inside sap magazine issue 17 autumn 2012

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

Issue 17 | Autumn 2012

CASE STUDIESCOCA-COLA AMATIL; QR NATIONAL

LEADERSHIPTHE NEXT GENERATION CIO

MOBILITYTHE SAP EXPERIENCE: SALES GOES MOBILE

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TOP 10MOST INFLUENTIAL 2012

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CONTENTS

4 Editor’s note

5 Quarterly news roundup

News in Focus8 Launch of new SCN met with

mixed reactions

10 Moving forward on mobility management

2012 Top 10 Most Influential People in SAP 14 How we found the Top 10

15 Community Contributor: Paul Hawking

16 Community Contributor: John Moy

17 Community Contributor: Tony de Thomasis

18 Community Contributor: Adrian Everett

18 Project Leader: Jennifer Vasseleu

20 Project Leader: John Ansley

21 Project Leader: Rebecca Hanna

22 Partner: Gough Venter

23 Partner: Stuart Dickinson

24 Partner: Iain Macleod

Case studies25 Interfacing across the sea:

Coca-Cola Amatil

27 Going mobile for inventory: Officeworks

Change management28 Maintaining training and

accreditation compliance: QR National

30 Realising the full benefits of financial process transformation investments

Technology34 Next Generation CIO: Four

radical shifts transforming the CIO’s role

39 Maximising performance of your SAP system

41 On the Move

45 Event calendar

46 Partner directory

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4 Inside SAP magazine

EDITOR

From the EditorAs I write, SAP has just celebrated 40 years since it started life as a five-man operation. Now employing 55,000 people and serving more than 183,000 customers worldwide, the company is far from suffering a mid-life crisis. SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott pointed to its best-ever financial results, the strategic acquisitions of Sybase and SuccessFactors, its long-term investment in China and its share price reaching its highest point since 2000 as proof that the company is on the right track – with the passion of SAP employees to win bringing “amazing momentum back to the company”.

Hasso Plattner, SAP co-founder and chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board, said, “When we began in 1972, our vision was to build real-time business applications, and we did so in close cooperation with our first customers.” With the release of HANA and emerging mobility applications, SAP is arguably closer than ever to this vision.

In this edition, we’re also celebrating the 2012 Inside SAP Top 10 Most Influential People in SAP. For the fourth time, we asked our readers to nominate and vote for who they felt had been the greatest influencers in the ANZ SAP community over the past year, in the categories of Community Contributors, Partners and Project Leaders. Reading our profiles of this year’s Top 10, it will become clear that all maintain a commitment to continuing to understand the trends that shape the way organisations in business and the public sector use SAP, and to lifting the bar when it comes to realising value from technology investments.

Many in our Top 10 also emphasised the importance of collaboration, information sharing, and having colleagues and contacts you can turn to when things aren’t going to plan. As a magazine for the SAP community, we are also committed to providing a forum for you to share and gain knowledge from others in the industry. There are plenty of opportunities for you to contribute to both the magazine and www.insidesap.com.au – whether it is through writing blog entries, providing case studies, updating us with news about your projects or appointments, or providing your views on industry trends. If you would like to contribute, please contact me at [email protected].

Congratulations to our Top 10, and we hope you enjoy this edition.

Managing Editor Freya Purnellt. (02) 9929 5465m. 0412 602 [email protected]

Journalist/Editorial Assistant Anne Widjajat. (02) 9929 [email protected] Kirsten Wadet. (02) 9929 [email protected]

Creative Director Justin Knightst. (02) 9929 5465m. 0425 292 [email protected]

Advertising SalesLaura Blackwellt. 02 9029 6028m. 0411 [email protected]

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© 2012 FlapJack Media Pty Ltd. Inside SAP is published four times a year by FlapJack Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publishers. FlapJack Media Pty Ltd makes no representation or warranties with respect to this magazine or its contents including, without limitation, material communicated by third parties. FlapJack Media Pty Ltd does not warrant that the information available in this magazine is accurate, complete or current. Opinions expressed are those of the respective authors and not necessarily of the publisher. Neither FlapJack Media Pty Ltd nor any persons involved in the preparation of this publication will be liable for any loss or damage as a result of use of or reliance upon advice, representation, statement, opinion or conclusion expressed in Inside SAP magazine.

Freya Purnell Managing Editor, Inside SAP


Making news this quarterSAP news

After a preliminary review of its 2011 fourth-quarter financial results, SAP AG announced that the company achieved its best-ever full-year and fourth quarter financial results for 2011. The results revealed outstanding growth in SAP’s core applications business and strong momentum for analytics and mobile solutions – which contributed more than a100 million to software revenue. The strongest result was the accelerated growth of SAP HANA, which significantly exceeded the company’s ambitious a100 million target, reaching revenue of more than a160 million.

SAP AG announced the launch of SAP Business One OnDemand solution, a new offering that aims to complement the mid market cloud offering, SAP Business One application, and address small business needs. The on-demand option aims to provide customers with delivery flexibility so customers can adopt the solution on their own terms, using cloud-based or on-premise deployment. This new solution aims to fill the gap in the marketplace for cloud solutions that meet the needs of small business.

SAP AG successfully completed its acquisition of SuccessFactors earlier this year. Only a week after the expiration of the tender offer, which was extended to 8 February 2012 as a result of delays in regulatory approval, over 81 million shares of common stock of SuccessFactors were successfully tendered.

Just days after the close of tender, the companies announced their unified product direction for Human Capital Management solutions (HCM). They are to combine SuccessFactors Business Execution (BizX) Suite with SAP solutions, while SAP will continue to offer the SAP ERP Human Capital Management as an on-premise offering for core HR. SuccessFactors Employee Central will be the core human resources (HR) offering in the cloud, and SAP has indicated that it plans to “boldly invest in it”. SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, powered by SAP HANA, is one of the development priorities for the two companies, as it will dramatically speed existing processes. The companies have already seen great results using HANA with SuccessFactors Employee Central.

Project news

SAP AG announced that its BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC) application for NetWeaver will be supported by the SAP HANA platform. The announcement was made at Financials 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to SAP, powering SAP BPC 10.0 version for SAP NetWeaver with HANA will provide increased agility by allowing enterprises to plan better and act faster with better insight into information by harnessing big data. The application is poised to be the first enterprise performance management (EPM) application capable of supporting the HANA-based SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse component.

SAP ANZ also announced that Praxa would be its second partner for SAP Business ByDesign. Praxa will resell SAP’s on-demand SaaS solution and also provide customers with ongoing service and support. SAP also revealed that Visy, Futureye, Dragonfly, QVS, Soltius and Tango were among its first ANZ customers for Business ByDesign.

NEWSROUNDUP

Australian-owned international energy company INPEX will deploy the OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) product for use with its existing SAP solutions. The OpenText application will work in conjunction with INPEX’s existing SAP software to speed up the creation, management and routing of invoices and orders. INPEX will also use VIM to provide suppliers and staff with secure, browser-based access for invoice submissions and timely access to information such as invoice status and purchase order numbers.

International oil giant Shell recently outsourced SAP-based HR and payroll maintenance services to Accenture. Under an agreement signed in July 2011, Accenture will now provide application management services to support the company’s SAP HR and payroll systems. The company’s SAP HR and payroll systems are being used by 90,000 people in 60 countries, including Australia.


