SAP Innovation Newsletter 29: Introduction

IT investments have been strangled for the last few years but as we emerge from the recession the way you create, present and manage investment proposals will be key to your future success – we highlight a well established toolset used by major vendors that will show you how to win IT investments.

Our SAP star is well known in SAP circles for his strategic thinking and his ability to design programmes that deliver. His verbal dexterity is also something of legend and he is sort out by many CIO’s based on the value he adds.

IT investments have been strangled for the last few years but as we emerge from the recession the way you create, present and manage investment proposals will be key to your future success – we highlight a well established toolset used by major vendors that will show you how to win IT investments.

Our SAP star is well known in SAP circles for his strategic thinking and his ability to design programmes that deliver. His verbal dexterity is also something of legend and he is sort out by many CIO’s based on the value he adds.

Innovation Number 29: Better IT investment justification

Better IT investment justifications

The world of IT investment has changed for the better.

Without exception and no matter where the project originates, IT exec’s are now having to provide much improved justifications for projects that require substantial investment. This provides the IT exec a major opportunity to present and sell the ability of their department to add significant business value. However building business cases is a long arduous process.

The world of IT investment has changed for the better.

Without exception and no matter where the project originates, IT exec’s are now having to provide much improved justifications for projects that require substantial investment. This provides the IT exec a major opportunity to present and sell the ability of their department to add significant business value. However building business cases is a long arduous process.

SAP STAR Number 29: Liam Donnelly

Let me introduce

Liam Donnelly

Liam is a long term SAP professional with many credits to his name including Application Strategist for Diageo’s GBP37m Release 5 project, Shared Services Architect for 3Com including the global rollout of shared services and headcount reduction of the global finance team from 1,800 to 200, and the successful ECC6 upgrade at Capita for 60,000 users which cost a tiny fraction of the norm for the industry. He is currently initiating the Centre of Excellence (CoE) at Royal Mail.

His SAP breadth and depth are legendary and his ability to ensure C–level support of transition programmes has meant he is regularly recalled by CIOs to help with challenging programmes both in justification and delivery. The teams he manages generally transition to long term friends, and he is known for his ability to talk the hind legs off a donkey (allegedly).

If you want an SAP Roadmap, a Global IT strategy or want to reprieve an ailing programme Liam is definitely the man you should speak to.

He generally works as a consultant/contractor but if the right role comes along…..

Call me and I will put you in touch.

Jeremy 07712 663598

SIN29: csi10 Wanted: Enterprise Architect

Enterprise Architect

Have you a solid background in SAP with an ability and drive to determine and design a new architecture for a very fast growing FTSE100 company. Can you persuade C-level management of the need to drive standards and then deliver a consistent and robust framework?

You will need to be a person with a fantastic communication capability with concise delivery and an ability to continually encourage very busy stakeholders to provide constant support to your ideas and strategies.

ThoughHi Alastair, not revolution – rapid evolution is the name of the game and you are the principle architect in the design.

This is a full time position and will bring the ultimate in challenge and rewards for the right person.

Email: Terrie.Creswell@csi10.co.uk

SIN29: Reducing Critical Business Risk

As recession lifts – reduce risk!!!

Five ways IT can help reduce critical business risks.

As the recession lifts, we are all going to have to deal with a new set of risks that were introduced by having to quickly and decisively act as the recession took hold and slowly progressed through our businesses.

These enforced changes have bought a new way of managing the risks in business and presents IT with an ideal opportunity to help the business. A recent survey has shown that the risk ‘hot spots’ for 2010 are:-

· Strategic change management

· Capacity constraints

· Incentive plans for staff

· Human resources

· Fraud

Each of these crucial areas presents IT with a golden opportunity to help the business emerge from recession strong and more prepared. You can see more about how these key risk elements are both defined and then resolved by reading the article by Stuart Roberts of the Corporate Executive Board.

