SAP & ERP Consulting from the Customer Point of View

SAP consulting services best practices

Last week’s post took a hard look at the types of consulting services you need for a high speed SAP project (see SAP Consultants for High Speed SAP Projects).  Consultants who work on SAP projects in the small and mid-sized business space develop great breadth of SAP experience across an entire area.  This week we will look at the other side of that coin, consultant skills from large, long-term type SAP projects and what their experience provides.

Consultants on the larger, longer-term SAP projects may not develop the breadth of experience gained through smaller company experience but they develop depth of experience.   Small and mid-sized SAP implementation projects create breadth of experience while large projects create depth of experience.

How is Consulting Service Delivery Impacted by Large SAP Project Skill Development

On larger SAP projects the projects are usually broken out into sub-teams within a module or area.  These SAP consultants may cover a small subset of a module, or of the overall solution within a small subset.  As a result they spend much more time digging into the details of the functionality around that small subset of SAP setup.  That type of focus creates a high degree of narrowly focused specialization.

For example, a consultant who focuses on just the SAP GL Account setup will easily become an expert at every setting and every option related to its setup.  They will learn about the different posting possibilities, account settings, document types, how to deal with taxes, reporting issues, data elements that can be stored in the GL, etc.  An SAP SD consultant who focuses on order setup might become an expert at all of the copy rules around moving the data from an order to a delivery or to billing.  Depending on how the responsibilities are broken out they might focus on the different types of item categories and all of the functionality they drive.

Small and mid-sized SAP implementation projects create breadth of experience while large projects create depth of experience

Big SAP project consultants gain great depth of experience with very narrow areas of the application.  Those with many years of experience are great for projects that require specialized focus for complex processing around a very specialized area.  So if you are having a particular problem, in a very narrow area of the application, these SAP consulting skills may provide value.

SAP Consulting Services to Produce Business Value and Achieve ROI

Depending on what you are trying to achieve different types of consulting skills are required.  When you need SAP architecture, complex process design, involved SAP custom development, or other unique requirements you will want an SAP consultant with many years of all around experience.  That type of consultant needs both depth and breadth of experience with a well-rounded background in small, mid-sized, and large company SAP implementations.

The obvious but often overlooked fact is SAP consulting service delivery is directly related to the type of consulting experience you are provided

This type of experience will generally take around 10 or more years of experience.  I’ve written about this previously in Expert SAP Consulting to Reduce SAP TCO and Improve SAP ROI where the academic studies lay out the path to “expert performance.”  Unfortunately for most SAP customers they will rarely find this level of skill with any of the consulting firms or system integrators unless those integrators use contractors.  Few consulting companies provide these types of consulting services because as I’ve pointed out, if you haven’t moved up “through the ranks” after 10 years in a consulting firm, your future is pretty dim.

Where Can Customers Find These Skills or High Quality SAP Consulting Services?

One of the most important areas where you can make a difference in your solution results is to hire solution experts (see Industry Specific SAP Consulting vs Deep SAP Application Experience).  They are not easy to find, but they are out there.

If your SAP project is large enough to have more than one consultant per module then demand that at least one of those consultants has both depth and breadth of experience.  If they are the only consultant for an entire module you may wish to insist that they have a significant amount of small and mid-sized project experience.  If you need specialized skills then you will certainly want to consider large project experience in that particular sub-area of expertise.

As an SAP customer you have to insist on the level of skill and experience that a consulting company provides in their initial proposal.  In other words, your SAP RFP must call out what level of skill and experience you expect.  You must insist in writing on this and build it into your SAP consulting service contract with the vendor you choose.  Until SAP customers begin demanding this from the marketplace nothing will ever change, results will continue to be sub-par, and ROI from your SAP investment will continue to be lacking.

One last consideration is to be very, very careful of the consultants you or your SAP consulting firm hires.  There are so many frauds, fakes, and con artists out there it is frightening.  And I don’t mean just exaggerated either, but outright fabrication and fraud.  Unfortunately many of the staffing firms knowingly allow the fraud to continue (see Screening and Interview Methods to Find the Right SAP Consultant and Screening and Interview Methods to Find the Right Consultant – Part 2).

Related Posts:

• SAP System Vendor Project Success Criteria & Factors 4
• SAP System Vendor Project Success Criteria 1
• Reduce SAP, ERP, or Technology Project Stress: Part 2
• Series on SAP ERP Project Success Factors
• How the SAP Consulting Peter Principle Works

SAP consultant results

No matter what size company or organization you have the type of consulting experience you choose will have a huge impact on the results of your SAP solution.  For high speed projects consultants with several small or mid-sized SAP project experiences tend to be more well rounded.  They have skill at delivering the more difficult SAP solutions with standard functionality and at a faster pace than their counterparts with significant amounts of large project experience.

Why are SAP Consultants with Many Small and Midsized Projects Uniquely Qualified?

