February, 2009

Where will SAP’s new North American leader find new customers?

Rob Enslin will serve as president of SAP North America, SAP announced Wednesday.

Seem like he’s got his work cut out for him. It’s no secret that selling software now is tougher, in the United States at least, for every vendor, than it has been in the last few years.

Continued »

Is certification the ticket to a more successful SAP implementation?

I recently spoke with a company with a unique story — they were actually growing their landscape supply business despite the recession. They credited their SAP Business One software with helping them do so.

But when I asked Bamboo Pipeline about any problems it experienced with the software, its one gripe was a common one — the ERP implementation took twice as long as the company was told it would.

The sentiment is consistent with a recent report by Panorama Consulting Group. Of the more than 3,000 companies surveyed, 93% said their ERP implementations took longer than they expected and 65% indicated that they went over budget. Companies named lack-of employee buy-in and lack of the proper ERP skills as the two main culprits for ERP implementation problems.

Our readers have been lending some interesting advice on how to avoid ERP implementation failures, in response to a recent blog post, “What’s the real trend in failed SAP projects?” The blog questioned who was really to blame for the recent Shane Co. and Select Comfort SAP ERP implementation failures — the software, the system integrators or the company’s management.

Ensuring that you have the right skills on your project team is cited in multiple responses. In that light, SAP’s announcement this week that it will focus on increasing the quality of its workforce — largely through pushing SAP certification – is quite interesting.

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SAP: We’re not restricting customers from seeking third-party support

SAP is not putting clauses into contracts that restrict customers from seeking third-party maintenance despite claims to the contrary, an SAP spokesman said today.

But claims that the vendor was doing so put maintenance and support back on the radar yesterday, sparked by a post on Twitter that generated quick buzz around the blogosphere.

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Who’s ready to upgrade now?

Business Suite 7 is supposed to be easier and cheaper to deploy and use, and will give upgrades, “the kiss of death,” as SAP Co-CEO Leo Apotheker put it during yesterday’s press conference.

But most customers have to get past one more “traditional” upgrade before they can leverage Business Suite 7. So one question for the new release is — will it push more customers to upgrade?

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Welcome to our new blog location on IT Knowledge Exchange

I’d like to introduce you to some of our new blog features, as well as the IT Knowledge Exchange.

Instead of a long list of categories, we now have a Tag Cloud. Click any topic in the Tag Cloud and you’ll see only posts on that topic. The more a tag is used, the larger and darker it will appear. These are the most popular topics.

You’ll also notice we’ve integrated more of our related editorial content in the right sidebar. If you’re reading a post about a specific topic and want to know more, be sure to browse these links.

We like when you share our content on social networking sites. To make that easier, we’ve increased the number of bookmarking tools from four to 43.

Looking for more blogs? On the top of the page and you’ll see a row of tabs. You can click the IT Blogs tab to find dozens of user-generated and TechTarget editorial blogs. You can even request your own blog.

To ask your own IT questions to our thousands of users, click on the IT Answers tab. So be sure to pose your own SAP question, browse thousands of SAP answers or help out a fellow IT pro by answering a question.

Thank you for stopping by and be sure to bookmark our new blog location and visit the SAP section on IT Knowledge Exchange.