Industry trends

Partners expand capabilitiesLeading accounting and advisory firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) has acquired Avantis, a business intelligence (BI) and analytics implementation consultancy, specialising in SAP’s BusinessObjects solution suite. Founded in 2001, Avantis doubled its revenue in the last three years, generating 80 per cent of its revenue from its consulting and SAP training services. Avantis’ team, which includes 33 members of staff, will provide PwC customers with valuable expertise in the areas of business intelligence and analytics.

In response to the increased demand for SAP business intelligence (BI) design and implementation services, the team from local SAP provider Logro has joined Deloitte Consulting. Deloitte’s partnership with Logro will also aim to innovate beyond traditional enterprise platforms, expanding its technology offerings to clients to encompass cloud computing, analytics and mobility.

ISYS, Sydney-based global leader in high-performance enterprise search solutions, has won an exclusive multi-million dollar contract with SAP AG. The contracted OEM agreement between ISYS and SAP will involve the implementation of ISYS’s Document Filters technology into SAP’s new generation of enterprise applications. It will replace Oracle’s OutsideIn and Autonomy’s KeyView products across all SAP platforms when it is implemented early next year.

Transaction-based workloads are the priority data source for 32.3 per cent of organisations that are looking to perform big data analysis, according to analyst firm IDC Australia’s most recent ‘Information Management Survey’. According to the survey, 16.9 per cent of organisations in Australia already have a formalised process to take advantage of big data opportunities through either an organisation-wide initiative or business unit-led initiatives.

A recent IDC report, ‘Analysing the Bring-Your-Own-Device Trends (BYOD) in Australia’, has concluded that an increasing number of CIOs and IT decision-makers are responding to pressure from executives and employees to support the use of consumer technology in the workplace. According to the report, one in every two organisations intends to deploy official BYOD policies in the next 18 months. However, this finding is at odds with IDC’s ‘Next Generation Workspace Ecosystem’ report, which highlighted that the majority of employees don’t want to use their own consumer devices for both work and personal use.

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NEWSROUNDUP

In a bid to deliver enhanced SAP mobile capability for asset management in the field, Extend Technologies has signed a service partner agreement with AMT-SYBEX, a specialist mobile systems integrator and provider of end-to-end mobile solutions. This agreement will involve the implementation and support of the AMT-SYBEX Fieldreach mobile asset management solution, built on the Sybase Unwired Platform. Organisations including Transport for London, National Grid, Southern Water, Urenco and UK Power Networks have already implemented AMT-SYBEX mobile solutions.

A new study by Accenture found that 67 per cent of CIOs and other IT professionals believe mobility will impact their businesses as much as or more than the internet did in the 1990s. The Accenture 2012 CIO Mobility Survey also found that 69 per cent of IT professionals surveyed would allocate more than 20 per cent of their discretionary budgets to delivering mobility capability for their business this year. Similarly, the survey found that 48 per cent of respondents in emerging markets have an extensively developed mobile strategy, compared with only 12 per cent of those in mature markets.

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Community news SAP ANZ and the SAP Australian User Group (SAUG) have announced they are joining forces on their major events this year, holding the SAUG Summit 2012 and the SAP Forum Australia (replacing SAP World Tour) concurrently over three days. To be held 21-23 August 2012 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, the combined event will be Australia’s largest SAP event of the year, and feature the very latest in SAP strategy, technology and industry content. Organisers expect the Summit to attract over 1000 senior executives, IT decision-makers and business managers from across Australia and the Asia-Pacific.

In 2012, the 2nd Annual SAP Ecosystem Foundation Regatta for Redkite will be taking place on Friday 2 November 2012 at the Middle Harbour Yacht Club in Mosman, Sydney. In 2011, the Regatta was born with the purpose of raising vital donations for Redkite. Last year, the SAP ecosystem had 15 boats competing in the first-ever Regatta. The effort raised over $35,000 for Redkite.

A group of SAP professionals, frustrated with the current models for recruiting and resourcing trained SAP staff, have banded together to form the Australian Society of SAP Professionals (ASSP). Wallis said the ASSP will form an independent board of members representing the interests of consultants. Among the group’s plans are instituting professional development requirements, creating defined career paths, providing independent quality assurance reviews, and assembling a database of skilled SAP professionals in the Australian market, which would detail their skill level and experience. The ASSP has also launched its first conference, The PPM Revolution: From Strategy to Execution, which will be held in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth from 8-10 May.


The launch of a new and improved SAP Community Network (SCN) was announced in January last year, and promised more functionality, cleaner navigation and improved networking features. Now, after several delays to the launch date, the SCN was finally launched in mid-March – but has met with mixed reviews.

The SCN has long been established as an online platform to help SAP customers, IT professionals and end-users interact with one another to solve problems, network and access resources such as community contributor blogs and forums.

When users began complaining about the out-of-date functions on the SCN, an overhaul of the network seemed like a necessary measure to ensure that the site remained responsive to the needs of the SAP community.

The plan for a new and improved SCN, to be launched at the end of 2011, had the SAP community eagerly anticipating its arrival.

Mark Yolton, senior vice president, SAP communities and social media, described in a blog entry that the new SCN would have capabilities such as: more organised content, blogs and discussions; streamlined navigation; social media functions such as the ability to ‘follow’ authors; relevant updates on matters of interest and features on top participants, top viewed and rated content.

However, the decision to delay the launch to early 2012, and rumours that the SAP team was still trying to fix elementary problems, quickly dampened the hype.

The new SCN is now live and functional, and according to Yolton’s blog entries on the launch, it has been something of a bumpy start for the new site – Yolton described the first three days as “hairy”, with a variable response from users.

“The feedback and reaction from the community members was quick, far-reaching, coming in high volumes, and devolved from curiosity, to frustration to anger, with some raw emotions expressed pretty harshly,” Yolton said, adding that the team was prepared for this, and focused on resolving issues as quickly as possible.

Among the negative comments by SCN users, complaints about missing search functions and content on the site were raised repeatedly.

Yolton also admitted that there were several unresolved problems with the SCN, explaining that the site would remain in beta so it could continue to be improved in response to user feedback.

Yolton identified specific key areas of improvement as speeding up performance, ensuring log-ins would not bounce back, and adding missing discussion threads.

However, considering the site is very new, overwhelmingly negative responses may still be premature. Whatever users may think about the new SCN, it at least appears that the SCN team is committed to responding to user complaints and bringing the

functionality of the site up to scratch.Australian SAP Mentors have also been generally positive in

their feedback about the new SCN. Matt Harding commented that although it was going to

take some time for users to become comfortable with the new SCN, especially with the change in features and the odd bug, he said the new “social features” were a “big step in the right direction”.

Nigel James praised the system in a recent blog, commenting that he was very happy with the outcome. James said that he was relieved that issues with the site’s look and functionality had finally been improved, and that he was pleased to be rid of the “painful” old blog platform. He did mention the little “niggles” that needed to be fixed, such as a problem with log-ins, but also thanked the SCN team “for all the effort that you have put in… to make a rock solid platform that is the envy of the enterprise world”.

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Launch of new SCN met with mixed reactions

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NEWS IN FOCUS

Under the new partnership, Fujitsu will host mobile solutions powered by Sybase Managed Mobility technologies and offer them on a software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service basis to customers in the Australian and New Zealand marketplace.

It will enable enterprises to integrate mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets with existing SAP applications as a service, with minimal set-up time and no infrastructure requirements. Fujitsu will also offer integration services and custom development for customers of the service.