The small and midsize business segment of SAP implementations use smaller teams, smaller budgets, and tighter timelines.  Contrary to popular belief a small or mid-sized company’s SAP implementation often has the same process requirements, similar industry needs, common competitive pressures, and all of the other issues that go with doing business.  In other words, their business software application requirements are exactly the same as their larger counterparts.  However, they must deliver similar or better results than their larger counterparts with fewer resources.  Consultants who deliver solutions in this space must know their area of responsibility well because they are often one deep, without others to fall back on.  They have to cover the integration touch points and other project activities together with their own module.  This type of effort is usually performed by other groups and numerous other consultants on larger projects.

Consultants who have worked in the small and mid-sized space don’t have the luxury of the big consulting firms, on their mega projects, where they can specialize in one little component of a module at a time. They don’t have the luxury of massive numbers of people coordinating small, discrete components of an overall effort.  Small and midsized SAP implementations often don’t have the resources or budget for large change management and training staffing, separate data conversion groups, separate testing staff, or other key areas of the project.

The consultants with many years of small and mid-sized business exposure are able to do in a few hours, or possibly a few days, what takes consultants with less exposure weeks to figure out. Even if it is a bit of a stretch, they have enough background, enough exposure, and enough experience to be able to start immediately with 80% or more of the solution. From there it is just detailed testing of different settings to be sure you have just the right combination and the process or transaction behaves exactly like you planned.

Small and midsized business consultants are less likely to need lots of custom coded solutions because they can figure how to do it with standard functionality, or how to “re-purpose” other functionality for your company’s particular need.

An SAP Project Examples of Complex Standard Functionality that Helped Avoid Blown Budgets and Timelines

I’ll provide one example here of many SAP experiences I’ve had where this experience made a huge difference in the SAP project result.  The SAP experience helped save the timeline, stopped the continual circular meetings, and finally moved the process along.

SAP Cross-Company Supply

I was on a very large project that had cross-company supply issues that no one had been able to resolve for about two months when I joined. There were weekly meetings, and weekly arguments, and no one could agree on the solution.  There was third party cross-company supply where one company would take the order, transfer the requirements to a separate company who would actually carry out the delivery and bill the other company who then billed the end customer and collected the payment.  This was also being done in different countries, with different currencies, cross-company pricing markup, and foreign trade.  After a few weeks of this dragging on after I arrived on the project as the SD team lead  I knew something had to be done.  All of the “Big x” consultants claimed this could not be done without mountains of custom code and that standard SAP would not work.  These consultants did not have a lack of years in SAP, or large projects doing SAP, it was a lack of experience having to deliver results on a compressed timeline with standard functionality.

The SAP Blueprint was over and we were still in design on a key set of processes.  After several discussions where it was mentioned this was standard functionality and strong disagreements together with claims that only custom coding would work I had enough.  I took a couple days to set up and prototype the entire solution.  The standard SAP functionality did over 90% of everything that was needed for every process and transaction they needed. After the prototype was set up, and without telling the other consultants who insisted it wouldn’t work (and claimed they wouldn’t support it if it did), I set up a meeting with all of the key stakeholders and the client project manager to demo the new functionality.  It was a huge success and the ridiculous arguments and endless discussions to flow out processes for unneeded custom ABAP solutions finally stopped. The solution was nearly complete with almost all standard functionality. [FN1]

Big SAP Project Experience Effects on Compressed Timeline and Budgets

When you want to do a compressed timeline project with resources (consultants, managers, coordinators, etc.) who come from big SAP projects you end up with unnecessary struggles.  Their “experience” has conditioned them to believe these types of projects cannot be done, they rely on too many middle layers of coordination / management, they struggle with the intense need for integration coordination, and undermine attempts to gain momentum because they are not used to the pace.  These large projects often provide the “luxury” of deferring discrete components of an area to others.  They provide big budgets, lots of time, each delivery area broken down into little tiny “chunks” and then handed off to others.  Some (though certainly not all) of these consultants and managers from larger projects are so uncomfortable with the pace and demands that they spend more time making excuses for lack of results and look for others to blame. The idea of delivery “ownership” over an entire area is a foreign concept to them.  Some of these consultants from larger implementations, with slower paces and many layers of coordination are lost without someone managing each tiny aspect of what they do.

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[FN1] In fairness to the other consultants who thought this could only be done through ABAP custom coding, it does require a major amount of setup in SD, MM, FI, and EDI to work correctly. While it is all standard functionality, consultants with experience on very large projects have limited exposure to even their own module of expertise. As a result it is unlikely that the full breadth of this and other functionality has been seen outside of the small and midsized business space. In the small and midsized business space the consulting teams are smaller, and out of necessity are more knowledgeable within their module area, and because of the integration requirements with other modules they tend to gain greater application exposure to standard functionality options.

