is a basic issue: How do you ensure some kind of financial return? Although some social media folks genuinely understand the need for measurable business results, especially in difficult economic times, others insist that you must pay for something that is unproven and may never produce any real results. They seem offe [...]

3 Development Phases for SAP Center of Excellence Maturity

By |May 14th, 2012|

Before we get into the substance of how to build a next-generation IT organization that is integrated with business, we need to take a quick review. Last week’s post on SAP Service Provider to Business Peer Through Center of Excellence Maturity proposed the direct maturity of the SAP IT organization. Here, we discussed the three stages of Organizational Change Management Inside the SAP IT Support Organization. These stages create clear distinctions between SAP Service Delivery versus Value Deli [...]

SAP Service Provider to Business Peer Through Center of Excellence Maturity

By |May 7th, 2012|

One key pillar of moving Beyond Technology Alignment requires Organizational Change Management Inside the SAP IT Support Organization (OCM inside IT). A key component of that OCM within IT relies heavily on Creating a Knowledge Centered Learning Organization. Within that learning organization, especially with enterprise applications such as SAP, you need to build organizational maturity. A three-tier approach to building that organizational maturity is part of the Series on SAP Competency Cente [...]

SAP Service Delivery versus Value Delivery

By |April 30th, 2012|

In my review of academic literature around SAP or ERP implementations, I find some thought-provoking items. Recently, I reviewed a study that helped me to form a more complete picture of important issues in IT delivery. Even though I have been writing about it for years, I gained a new clarity around evaluating some of the existing delivery models [FN1]. What it comes down to is this question: Are you looking for service delivery or business results for your SAP project? SAP Service Delivery or [...]

SAP Customer Responsibility for SAP Project Success

By |April 23rd, 2012|

Some time ago, I put together a synthesis of SAP success criteria based on academic literature and my own personal experience. The table below is part of the list of SAP Success Factors for Vender Selection – Responsibility Matrix. For a more detailed explanation of each of the vendor-related items, see the posts listed in the Series on SAP ERP Project Success Factors. In the prior series, we went through SAP success factors with shared responsibilities between the company adopting the SAP appl [...]

SAP Enabled Business Transformation for IT Leadership

By |March 12th, 2012|

Continuing the Journey to the Business-Converged SAP Center of Excellence After many years researching and living through IT and business convergence for IT leadership, I ran into a study that brought more clarity to the key dividing concepts. Some interesting approaches and maturity models are available for senior executives, but little direction for the delivery organization (for detailed development, see 3 Development Phases for SAP Center of Excellence Maturity). CIO magazine established a [...]