If you would like help on how to apply solutions to new risks call Jeremy on

07712 663598

Innovation Number 28: Easiest way to Secure SAP

Easiest way to a secure SAP system.

With the added pressures of compliance audits and the resultant segregation of duties (SoD) the issues of Securing access to SAP and reporting on SoD has become an imperative to the security professional in your organisation.

We have recently come across a simple but highly effective way of increasing the secure access to your SAP system, ensuring segregation of duties and even ensuring you are only paying for the number of SAP licences you need.

With very little expertise needed to install, the Xpandion solution (ProfileTailor Dynamics) builds a comprehensive record of the use of your SAP system. Immediately highlighting the obvious security issues, such as the use of SAP_ALL and SAP_NEW, as well as providing dynamic reporting to challenge SoD situations, report unused profiles and query inappropriate use.

With significant savings to be made in Risk Management and Compliance Audit events and provable and visible security improvements for the business, the system immediately adds benefit.

Unless you are convinced your security is 100%, we recommend that you take a look.

Call us on 07712 663598 and we will ensure you get to speak to the necessary experts.

SAP STAR Number 28: Paul Bhuhi

Let me introduce

Paul Bhuhi

Paul has over 15 years working within ERP/ SAP. An experienced Senior Practice Manager Paul has managed 400+ people and £45m+ in annual revenues. He combines a strong business development approach with a wealth of experience in consulting at all levels from delivery to CxO. Paul offers tangible experience in ERP transformation and change roles across a mix of Programmes, BPO contracts, ITO contracts; all with mixes of ‘on and off’ shore delivery models. Paul currently leads RWD Technologies in EMEA, working with SAP as their global partner for Human Performance Improvement and training products (software) sales.

So if you have any IT focussed Human Performance issues or would like to discuss how his other talents can benefit your business, give me a call on 07712 663598 and I will put you in touch.

SIN28: csi10 Wanted: SAP Performance Specialist

SAP Performance Specialist

Have you got a background in bringing SAP system performance to the highest levels expected by the business users? Can you show that you have helped Blue Chip companies realise significant improvement on their SAP systems response times across diverse geographical and functional landscapes.

If so we urgently need to speak as one of the largest SAP users in Europe needs a step change in the response times of their intricate SAP landscape.

Please contact us for a chance to speak to the people who will truly challenge your performance management skills.

Contract position.

Email: Terrie.Creswell@csi10.co.uk

SIN26: So what's your password!!!

So what’s your password!!!

Are you using a secure method of entry?

A recent security breach allowed the analysis of 32 million passwords (by Imperva) which has lead to concern in the world of blue chip security.

What would you guess was the most commonly used password that came out of this analysis…… ‘PASSWORD’? – well actually that came in 4^th.

Would you believe that the most popular password was ‘123456’, that’s right it’s as simple as 123 – with a 456.

Second was the even more impressive version for the lazy – ‘1234’ and for the more security conscious but equally less sophisticated, third in the list was ‘123456789’

So if you are an InfoSec professional; start pulling your hair out, if you use one of these blinding obvious password maybe now is the time to consider just how secure you wish your information to be and change it to a more secure password (and save the hair of your InfoSec professional)….

…. OH! and one more bit of advice which I thought worth passing on….. the experts advise NOT to use the same password for social networking as you do for your corporate systems.

For more call Jeremy on 07712 663598

SAP Innovation Newsletter 27: Introduction

First and Foremost – HAPPY NEW YEAR

2009 proved to be a very poor year for IT innovation and hence why you have not seen any SAP Innovation Newsletters recently. We hope that 2010 will prove to be a year when innovation in IT makes a dramatic return. If you have seen or experienced something your fellow SAP professionals and customers could benefit from, please get in touch.

Our SAP Star is a real talent in Knowledge Management and IT education; he is keen to speak to anyone considering leveraging their current systems to make the most of the company knowledge asset.