SAP ANZ mobility lead Andrew Fox said Fujitsu made a natural choice as SAP’s first ANZ partner in this area, as one of only two SAP-certified cloud data centres locally.

Fujitsu’s cloud will provide the infrastructure for the solution and leverage Sybase’s enterprise device management platform, providing a solution for CIOs trying to manage the increasing number of mobile workers, devices and applications in their corporate IT environments.

Fox said among their customers, there is a 50:50 split between those who would like to have their mobile platform on-premise, and those who would prefer to have a cloud-based offering.

“The customer is looking for not just the management of the device, they are looking for apps to go out to the end user,” he said. “SAP has pushed out into the market a number of heavyweight apps for line of business solutions, and Fujitsu will take those and host them on the Sybase Unwired platform, and deliver those to both our customers and other back-end systems.”

Enterprise mobility trendsBussmann said the consumerisation of IT is having a huge impact on enterprise IT in several ways – particularly as in-memory technology comes together with mobility.

The first is the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, and Bussmann says to manage a diverse range of consumer devices, including iPhones, iPads and Android devices, CIOs require a mobile device management system that can both maintain the appropriate security levels and deploy apps to devices.

The next issue is what type of mobile apps should be deployed. At SAP, they have chosen apps which could enable workers to do all the typical tasks they can do in the office environment on the mobile device, such as travel expense management, leave requests

and procurement; giving mobile workers such as sales staff access to the tools and information they need on the road; and providing access to business intelligence to access financials and sales numbers from any device. Providing this access can have a significant impact on behaviour.

“Because you can check business results easily with three or four clicks, consumption of business information goes up significantly too,” Bussmann said. “Overall, there is a big change going on in the business – the future desktop is a mobile one.”

Poonen agreed. “We think mobility is going to be a huge door opener for

enterprise information, to enable salespeople, employees, even consumers, to get that business information and run their business more efficiently,” he said. “Every industry is now looking very strategically at how mobile transforms the way they do business internally, for their employees, and also with their customers and consumers. And that’s what we seek to take advantage of. There is a wealth of information in SAP systems that we are looking to unlock and make available to employees within organisations or more strategically, to customers’ customers.”

SAP’s takes its salesforce mobileSAP is also putting its money where its mouth is on mobility. In addition to 20,000 BlackBerries, 10,000 iPhones, and a sprin-kling of Android devices, the company has deployed 15,000 iPads to its salesforce worldwide.

“We run the complete pulse of our sales pipeline on tablets. That is our lifeblood. Revenue and revenue growth is an early indicator of how your quarter is going to look,” Poonen said. “I run my business with a BlackBerry and an iPhone. Having this information at my fingertips and the ability to take action creates an incredible pace of business when you’re running in real-time.”

Poonen said when building a business case for this type of mobility strategy, SAP considered how the two drivers of revenue growth – customers and employees – could be managed strategically with IT.

For sales, it is eliminating the need to log in to a computer, download spreadsheets, and fill in forecasts.

“If we could take that onerous, often paper-bound,

Moving forward on mobility managementSAP Australia and New Zealand took the opportunity to announce a new partnership between Sybase Australia and Fujitsu for enterprise managed mobility solutions while Oliver Bussmann, SAP CIO, and Sanjay Poonen, president, solutions and global mobility strategy, SAP, were in town to discuss how they are embracing key mobility trends in-house at SAP.

BY FREYA PURNELL

spreadsheet-bound, latency driven, error-prone process, and say we’re going to make this real-time, driven by your fingertips on an iPad. You have that information about the pulse of where we’re going all the way up to the top, and you significantly increase the productivity of those workers,” Poonen said.

When you’re pursuing the vision of a real-time enterprise, you can’t let one component lag behind, Bussmann said.

“After the salesperson has visited the customer, they can immediately update that information and it goes straight into our real-time analytics and mobile solution,” he says. “You cannot slow down the beginning of the food chain – you need an end-to-end optimisation, and we have all the tools to update accounts, contacts, opportunities and even pricing information in the field.”

For other employees, mobilising processes in the HR area, for example, increases productivity and reduces annoyance.

“I think companies are systematically going through their business processes and finding out what are the most cumbersome – like expense reporting,” Poonen said. “You can take a paper-bound process and make it so much faster. The whole idea of IT is that it is supposed to make people’s lives more efficient, so those are the first applications we’re going to mobilise.”

SAP has also implemented a BYOD program, in line with its belief that this trend is unstoppable, and Generation Y increasingly expects to be able to use their own devices.

Bussmann said while initially the company planned to have a global policy and infrastructure, it became clear that it had to be developed on a country-by-country basis, engaging local staff from the legal, HR, and finance functions to address data security and privacy, onboarding processes and tax implications.

“We came up with a country-by-country program, beginning in Japan, to enable people to use their own iPhones, iPads and Android devices in the corporate environment. You need the mobile device management infrastructure in place to make sure that the personal device is also being managed and secured. The employee also has full access to our app store, which offers 50 SAP apps as well as over 100 partner apps,” Bussmann said, adding that the feedback from users has been very positive.

“It is also setting a mobile mindset will helps us to think about future apps that could also be moved onto the device.”

The BYOD program has been offered in Australia since September, and Fox said of his newly hired mobile team, nine out of 10 staff have opted to use the BYOD policy.

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Issue 16 | Summer 2011

MINING AND RESOURCESPowering the engine that’s driving Australia’s economy

UNWIRING THE ENTERPRISEAre you prepared to lose control?

CASE STUDIESGEORGE WESTON FOODS; CENTRELINK

YEAR AHEADPREDICTIONS FOR ICT PRIORITIES IN 2012

MANUFACTURINGTECHNOLOGY KEY TO COMPETITIVENESS

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How we found the 2012 Top 10 Most Influential People in SAPNow in its fourth year, the Inside SAP Top 10 Most Influential People in SAP has always sought to identify the top influencers in the SAP ecosystem, as voted by our readership.

To this end, we undertake a multiple-stage process to arrive at the Top 10.

Through the magazine and www.insidesap.com.au, we called for nominations of those who had been influential in the SAP community over the last year, in three categories:

y Most Influential Partners (for those in the SAP partner community);

y Most Influential Community Contributors (for those who contribute to the SAP community through education, mentoring, technical leadership and so on); and

y Most Influential Project Leaders (for those working for

or on behalf of an SAP customer on SAP projects). Readers of Inside SAP then voted online for the

nominee they felt was most influential in each of the three categories.

This reader vote accounted for 50 per cent of each nominee’s final score, while the remaining 50 per cent of their score was generated based on a submission by the nominees, covering a range of areas including significant projects undertaken during 2011, awards or recognition received, community involvement and other achievements demonstrating influence. Our highest scorers in each category were then named in the Top 10.

We would like to thank all our readers and the nominees for participating in this year’s awards, and congratulate our 2012 Top 10.

– Freya Purnell



As SAP Mentor and SAP academic program director in the School of Management and Information Systems at Victoria University, Paul Hawking is no stranger to our Top 10 Most Influential People list.

With his wealth of knowledge around ERP and his growing list of industry accolades, it is no surprise that in 2011, SAP employed Hawking to develop a university curriculum for the newly released BusinessObjects 4 solution. The new curriculum, incorporating Dashboard Design, Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Universe and BusinessObjects Explorer, was launched in June in Singapore, where academics from the Asia-Pacific and Japan region were able to attend BusinessObjects workshops, before the curriculum was distributed globally to universities.

