Make M&A Transition & Integration Easier

By |May 21st, 2019|

Merger & Acquisition Integration is hard work, but the rewards can be significant. Fortunately, we can accelerate the first hundred days to gain rapid benefits. Anyone who has done M&A work knows it can be difficult. Mergers and Acquisitions involve integrating the people, existing processes, technology, assets, products/services, cultures, and a whole host of other key items. None of this effort is trivial. Mix in aggressive TSA (Transitional Service Agreement) terms from an acquired d [...]

What is IT Strategy?

By |July 7th, 2014|

  We hear it almost every day: IT Strategy, Business Strategy, strategic customer accounts, strategic widgets, etc. Strategy is applied to so many areas with so little understanding that the word has almost become meaningless. I decided to build my own research-based model around strategy because of all of the buzz and the lack of clarity or simplicity. I wanted to answer a key question: How do you determine if you are being strategic or just using tactics you are calling a strategy? Wha [...]

Will SAP HANA Lead to a Big Data Revolution?

By |December 17th, 2012|

Many people focus on HANA as a competitor to Oracle, and it is. Even if HANA adoption and sales were to completely devastate SAP's biggest competitor (Oracle), that would not be HANA's biggest impact. The HANA product has the potential to disrupt entire industries in the context of Big Data. Unlike Big Data, I have been skeptical about the benefits and use of social media in the enterprise, writing about it in Why Social Media Marketing Success Is Elusive for Business and Social Media Fads and [...]

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 [...]