Maybe you could help csi10; if you consider yourself to be the best ever manager of customer relationships, or have a passion for proving excellence in IT services delivery, our client would love to speak to you.

And Finally, just a quick thanks to all our customers, supporters and clients who have helped us develop a new range of services that bring innovation, expert resources and improved perception of IT to more and more blue-chip IT departments.

Here’s to a healthy, wealthy and wise 2010.

Regards

Jeremy (tel: 07712 663598)

Innovation Number 27: 2009 Little Innovation : 2010?

Innovation Number 27

2009 IT Innovation suffered, but in 2010?

A recent Datamonitor report has showed that 25% of 3,000 executives questioned believe that IT budget cuts harmed innovation and stopped them winning new business. Most CIO’s do not believe cloud computing is the answer according to BT’s Enterprise Intelligence survey many citing the security issues and a lack of understanding as a reason for not investing. The outsourcing trend took a bit of a battering in 2009 but according to EquaTerra the pipelines of outsourcers are growing and growth rates are likely to be at 2008 levels (see the article). Mobilisation of enterprises seems to severely missed the stretch targets made for it a few years back.

So, as always at this time of year, it is a time to make your guess (calculated or otherwise) as to what key innovation is going to be at the forefront in 2010…… our prediction: NONE!

There will be no one great innovation that will revolutionise IT fortunes. IT budgets will remain under severe pressure and any savings will be sucked back into the organisation to fund recovery, customer retention/expansion or expanding the business in other forms. The one possibility that supports this maybe Business Intelligence investment but with initial investment being so high, many companies will make do…..

So what do you think will be the big IT Innovation winner in 2010 email us or call us on 07712 663598.

SAP STAR Number 27: Tony Gregory

Let me introduce

Tony Gregory

Systems and business training solutions can be expensive; typically £1-5m, time consuming; 1 – 3 years, and more often than not don’t deliver the results you hoped for; Gartner reports 50% of all training projects fail and we all know your systems and processes are only as good as the people that use them!

Tony will utilise your existing infrastructure and resources, including the efficiencies of any training tools you’ve already purchased and using his knowledge of the latest strategies, technologies and performance support tools, will work with you to understand your key objectives and business drivers, quickly developing an integrated solution that delivers guaranteed results from minimal investment.

Tony is an expert in finding and delivering the fastest path to a working, collaborative and cost effective education strategy, delivering more for less using reusable technologies, to ensure you win the right to re-invest the savings into future higher ROI projects.

Tony has been a colleague and friend for a long time and I know that he can add value to building your systems-lead training strategy, your Knowledge Collaboration project or the ongoing support of your business by providing the most cost effective, intuitive and easy to use learning solution across the organisation. Call me and I will put you in touch with Tony. Call Jeremy on 07712 663598

SIN27: csi10 Wanted: Customer Service Expert

Customer Service Expert

csi10 have been asked to help find a person who has experience in helping develop and manage customer relationships to a mutually profitable outcome. Whilst always looking for new opportunities the person must be adept at managing the service expectations and actual delivery to a set of very demanding clients. A background in IT infrastructure and IT service delivery will be important as will the ability to demonstrate that you can marshal a set of different departments and resources into one seamless service for the customer. For more information please send an email to Terrie.Creswell@csi10.co.uk

Happy New 2010 and thanks!!!

Happy New 2010 and thanks!!!

csi10 would like to thank our clients for helping us deliver improved innovative services.

2009 proved to be a tough year for many in the IT industry and csi10 was not alone in having to find new innovations to help weather a turbulent 2009.

As 2009 progressed we reviewed how we helped those clients who trusted us to bring them new ideas and innovations. We were very aware that many of our clients had budget restrictions imposed in 2009 and needed to improve how they communicated the value they added and improve the way they justified new investment.

