Run the Business IT Services Add Value

IT professionals may provide support services, instead of working solely on projects, over their careers. Support work is important to keeping the business or enterprise running, requires a substantial percentage of the IT budget, and is under constant pressure to demonstrate efficiencies, ie: cost savings. It is a perennial challenge to tell the holistic IT value story and even more challenging to describe and defend the support space. Business leaders identify with project work, which generally targets improving, growing or innovating -the-business. And, support work, sometimes referred to as run-the-business, takes a back seat. I'm always on the lookout for strategies that improve the articulation of IT value. Here's an interesting development in the ERP space worth watching.

SAP is taking a step forward in the support space, by aligning its mandated maintenance cost increase (think unhappy customers) with demonstration of business value drivers, as defined by an index of key performance indicators. The index will be measured at a representative short-list of customers and shared with the all. This work could be helpful to IT professionals and CIOs in articulating how support costs align with business value. And, SAP's maintenance fee increase is contingent upon demonstrating the defined value KPIs. ...

... "This effort will help customers by providing a transparent mechanism to link their support investment to the value delivered. SAP has agreed to postpone the subsequent price increase schedule until the targeted improvements measured by the SUGEN KPI Index are met. Successful delivery on KPIs is expected to demonstrate tangible cumulative cost savings for customers. This value delivery is targeted to be fully realized within the four-year time frame of the benchmarking program. " ...

Via SAP: Enterprise Support Value Index

Collaborative Sustainability

SAP takes a collaborative approach to developing its strategies for sustainability, as it publishes its first update on the topic. ...

... "The first challenge in preparing this report was to decide what exactly to report on. It is not so obvious for a software company on the basis of risk alone. But once we started to engage with stakeholders over the past 18 months or so it became really clear that what our stakeholders are most interested in is the solutions SAP can provide to other businesses to become more sustainable. " ...

Via SAP Sustainability Blog: First Report

Enabling Business Analysts to Visualize Information

Through the acquisition of Business Objects, SAP is enabling its user base to realize the power of data visualization. This product offering comes with templates to jump-start business analysts and accelerate their time to value. ...

... "Pre-loaded in Xcelsius Present are ten ready-to-use data visualization templates, allowing first-time Xcelsius Present users to immediately use and benefit from the solution. These templates are tailored for specific business functions, such as human resources, sales, marketing, finance and accounting, as well as different vertical segments like government and education. Business users can simply paste their existing business data into Xcelsius Present templates, create visually compelling models and then share them via Microsoft Office documents. " ...

Via Business Objects: Bring Business Data to Life

SAP Project Managment Matures

SAP uses customer input to shape the future of its project management software capabilities in cProject module. ...

... "When it comes to functionality, cProjects 4.5 is a winner in the areas of multi-project and resource management. For example, the new Multi-Project Monitor displays several projects, including their relationships, in graphical form and therefore portrays the business dependencies, for example between the main project and sub-projects. " ...

Via SAP INFO: Ramp-up process for cProjects 4.5

SAP Hacks Oracle Computers For ERP Software

SAP support subsidiary, an ex-Peoplesoft support team, takes advantage of access to Oracle computers through support clients to download sensitive materials. ...

... "Oracle Corp. on Thursday accused SAP AG of hacking into its computers to heist secret product information in a lawsuit that escalates ... " ...

Via Houston Chronicle: SAP Hacks