SAP IT Convergence Beyond Business to IT Alignment

By |September 6th, 2011|

In the new global business age, organizations need to leverage technology organization expertise for business benefit more than ever. Too often, technology organizations focus on technology for the sake of technology, rather than for how it might improve products and services or how it might create more customer focus. In today’s competitive global economy, filled with international economic instability, no part of the enterprise can afford to move very far from what pays the bills. If your SAP [...]

Steps to Achieve SAP IT Convergence

By |August 22nd, 2011|

My last post on SAP IT Convergence is About Business Focused Integration provided an overview of Business - IT Convergence and why it is important. This week, we look at some of the key principles around creating SAP IT Convergence, including some steps on the path to convergence. ========================= What Is the Difference between Business to IT Alignment and Business - IT Convergence? Convergence and alignment have an important distinction. Business to IT alignment works to mature the IT [...]

Will Next Generation IT Finally Transform Business

By |April 18th, 2011|

New IT Value Propositions – Moving from Operations to Customers and Innovation Throughout everything I do as a consultant, I try to categorize my activities into the three key areas of business: operations, customers, and innovation. Even though I have been working primarily in the supply chain areas of SAP since 1994 (SD – Sales and Distribution, MM – Materials Management, and PP – Production Planning), I have been focusing more on the key value areas of customers and innovation. I focus on cu [...]

ERP vs. ERP II vs. ERP III Future Enterprise Applications

By |May 31st, 2010|

ERP I, ERP II, & ERP III Abstract ERP applications integrate enterprise operations within and across enterprise legal entities, or company codes. ERP ii (or ERP 2) applications extend supply functionality to external enterprises (generally vendor-affiliated companies or enterprises) to reduce cost, improve supply chain efficiency, and perform collaborative innovation. ERP iii (or ERP 3) enterprises go to the next level as they integrate the ERP and ERP ii functionality to include customers [...]

Striving for a Customer Focused Approach to Innovation 3 of 3

By |April 5th, 2010|

In the first two parts of this series, we looked at the current innovation paradigm. That paradigm consists mostly of two primary approaches: namely incremental innovation that looks more like continuous improvement, and a free-for-all that is more like chaos. We also looked at a third approach to innovation: leveraging existing marketing infrastructure to produce a future state narrative. That narrative acts as a future state blueprint for product or service development to move toward. Innovat [...]

Social Media Fads and the Risk to the Enterprise

By |March 17th, 2010|

Today's IT landscape is filled with hype around Web 2.0. While collaboration is a key forward-looking initiative for any organization, social media requires a specific purpose and goal. Without a clear direction and purpose for social media initiatives, they are at best a distracting fad, and at worst an enterprise disaster. When I look at today's social media applications, I see them as a fad. Popular today, and they will be around for a while, but like all social outlets they are waiting for [...]