In 2011, Hawking also collaborated with fellow Top 10 member and SAP Mentor Tony de Thomasis to develop a new NetWeaver-based subject for Victoria University. With input from leading SAP professionals, including other SAP Mentors, it was the first time that such a subject had been taught anywhere in the world.

Hawking’s knowledge of both the academic world and SAP afforded him a number of opportunities to present at various SAP events in 2011. He was invited by SAUG to present at four events, and by SAP to participate in a number of keynote panels as part of SAP’s World Tour in Australia. Hawking was also instrumental in enabling the SAP InnoJam to be conducted in Australia for the first time as part of the SAUG Summit 2011. Hosted by Victoria University, InnoJam is a 30-hour event that allows SAP professionals the opportunity to develop prototypes based on a scenario, utilising SAP’s latest technologies, and for the first time in the world, university students were offered the chance to participate.

“I was also fortunate to be part of the winning team,” Hawking says.

It’s easy to forget, with his active contribution to the SAP community, that Hawking is first and foremost an academic. In addition to his day-to-day teaching responsibilities, he continued to promote a number of events designed to give students practical experience with SAP, including the Australian Universities SAP Dashboard Competition and the Supply Chain Simulation game – in 2011, taking these to the next level with more participants and greater involvement from SAP and industry.

Last year also saw Hawking named as top contributor on SCN for the SAP University Alliance Program and SAP University Alliance Program Outstanding Academic for Australia 2011, an award given in recognition of the contribution and leadership Hawking had demonstrated to assist Australian universities to incorporate SAP solutions into their curricula.

But for Hawking, perhaps the most surprising opportunity came from something he had previously dismissed as “a load of rubbish” – Twitter. Putting aside his preconceptions, he gave the social media tool a go, and was astonished at the results.

“I learned more from Twitter on SAP in the last six months than I had in the previous two years. I can, all of a sudden, discover research reports from people and what’s happening in different countries. It’s a way of keeping up to date with the SAP world, and it’s my job to understand that and to disseminate that to the user group, my students and other universities,” he says.

As IT educators, Hawking and his colleagues face some tough challenges at the moment – the high Australian dollar is threatening our attractiveness as a destination for international students, which, in the face of declining government funding, has long been the lifeblood of many universities. There is also a dearth of students opting for IT courses.

“For example, in Victoria there were 69,000 applicants from Year 12 for university places, and only 1400 of them were choosing computer-related courses,” Hawking says.

Looking ahead in the SAP landscape, Hawking believes that with a proliferation of bolt-on solutions in addition to core ERP, enterprise architects are going to become more and more important.

“With two-tier ERP systems, you need to understand how the company is going to manage the system and how you can manage the licensing implications. People who have that knowledge will be in high demand. There are lots of opportunities to improve what you are doing with SAP, but we need people who understand how to capitalise on those opportunities.”

When it comes to being influential in the SAP community, Hawking recommends “just putting yourself out there”.

“There are lots of people who are very knowledgeable, but they keep their knowledge in a very limited environment. There are other people who want to share their knowledge and are always available to help, so when you go above and beyond, that’s where you become influential and that’s what it’s all about.”

– Kirsten Wade

Paul Hawking Victoria University



As SAP user interaction and mobility architect at Australia Post, during 2011 John Moy worked as the SAP development architect for a new browser-based Point of Sale solution for 4000 Australia Post outlets. Yet, despite the demands of his day job, Moy still managed to find the time to become one of the most influential mobility experts in the SAP

community. For Moy, becoming an SAP Mentor in April 2011 was only the first of many achievements during the year.

In September 2011, Moy and his fellow team members achieved second place in the SAP InnoJam event at SAP TechEd 2011 in Las Vegas for the ‘Do I Know You’ app. Moy had already developed two successful apps since the beginning of the year – the Android apps ‘myHelp for SAP Professionals’ and ‘NetWeaver UberGeek’.

Moy also presented at a number of high-profile SAP events in Australia on the topic of mobility, including the SAUG 2011 Summit, the SAP World Tour and the annual Mastering SAP Technologies conference.

However 2011 was most importantly the year that firmly established him as one to watch in the SAP blogosphere.

Moy says one of the best decisions was to begin blogging – which he sees as a way to make a contribution to the SAP community.

“I think I started the year by putting out a few blogs that gained a lot of attention… One of them even made the front page of the SAP Community Network,” he says.

“You spend years consuming this material in various communities [like the] SAP community… just being able to give back and actually have people benefit makes you feel good.”

Moy says the conversations about his blogs that occurred in the SAP blogosphere – one of which attracted 8000 views in a year – showed how rich and innovative the SAP community and the wider internet community could be. Moy’s blogs about jQueryMobile with SAP triggered other bloggers to post and contribute to discussions about mobile technology.

“When you blog and come out with an idea, it’s really standing on the shoulders of everything else you have

seen and learnt,” says Moy. “Someone else can take that idea and say, ‘hey, that’s good, now I am going to add something else and make something out of that’. It’s like putting a few pieces together to make something new, like Lego.”

Currently, Moy gets regular emails from people all around the world that want to engage him on his ideas about mobile-enabling SAP. One Australian company even adapted the code from one of Moy’s blogs to build a fully functioning app. Subsequently, Moy’s interactions with his followers have become a source of motivation for staying actively engaged in the SAP community. That, and keeping up with the boom in the mobile technology market which he likens to the “dotcom days”. He says keeping up with the latest innovations is like “trying to drink from a fire hose”.

In the mobility space, Moy predicts that 2012 will be a defining year for SAP. With the upcoming release of the “mobile-friendly and tablet-friendly” Windows 8, he believes that the Sybase mobility solutions will be judged on how quickly they will be able to support the new Windows operating system.

Moy also believes the success of SAP’s new app store may also be an indicator of the company’s maturity in mobility. Despite the app store’s reported months-long app approval process (compared to Apple’s seven-day approval process), Moy says “the true test will be how fast that can grow this year, and if they will get traction with customers and partners. It will be a real test of the mobile strategy for SAP and how well their mobile platform can evolve to keep up with the rapid pace of change that’s going on in mobile.”

Across the board, he believes the growth in mobility will come from the more consumer- or employee-oriented scenarios – such as accessing HR information from mobile devices – rather than heavyweight business critical applications, which have been underway for some time. Moy also says expectations around user experience on mobile devices are so much higher now, with users favouring the usability of the iOS interface rather than a text-heavy Windows-style interface.

Even though Moy was once recognised by a stranger on the streets of Melbourne because of his blogging – which he describes as “mindblowing” – he remains modest about being an influential member of the SAP community. He believes his hard-working ethos has gotten him to where he is today, and encourages others to do the same.

“My best advice is to share and collaborate. The more I put into the community, the more I get out of it.”

– Anne Widjaja

John Moy Australia Post

Community Contributor



Gaining inspiration from the 2000 movie Pay It Forward, a movie about doing good deeds for other people and then seeing those deeds multiply, Tony de Thomasis spent most of 2011 adopting the concept to help university students secure jobs upon graduation, in addition to his ‘day job’ as SAP NetWeaver practice lead at Acclimation.

At Victoria University, de Thomasis lectures and mentors fifth-year Masters students in SAP – essentially providing a masterclass in how to become influential in the SAP industry. The students are taught about the value of community, who the main players in the community are, and how to become aligned with some of the industry experts. They are also taught about some of the tools available in the SAP ecosystem, the role of Twitter and Facebook, how to obtain information on SAP technology through these social media channels, and how to make their LinkedIn profiles look attractive to potential employers. As a Gold contributor to the SAP Community Network and author of articles for SAP Solution Manager and SearchSAP.com, de Thomasis practices what he preaches.