Related Posts:

• Industry Specific SAP Consulting vs Deep SAP Application Experience
• Tactics, Strategy, ROI, TCO and Realizing Business Benefit from SAP
• Using SAP to Improve Revenue and Profitability
• More on Stupid SAP Vendor – Partner Selection RFI-RFP Processes
• How “As-Is” Process Mapping Can Damage Your SAP Project

SAP Project Insight

This is a continuation of the previous post which addressed early requirements for good SAP project management (see Effective Results from SAP Project Managers – SAP Program Managers).

SAP Project Management Responsibility

A manager’s primary responsibility, above all else, is to ensure the success of those they are responsible for managing.  Overall success of any initiative is directly tied to the success of those responsible for delivery of that initiative.  This is especially true in fast paced, moderate to large scale SAP projects.  If your reports succeed then you as a manager automatically succeed.

An SAP project manager or SAP program manager must focus aggressively on removing obstacles, encouraging success, and fighting against those things that would impede momentum.

Once again, I will re-emphasize:

I don’t blame client project managers because if they had all of the resources, skills, and experience, they would not need outside help.  These posts are focused on contracted help who are supposed to ensure your success.

What can SAP Project Managers or SAP Program Managers Do to Help Ensure Success?

One of the first requirements of a contract SAP project manager is to build momentum.  Once momentum is built that contract SAP project manager or program manager must do everything possible to sustain that momentum.  Some of the things which help to build, sustain, and then manage momentum include:

• An articulated obsession with building and maintaining momentum.
• Activities, tasks, responsibilities, and value added tools are defined ahead of time and not made up in real time.
  • People must understand what is expected of them – project requirements in the form of deliverables, tasks, and timelines are communicated early in the project and reinforced *before* transition points throughout the project.
  • These “expectations” must be laid out early in the project, throughout the entire project lifecycle (beginning to end) and have proper transitions built into the planning.
• Tracking mechanisms must be simple, easy to understand, and easy to manage.  Overly complex or involved tracking mechanisms destroy momentum and “cloud” visibility into progress.
  • Work efforts are relatively evenly distributed (resource leveling) and across all project participants (although lengthy these are very informative posts, see Reduce SAP Project Stress: Part 1 and Reduce SAP, ERP, or Technology Project Stress: Part 2).
  • No resources are allowed to be overloaded unless every available project resource is overloaded.
• During blueprint emphasis is focused on design that will enable execution, if it doesn’t enable execution (or Realization) it is a waste of time (see  How “As-Is” Process Mapping Can Damage Your SAP Project).
  • Project emphasis must be on execution – execution builds momentum.
  • There is an emphasis on coordinating activities rather than administrative overhead–, some administrative overhead is necessary but only to the extent that it directly supports execution).
  • Project management is actively and directly engaged in coordinating execution activities beyond checking off spreadsheets.
• After blueprint emphasis moves to execution over design.  Areas where design continues to be evident must be aggressively managed so that design only supports directly executable activities that are in scope.
• Risks to success are identified and mitigated throughout the project.
  • Issues, risks, decisions, or other obstacles to project success are regularly captured and worked to resolution.
  • Periodic QA reviews at appropriate milestones or intervals.
  • Obstacles to activity or execution are aggressively managed (with few exceptions there is no “we can’t do ‘x’ until ‘y’ is perfect)

Do You Have a “Slick Politician” or a Real SAP Project / Program Manager?

There are unfortunately too many politicians in the project manager ranks and too few “straight shooters.”  Project manager politicians are destructive to morale, on-time delivery, and are dangerous to budgets.  However there is a measure of diplomacy that is required so how do you know when you have a political SAP project manager or SAP program manager rather than a skilled and talented one?

A manager’s primary responsibility, above all else, is to ensure the success of those they are responsible for managing.

Think about that a minute.  If a manager’s primary responsibility is to ensure the success of those they are responsible for then what would be a sign they are not a good contract project manager?

If your reports succeed then you as a manager automatically succeed.

The worst kind of project manager is the one who will “throw others under the bus” to deflect from their own shortcomings.  They demoralize and discourage project team cohesiveness while crushing momentum.  They create an environment where people do not want to do anything at all for fear of becoming the next scapegoat.  When things go well they are the first in line to take credit for what went well (even when they weren’t involved).  They lack integrity and character.  They spend more time and effort trying to cover their own back side than on trying to ensure the project is delivered successfully.  If you see these signs in your contract project manager you should seriously consider firing them.

Related Posts:

• More SAP Project Leadership Tips for Managing Conflict
• 5 Leadership Tips for Successful SAP Project Management
• SAP Success Factors for Vendor Selection – Responsibility Matrix 1
• Reduce SAP, ERP, or Technology Project Stress: Part 2
• Toward an SAP Center of Excellence or SAP Competency Center – PART 3