With our clients we re-developed and expanded a service offering and now would like to offer you the ‘csi10 IT coaching service’. Aimed at the CIO and direct reports it provides a unified way of capturing, analyzing, articulating and communicating the VALUE added by the IT department as a whole and the individual departments within the IT department. An option allows this to be extended to individual coaching that allows the IT department senior management to radically improve how they are perceived by their clients (the business.)

These new client-led services are helping our customer to re-establish some of the fundamentals that assist the whole IT department to understand and communicate how to build strong cases for more innovative projects in IT and deliver much more business-as-usual efficiencies.

csi10 IT Coaching Services can be initiated for as little as £5,000 for a team session and the outcome is a unified approach, common language and communication style that builds the positive perception and reputation of your IT department.

For more call Jeremy on 07712 663598

SAP Innovation Newsletter 26: Introduction

We like to bring real innovations that generate savings to the table first and I am sure you will forgive us if we are a bit premature with this application of GRID-Computing to SAP infrastructure. The savings and claims made are just too big to ignore.

Also our SAP Star is more of a Change Guru with a much broader reach that just SAP; he is however a man that can help you make change stick. If you know SAP CRM and can get senior exec’s to understand, use and really value it, we really have a challenge for you.

And Finally, for the smaller organisations out there, this is your chance to rent the power of SAP at a bargain price – however you will be a Guinea Pig.

Innovation Number 26: Harnessing Prodigious Power

We have recently been very impressed by the claims of a very valuable and highly desirable piece of extraordinary thinking that claims it can reduce the costs of operating your SAP systems by £10m’s.

The approach claims to harness the GRIDComputing concepts and apply them to the SAP infrastructure with some very key and highly protected additions.

This apparently simple idea is making remarkable claims; for one of their clients, this include:-

• Server Count reduced by 90%.
• SAP Instances reduced from 130 to 30
• Consistent management of environments 80% automated

Along with some other incredible simplifications and reduction in complexities, the realisation of the approach has, for one customer, contributed c.£2m of saving per annum with a payback in about 2 years.

We at csi10, thought that this approach was so important that we have yet to fully explore the possibilities….. but thought you should know about it…..

For more information and to do your own review, call us on 07712 663598.

SAP STAR Number 26: Phil Puddefoot

I have known Phil ever since I did NOT give him the Training Manager job at SAP; he was over qualified; really!!

Anyway, Phil provides that excellent combination of talents and straight-forward strategic thinking that allows change management to become an integrated part of transition programmes and not just a bolt-on. A consummate change professional who is adept at helping you plan (and execute) your change strategy in terms that the board and exec can clearly understand and easily buy in to.

With many 10K+ user transformation projects under his belt, including the pub and hotel group with 350 sites and more than 10K users, 2million online learners through learn direct and a banking group project with 60K users , Phil has a background, toolset and reference clientele that impresses.

His experience ensures that your business objectives are achieved, users are ready, willing and able to adapt to the change and that it is all driven by a crystal clear strategy and a comprehensive plan.

So, if you are involved in, planning or even considering a transformation that involves large scale business change, Phil is the man to talk to…..

Drop me a line and I will gladly introduce you……

Call me on 07712 663598.

SIN26: Any Guinea Pigs out there?

SAP look to increase the test base for their SaaS offering.

Fancy being an Guinea Pig for the latest release of SAP’s Business ByDesign.

Rinow Zinow, an old colleague from SAP Ag, has been to London resetting expectations around SAP’s initial push into the SaaS market. The original target of 10,000 customers by end of 2010, is somewhat awry, with only 90 currently using it worldwide. However, SAP remain confident that they can meet the 10K target by 2012 even with the reduced investment announced last year.

So if you fancy being a Guinea Pig, now is the time to cut a deal with SAP. They ofcourse will also want you be a reference customer which I am sure they will consider when they offer you a great Guinea Pig deal.