“The number one piece of advice I give to the students is about the social identity. Unless you’re part of the SAP ecosystem, you’re really not on top of some of the innovations and you’re not engaging,” he says.

De Thomasis believes in the importance of mentoring students at this early stage.

“I think the ecosystem is changing considerably. We’ve gone through the whole 360 degree view of outsourcing and now we’re into the stage of smartsourcing,” he says. “I try to teach them that there is a necessity for new understandings of how to participate in the community.”

Under de Thomasis’ guidance, the students are reaping the benefits of the head-start in the industry, with several students having already gained employment directly through the contacts he has been able to provide. One student got their first experience in the SAP industry with a six-week contract working for Spotless. Another student who has graduated is returning to the university to assist with presenting tutorials, effectively paying something forward to the next cohort of students.

This mentoring hasn’t just been beneficial for the students, it has also opened up the door to new opportunities for de Thomasis.

“It’s amazing when you pay something forward how many strange things come your way,” he says. “I ended up getting picked to go to SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando and I took the story of the course that I was doing to the Influencers’ Summit. They have a little get-together

with some of the major influencers in the new SAP ecosystem and I found myself telling this story to [SAP founder] Hasso Plattner. I had a one-on-one with the great man.”

De Thomasis presented at the SAP Run Better tour in New York and at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas, as well as numerous SAUG and SAP events in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and was part of the winning team for the first Innojam in Sydney.

Speaking and presenting is all well and good, but de Thomasis also stresses the importance of maintaining hands-on experience in new SAP technology. He was able to run the first Solution Manager 7.1 course in Australia, and during the year, created Solution Manager roadmaps for over 20 companies in Australia and New Zealand.

“The hands-on expertise comes courtesy of working with a number of really nice customers,” de Thomasis says. “Customers give you an opportunity to deploy something and learn as you go, so both parties learn. So as long as you have the collaborative attitude when you’re doing a job for a client, everybody benefits.”

Looking at the SAP market overall, de Thomasis believes sentiment is improving.

“There’s a lot of confidence with some larger SAP customers,” he says.

He cites as examples major projects at Spotless and Australia Post, and utilities companies starting to think about big data.

“People are now beginning to understand that we have to start being a little bit innovative with how we use the data to get more out of it,” de Thomasis says. “In the future, people are actually going to read more into the data and develop predictive models based on patterns in data.”

No matter where these trends take us, he believes paying it forward is the way to go.

“Always look to help others in the ecosystem and you’ll find it comes back at you.”

– Kirsten Wade

Tony de Thomasis Acclimation




Adrian EverettEverjoy Consulting


Whether it was implementing SAP systems at Taronga Zoo, or providing IT services for financial and HR/payroll transactions in NSW Government agencies, Jennifer Vasseleu has thoroughly enjoyed the projects she

has been a part of.Beginning her career in HR and rising through the

ranks to senior corporate services roles, she made the move to IT while working for Taronga Zoo.

Vasseleu was nominated for our Top 10 this year for “leading the SAP team for the implementation of the ServiceFirst SAP system for a number of years, resulting in a shared service system that supports over 30,000 people across multiple NSW Government agencies”.

As business development manager for ServiceFirst, a shared services provider within the NSW Department of Finance and Services, Vasseleu moved 12 agencies from various HR/payroll and financial systems to SAP over the last year.

In addition to building and rolling out the systems, there is a significant change management effort associated with such a significant program of work.

To assist with a successful transition, Vasseleu has

Jennifer Vasseleu NSW Government Department of Finance and Services

Project Leader

If being the director of SAP recruiting specialist Everjoy Consulting wasn’t keeping Adrian Everett busy enough, his volunteer work for the SAP Ecosystem Foundation (SAPEF) certainly will.

In 2011, Everett founded and launched SAPEF, together with

a number of the representatives of the ecosystem, as a not-for-profit organisation providing these companies with a unique opportunity to achieve their corporate responsibility goals by raising funds and awareness for Redkite, a charity focused on providing support for children and young people with cancer and their families.

Among the members of the SAPEF are several SAP partner companies including Articulate, Ciber, CSC Australia, Everjoy Consulting, Extend Technologies,

Oxygen Business Solutions, Plaut IT Australia, SAP Australia, Stream Technologies and Wipro.

The SAPEF was formed specifically to run the SAP Ecosystem Regatta for Redkite, with the inaugural event held in November last year. It saw over 150 SAP customers, partners, suppliers and professionals come together to compete, network and have fun, but most importantly raise much-needed funds for Redkite.

For Everett, this involved using his influence in the SAP community and further afield to appoint representatives to the Board, seek sponsorship, entrants and the donation of prizes for auction, work with other stakeholders, secure celebrity support, including Kerry Chikarovski who served as MC, and manage the event on the day. But all the hard work paid off.

“Certainly for year one, we did exceed the expectations of what we were looking to achieve,” Everett says. “The inputs and feedback we got from the SAP ecosystem reflected the benefits of the work we did in terms of actually raising $35,000, which was a lot more than anticipated.

“Being aligned with Redkite, which is SAP’s charity

focused on educating new users to ensure they are ready and willing to use the new tools.

Also critical has been taking the time to understand the needs of different agencies – essential to deliver an efficient solution that gives customers immediate benefits.

During 2011, Vasseleu has also contributed to growing the SAP expertise within ServiceFirst. She has mentored project managers in the ServiceFirst Enterprise Program Management Office, guiding them through SAP transition projects. She also conducted ‘Introduction to SAP’ workshops for a number of government agencies transitioning to a new system. Internally, her achievements were recently recognised with two ServiceFirst Staff Recognition Awards, for ‘Responsibility’ and ‘Collaboration’.

She has also contributed more to the SAP community more broadly by assisting Eventful Management in roundtable conference planning sessions for the ‘Mastering SAP’ series of events.


of choice as well, meant the profile and the cause we were working to was one that touched the lives of almost everybody who we invited and who wanted to participate,” Everett says. “Overall in terms of the team-building and networking opportunities the event presents as well, people were very keen to be involved.”

Having exceeded all expectations in the first year, SAPEF has set their sights on an even better 2012. “Our target this year is to actually double our revenue figures to $70,000 for Redkite, and double the number of boats from 15 to 30,” Everett says.

Pulling together such strong support for a good cause is complementary to Everett’s day job, providing recruitment solutions in areas including SAP and business intelligence. 2011 was an equally successful year for Everjoy.

“Everjoy Consulting is continuing to achieve 100 per cent growth and we are reaching new markets constantly, which is helping us to expand rapidly,” he says.

Everett believes 2012 will be full of opportunities for those who work in SAP, though he believes getting some large projects off the ground would support the momentum in the market.

In the meantime too, Everett is hard at work on making the 2012 Regatta a success for the SAPEF.

“We are now seeking sponsors for this year’s event, and of course, some more entrants for a great day on the water.”


– Kirsten Wade

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The Linfox Logistics business operates more than 3.2 million square metres of warehousing and nearly 5000 vehicles across 10 countries. More than 18,500 people are involved in delivering supply chain solutions to customers. As you might imagine, technology is a critical part of running these operations seamlessly, and John Ansley is the

man in charge. Ansley joined Linfox in 2009 with a wealth of

information technology experience, having worked at BHP, SAP, EMC, Rio Tinto and Roche Pharmaceuticals. Currently the president of supply chain solutions and chief information officer for Linfox Logistics, Ansley oversees the Supply Chain Solutions team, whose role is to develop specialised solutions for customers, support business development activities and identify new operating efficiencies.

The role of SAP at Linfox has come a long way since it was initially used in the back office areas of the company for the first time 13 years ago.

“It’s expanded now to be our major platform for both transport and warehousing,” Ansley says. Linfox has had, on average, a new go-live on an SAP solution every month for the last two years. “This has helped provide solutions to many of our multinational customers.”

Ansley is currently working with SAP on the next release of SAP’s Transport Management to bring third party logistics (3PL) functionality to the product. The project has involved workshops and meetings with SAP in Australia, China and Germany.

“The resultant product will bring new best in class capabilities to customers who choose to implement SAP for transport management,” he says.

Linfox continues to strive to find new ways forward for the transport and logistics industry. Under the guidance of Ansley, Linfox joined with Hamburg Süd, Casella Wines, Ericsson, GS1 Australia, Gamma Solutions, Google, Tradegate, XAct Solutions, Victoria University and the University of New South Wales, and founding members SAP and NICTA, to form the SAP Logistics Living Lab. Opened in 2011, the Living Lab is dedicated to creating new information technology for the transport and logistics

industry, and is the only one of its kind worldwide.Ansley and his team have also created a three-year SAP-

centric strategy to bring together many SAP and partner products. These products include SAP BusinessObjects, SAP TM9, SAP eWM, Ortec SCM, SNET Safety Suite, SAP HANA, SAP BW and SAP ECC6.0.

“Many companies in the logistics industry use SAP in parts of their business, but the strategy at Linfox will see SAP used across all business units as well as the support services areas, giving Linfox a unique service offering to our customers,” Ansley says.

Ansley draws on his knowledge of SAP in his role as one of four Steering Committee members on the Australian SAP CIO Council. The role sees Ansley regularly present to the Council and SAP on areas such as customer engagement and how to get the best out of your SAP investment.

“There is a camaraderie amongst the CIOs, who are all looking to get similar value out of the SAP ecosystem, and it’s great to be able to actually work together, really share some decent information and talk about the capabilities of the product or people we know in the marketplace,” Ansley says. “It’s been really accelerating in the couple of years I’ve been on it, and I think this year’s been the best.”

Looking ahead, Ansley sees SAP’s move into more niche products continuing.

“Their acquisition of key technologies, whether it’s around mobility or databases or even some of the solutions they’ve developed like extended Warehouse Management, their Transport Management capabilities – all those things, if you look at them as stand-alone products, they’re competing with the best in class,” he says. “I think from an SAP point of view that’s a trend that’s going to continue, that we’ll be able to look to them to provide some of the high-end capabilities that previously people went outside for.”

Being in charge of the technology development of such a significant SAP customer is not without its challenges, and Ansley says the keys to his success are planning, and having a network to reach out to for advice and assistance.

“I think the people who struggle the most are those that don’t spend as much time up front planning as they need to and also those that don’t have a network to fall back on when they do have an issue,” he says. “I’ve got good friends and connections around the globe that I can reach out to and say, ‘Who do you know in this space that could come and help me?’.”

– Kirsten Wade

John Ansley Linfox Logistics

Project Leader



Government has been a strong sector for SAP in recent years, and Rebecca Hanna has been involved in driving some key projects in several large departments.

Hanna spent most of 2011 at the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), where she was responsible for growing and developing its SAP Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions beyond being simple compliance-based solutions such as payroll, organisational structures and master data.

This included implementing Performance and Development Management solutions, a Career Development Framework solution for IT specialists, and the analysis phase of a departmental Enterprise Learning solution – all delivered via the SAP portal in Employee and Manager Self Service.

Then in September 2011, she moved to the role of director of the SAP design, development and support team at the Department of Infrastructure and Transport, where two major implementations are underway – a performance management solution and the SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management solution.

“Our organisation is the first in the public sector to use Disclosure Management,” Hanna says, adding that being at this leading edge can be a bit daunting, with no other agency to share information or experiences with.

“There’s that fear of being caught somewhere between the sales pitch and the reality – sometimes it’s quite minimal, and othertimes it can have a massive impact,” she says. “We’ve been lucky with this implementation, our partner has paved the way, and SAP has been very helpful and open to supporting us.”

Her move to Infrastructure has involved branching out from just focusing on HCM to managing all aspects of a department’s SAP solutions. It is perhaps a natural progression for Hanna, whose career began in the private sector in HR.

“This provided me with a well-rounded experience, and as I was deeply involved in all aspects of the business operations, systems and IT solutions, I had a strong interest in how it all worked,” she says. The opportunity came to transition into the public sector, and to begin working with SAP. “I haven’t looked back – the whole world of SAP is huge, there are just so many opportunities for people to grow and extend their careers, either as a user or in a design and development team.”

Many in the SAP user community would also know Hanna from the SAP Australian User Group. She served as a committee member for five years and as secretary for two years.

While she has stepped down from the committee, she remains involved with the SAUG as the HR Public Sector Special Interest Group lead.

“It’s quite a challenging role, but incredibly rewarding when all the pieces fall into place,” Hanna says.

She believes that businesses are starting to mature and realise the fundamental value of HR solutions in how they can help them make better decisions, not just fulfil compliance obligations.

“It is often said that our people are our biggest assets, and we invest heavily in the recruitment, training and maintaining of the skills of our people. Ensuring we manage all spheres of talent management right from the very beginning to the end is imperative to making sure we get it right from a business perspective – this is no longer just a Human Resources team responsibility.

“Once organisations empower and enable managers with the right skills and tools to take on that responsibility, in their day to day roles, I believe we will see a transformation that all organisations would benefit from,” Hanna says.

With such rapid evolution underway at SAP, she believes it is an exciting time to see what will result from the most recent acquisitions, particularly with SuccessFactors in the HCM space. She also sees significant potential for the SAP Business ByDesign and Rapid Deployment Solutions to be utilised in the public sector to better manage machinery of government changes.

“As government portfolios and departmental structures can change to meet the priorities of the government, we’re constantly aware of the impact of such departmental moves and how we must support this transition efficiently and effectively, yet maintain the integrity of data, history and the application of strong governance throughout the process, therefore, I see those solutions as potentially effective,” she says.

To achieve success in the world of SAP, Hanna advocates collaboration not only within your organisation, but also with the broader community.

“I would like to encourage everyone to become more active in the user group. All contributions are valuable to the community – you can give as much or as little as you can. It’s as simple as putting your hand up and be willing to share your experience ‘this is what we’ve done, and we’d like to show you and share it with you ’, or ‘we think what you’ve done is great, and we’d like to know more about it’. I believe it comes back to the intrinsic value of shared information, shared experience and knowledge.”

– Freya Purnell

Rebecca HannaAustralian Government Department of Infrastructure and Transport

Project Leader



2011 was all about stepping up for Gough Venter and Stream.

Venter, who is the Stream director of consulting services, led a team to secure a four-year support contract for national media organisation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Winning the contract showed how Stream could take on the big names when tendering in large enterprise. Venter says, “I spearheaded the bid and then had to wear multiple hats, firstly being the bid manager, then the account manager and support manager. Having an amazing team at Stream to support me made all the difference.”