Call Jeremy on 07712 663598

SIN25: csi10 Wanted: SAP CRM Coach

SAP CRM Coach

csi10 have been asked to help with the roll-out of a SAP CRM project. The project will roll-out through the many divisions of this corporation. One such division is rolling out the pipeline management processes. A coach is required to help the CEO/CFO and Business Development Director know exactly what is contained within the numbers that are presented, how to drill down to the information on which they are based, what other reporting is easy to access and utilise. The coaching role will also be expected to help these senior execs understand and define their future requirements from the SAP CRM system.

Initially a 10 day assignment, you will be expert at bringing hard-pressed senior execs to rely on and value new technology.

SAP Innovation Newsletter 25: Introduction

Keeping your SAP skills up-to-date can be a challenge; demonstrating the latest functionality in the latest release of SAP to your users is hard; providing training systems for new users can be a pain; Now SID can come to your rescue.

Having built SAP focussed businesses in both Europe and Asia you may like to have a chat with Dudley Beagle who is able to help grow SAP revenues through an excellent network of customers, partners and SAP contacts.

Could you help build a world-class PMO function in one of the fastest growing companies in the UK? Then see below.

And Finally, want to save 50% on your SAP Maintenance Costs …. It’s possible.

Innovation Number 25: SID gives you SAP systems.

SID gives you SAP systems.

Why has someone not done this before!

Have you heard about SID?

SID is the name of a new service providing a complete SAP ECC6.0 system so you can innovate, test, play, build your skills, demonstrate … well anything really!!

SID has agreement from SAP to use host a service using specially agreed user licences. In this way SID provides the only legal publicly accessible SAP sandboxes loaded with Best Practice configuration and master data.

The SID SAP systems are hosted remotely; meaning that you can log on through a web browser, or SAPGui anywhere.

Now for the first time SAP is accessible to SAP Professionals completely independent of any employer or client site.

· So if you are a SAP consultant who needs to keep up their skills …

· If you are a Configurer who wants to demonstrate what the latest SAP system can do.

· Or an IT Manager considering implementing or upgrading SAP, and want to see SAP ECC6 in your own time …

Whatever reason you may need a self contained and complete SAP ECC6.0 system at your fingertips …

SAP STAR Number 25: Dudley Beagle

Dudley has a unique blend of talents which are of immense value to many in the world of SAP.

Dudley’s expertise in the area of Lean Management Solutions, where he took the Toyota principles of Lean Production and applied them to many different production and management situations, has been complimented with the building of several regional businesses focused on providing SAP customers with Enterprise Learning Solutions. Treble digit revenue growth seems to be his forte.

A complete business-builder, Dudley has grown a global network of clients, practitioners, partners and employees of SAP that would enable any company to excel. Dudley is currently looking for his next opportunity and would like to speak to anyone who thinks they could provide an opportunity for him to build.

Contact me and I will put you in touch with Dudley……

Call me on 07712 663598.

SIN25: A thought provoke: Save 50% on your SAP costs

SAVE 50% on your SAP Maintenance Costs

Now this is interesting…. Following on from SAP customers barking about the increase in maintenance costs and the subsequent back-off of by SAP to introducing it over several years etc….. it would appear that the increase has now encouraged others to muscle in on the strangle hold SAP have on their maintenance revenue stream.

Rimini Street have quadrupled their sales in the first half of 2009 and it only seems to be going one way…. by offering half-price SAP support (along with supoprt for other ERP systems such as Oracle, JDEdwards etc.)

SO, isn’t it about time you looked at how you could make saving on that large chunk of cash you shell out to SAP for support…..

Call Jeremy on 07712 663598

SIN25: csi10 Wanted: SAP PMO Resources

SAP PMO Resources

csi10 are interested in talking to people who are providing PMO services to a large scale enterprise. You will currently be a PMO analyst or a PMO Manager and are looking for a change and a chance to work for a dynamic, fast growing company with excellent future. You will be at the centre of innovation and will be encouraged to run planning workshops to tease out new ideas and get them onto the radar. You will be able to motivate yourself and be great communicator.