The ABC, together with Stream, was awarded the SAP Customer Award of Excellence for Best SAP NetWeaver Project in 2011.

Other projects during the year included a large program in the

mining industry in partnership with PwC, involving 14 Stream consultants and an innovative approach to mobility.

In 2011, Stream also worked on further developing its support practices and processes, in tandem with achieving Gold Partner status with SAP. This was to a large extent attributed to a standout greenfield project at Valley Longwall, in which Stream sold and delivered a full SAP program.

“Our mid-market and large enterprise capabilities are coming together perfectly, bolstered by a robust support process.”

Venter puts Stream’s success over the last year down to a focus on growing its capabilities.

“We’ve always had smaller support contracts that we could manage on a case-by-case basis, but now, to get to this scale, we had to actually put ourselves in a position where we didn’t just manage support in an isolated way, we had to do it as a process,” he says.

Learning from its experience with the ABC and other support accounts, Stream has since hired some key staff and most recently a national support manager to “allow people to have a clear focus rather than wearing too many hats”.

With the more structured approach, Stream is expanding its

As Oxygen Business Solutions’ general manager – consulting and solutions, Stuart Dickinson leads its team of 150 SAP consultants based around the country.

In 2011, Oxygen was rewarded for its innovative work at the SAP Customer Awards of Excellence, taking out the title of Best

SAP CRM for its Integria Healthcare project, which saw the company implement mobile CRM functionality to its saleforce in just eight weeks, and Best SAP ERP with Channel for its work with Pacific Hydro.

Among other projects during 2011 were an SAP Business All-in-One implementation at Trility, a graphical works scheduler implementation at Newcrest and an Amcor technical upgrade to ECC6.0.

The company now has 12 awards to its name, and Dickinson

couldn’t be more pleased with their success over the last year. “Delivering a number of successful projects and getting our

customers recognised through the SAP rewards process has been particularly satisfying, as has been continuing to drive our practice and add great team members to the organisation, so we will continue to grow and build,” Dickinson says.

He believes having projects recognised with awards serves two purposes.

“It’s an opportunity for customers to get recognised internally within the organisation as being successful projects, and from our perspective, our consultants like participating in projects that are highly successful and visible, and it is external validation that we are doing good work,” Dickinson says.

This dual focus on happy customers and a happy team is critical to Oxygen’s success, he adds.

“I have a great team. They have been with our business for a long time, and they have very good customer relationships. So that’s enabled us to build trust with our customers and deliver the outcomes they are looking for.”

Oxygen has also kept up with the rapid pace of change in SAP by launching several new capabilities during the year,

Gough Venter Stream

Stuart Dickinson Oxygen Business Solutions

Partner

Partner

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regional offices with some recent big wins in Queensland.Like many other organisations in the SAP ANZ community,

Stream is finding it difficult to find the right staff. “We feel it’s not only about having the right skills, but also

about the right attitude and finding people that want to be part of Stream, working in a culture of continuous improvement and continuous innovation,” Venter says. “I’ve always been very strong in driving that the status quo is not always good enough. If you’re not moving forward, you’re actually moving backwards – there’s no such thing as standing still in our industry.”

Venter believes 2012 could see growth across a range of areas.“There’s a few areas in the SAP world I feel are really going

to blossom throughout 2012,” Venter says. “Cloud solutions like Business ByDesign and mobility will see a lot of growth. In-memory computing is getting a lot of hype, but I think it’s still a bit early and its time is still to come.”

For Stream, Venter sees mobility, portals and Stream’s own solutions as growth areas in large enterprise. For the mid-market, Business All-in-One and BusinessObjects licence deals will be a big focus, together with winning further support contracts.

“For mobility, I feel that it’s like the wave just before BW really kicked into gear eight years ago,” he says. “There’s been a lot of mobility growing over the years in different industries, but never has there been a time like now where enterprise-level mobility is working its way into all areas of organisations.”


– Kirsten Wade

including a technology partnership with Sybase Australia, the release of hosted cloud solution Oxygen on Demand, and the launch of SAP Business All-in-One implementation capability in New Zealand. Oxygen was also granted SAP Partner Centre of Expertise status for SAP BusinessObjects solutions across Australia and New Zealand, and became the local representative of the United Value Added Reseller Alliance.

Dickinson says that SAP’s constant drive towards product innovation provides Oxygen with more chances to grow.

“We’re upskilling and investing in proof of concepts with our clients around HANA and mobility, but we’re also doing a lot of work around core ERP. With Enhancement Pack 6 coming out, that gives customers additional functionality without going through full-on technical upgrades.”

Oxygen also maintained its activities in the ecosystem – through sponsorship and support of the SAP Australian User Group and the ‘Mastering SAP’ series of events with Eventful Management, and became a founding member of the SAP Ecosystem Foundation – an example of the interesting work the SAP ANZ community can do when it bands together.

“The Ecosystem Regatta was a good example of the community starting to work together, and trying to put something back as well, and I’m hoping that we will see more of that over the next couple of years,” Dickinson says.


-– Anne Widjaja and Freya Purnell



As CSC’s ERP solutions director, Iain Macleod has overseen a shift by its SAP practice to become a strong player in the government sector, particularly in the area of defence. During 2011, CSC won some major projects in this area, which it will be working on during 2012 and beyond, with Macleod heavily involved in

securing these deals. Another highlight for Macleod has been achieving wider

engagement and coverage in the natural resources market, particularly in oil and gas.

“Over the last three or four years, we’ve established very good credentials in that market as a premier partner to work with,” Macleod says.

On the agenda in 2011 for the CSC SAP practice were projects at INPEX, Superpartners, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Woodside, which included a mobility project.

While Macleod says Australia’s two-speed economy is affecting the SAP market as well as the rest of the economy, CSC is in something of a sweet spot, with its strengths in government and natural resources – sectors still travelling in the fast lane.

“Government are big investors in the next generation of business solutions, and in the SAP ecosystem we are seeing the benefit of that investment,” Macleod says.

In natural resources, exploration is ramping up around natural gas and coal seam gas, while commodity prices for coal and iron ore are making these operations more profitable.

“There’s a huge investment in new mines and infrastructure, and improving what is already there. The natural flipside is that it translates into IT spend, because systems underpin all that,” Macleod says.

Macleod was also active in the SAP community during 2011 – as a regular commentator at conferences, roundtable discussions and analyst briefings during the year. CSC was also one of the sponsors of the inaugural SAP Ecosystem Regatta for Redkite.

Looking ahead, Macleod believes that mobility, analytics and big data, in-memory, and hosting and software- or infrastructure-as-a-service will be some of the big trends shaping the way companies use SAP.

“We’ll probably see public and private cloud switch from hype and conference talk into real projects and real dollars. But it will be very competitive in that market and we will see commodity pricing. It will open up the market to more than just the traditional SAP providers,” Macleod says.

For its part, CSC kept pace with these changes with a number of launches in 2011 – Infrastructure Utility for cloud in support of SAP solutions, built on Vblock Infrastructure Platforms from the Virtual Computing Environment Company, and a Mobility Solution Gallery that leverages the Sybase Unwired Platform.

However 2011 also brought continued challenges around resourcing, according to Macleod.

“We’re really focused on certain areas and markets, and we’re finding it difficult to get the right people at the right time. That is an issue of geography as well – Queensland, Western Australia and Canberra are just tough markets all the time, and the boom market makes it worse,” he says.

It’s a similar story for many partners, and Macleod believes the answer might be in looking beyond the traditional sources.

“We need to think about bringing business people back into the ecosystem again, rather than just hiring IT people all the time. When I first went into the SAP market in the mid-90s, we set up project teams that were half business, half IT, and the business people then often became SAP consultants,” he says. “In the last 10 years, that hasn’t happened. We’ve started to bring in people from IT or from university, and the business knowledge and credibility has started to disappear.”

As a veteran of our Top 10, Macleod’s thoughts on becoming influential in the SAP community are simple – “it’s not rocket science, just deliver what you say you’re going to do”.

“Success is based on delivery of outcomes or solutions or projects. Focus on making sure your role is successfully delivered, that you’re close to the departments or clients you work with and understand what their needs are, and work with them when variations in the business requirements arise,” he says. “And ensure that in the ecosystem you work across, you are seen as a good operator, reliable, trustworthy – it’s just good business practice.”

– Freya Purnell

Iain Macleod CSC

Partner


CASE STUDY

When Coca-Cola Amatil began building its new $57 million manufacturing facility at Eastern Creek, Plaut IT was tasked with the challenge of integrating CCA’s overseas equipment suppliers’ systems to SAP. Anne Widjaja reports.

COCA-COLA AMATIL

Interfacing across the sea

BackgroundIn May 2011, Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) commenced construction of its new PET preform and closure facility at Eastern Creek, Sydney. The facility would produce PET bottle preforms and closures which would be used by the company to make its own bottles in-house on production lines within its facilities.

The process of making bottles involves the manufacture of plastic bottle closures (caps) and PET resin ‘preforms’, which are test-tube shaped moulds used to manufacture CCA’s plastic beverage bottles. The preforms are fed into high-tech PET bottle self-manufacture or ‘blow-fill’ machines so bottles can be blown and manufactured to CCA’s specific design. The new bottles being made by “blowfill” are all lighter in weight because less PET plastic is used, resulting in a reduction of 22 per cent in the carbon footprint of each bottle.

The challenge that had to be overcome was the linking of CCA’s facility systems with a number of overseas equipment suppliers. These suppliers held integral but different roles in the factory control system.

Michael Shirbin, major project manager, CCA, explained that the challenge was integrating these divergent roles with the manufacturing processes in the Eastern Creek facility.

“We needed an SAP middleware system to capture all of the information and details from the various equipment, and present it so we could visualise it and see it on one screen,” Shirbin says.

Plaut IT was brought in to the project to create this SAP middleware system to enable communications horizontally and vertically across the various CCA equipment suppliers.

Plaut identified that the SAP Manufacturing Intelligence Integration (MII) solution would be perfect for the job, with its capability to integrate suppliers, vendors and

customers across the supply chain and automating systems to effectively streamline manufacturing capabilities. Having had previous experience implementing the MII solution for other manufacturers, Plaut was tasked with the challenge of designing and building an MII system for CCA.

Implementation and challengesOver six weeks, between August and September 2011, the team at Plaut designed a fully customised MII solution for CCA. The requirement at the Eastern Creek facility was to take process orders generated by SAP and carry them to the injection moulding machines, so that they were able to make the preforms according to CCA parameters.

Plaut had to collaboratively create interface documentation with overseas third party vendors so that orders could be fully carried out at the Eastern Creek facility. This documentation outlined how information would be exchanged between MII and the vendor systems. Once this was determined, MII collected the information from vendors for display on an electronic dashboard. Plant operators were then able to check the dashboard to see how the systems were operating, even if they were remotely located.

John Broadbent, national solution lead, manufacturing integration for Plaut, said the MII solution, for example, enabled bins filled with preforms to be transported to different locations in the production line. MII would schedule laser-guided vehicles to pick up the bins, and would scan serialised barcodes on the bins to evaluate what part of the production process they were at. These barcodes contained details such as what line the bin had come from, how many preforms were in it and what SAP process order it was made against. MII then created the production receipt automatically for SAP.

The toughest challenge that Plaut faced in the

implementation was meeting the strict delivery schedule that CCA had set out. Broadbent said it was “hard and fast”, and Plaut also had to undertake parallel programming of various parts of the MII solution – a task that they’d never done before.

“As that programme got more and more compressed, we had to become more clever in the way that we did things,” Broadbent says.

Due to the business-critical timing of the implementation, it was crucial that a robust and thorough testing regime for the solution was developed before the Plaut team was able to start working on-site. This regime enabled an extremely tight commissioning window.

“We only got site network communication on the first day, and by 4pm the next day we were able to produce their first preforms in the injection moulding machines,” Broadbent says.

Plaut successfully designed a modular horizontal and vertical communication system using MII, with a total of 23 different interfaces, user management screens and system monitoring. The Plaut team also managed to effectively link CCA’s multitude of vendor-supplied systems with SAP.

In October, Plaut commenced the system build and installation of the MII system for CCA. Subsequently, CCA was able to integrate the whole plant seamlessly without human interaction.

Business benefitsShirbin has since reported that the MII solution has worked “very well”.

“Like anything you do have some issues, but we’re all confident that it’s going to be a valuable solution,” he says.

For CCA, the greatest success of the project has been the ability to view all the manufacturing systems in the Eastern Creek Facility in an easily accessible user management screen.

Shirbin compared the old system at the facility, where “if we wanted to know how the compressors were going we would have to go and look at them”, to the convenience of the fully functioning MII system.

“Now we have all that information coming to us, I can sit here in the office and on my computer screen see how they are all working,” he says.

Although communicating with overseas vendors was one of the greatest challenges of the project, Broadbent said that all the vendors actually “worked exceptionally well together”.

“Fortunately vendor politics didn’t enter into the project at all – it was very easy to come up with a resolution without having to spend weeks debating or discussing or going back to every country to try and get those results.”

Shirbin says that since reaping the benefits of the centralised communication system at the Eastern Creek facility, CCA would be likely to “go down a similar path” when rolling out other manufacturing facilities in the future. Plaut has already been commissioned to work on enhancements to the existing solution, providing CCA with additional functionality to improve quality management processes at the new facility.

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BackgroundOfficeworks is Australia’s largest retailer of office products and solutions catering to the commercial, home use and education markets. Opening its first store in 1994, Officeworks has grown to over 120 stores nationwide and is continually opening new stores to keep up with demand.While Officeworks had an existing (offline) mobile inventory solution in place, it did not integrate with the SAP inventory system and could not be updated remotely. This presented the organisation with several challenges, including: y Team members not having visibility of ‘real-time’ inventory levels;

y Orders, stock checks, and inventory enquiries all requiring manual intervention; and

y Stock levels which were often inaccurate.

Business requirementsOfficeworks required an inventory management solution for deployment in all their stores nationally. It needed to cater for real-time stock location and back order quantities for individual stores, as well as the four closest geographically located stores. Officeworks also required synchronous transaction processing to ensure real-time feedback to end users when updating transactions. This mobility project utilised Motorola handheld devices that were already in use and formed part of Officeworks’ larger ePOS Project.

The solution needed to be capable of running in both online and offline mode; support dynamic and remote access to update and check stock levels; be fully compatible with existing SAP software and future upgrades; reduce the time and complexity of existing tasks performed by team members; leverage the wireless infrastructure and hand-held technology already implemented in all stores; and be compatible with any future hardware and wireless upgrades.

The mobile solution also needed functionality such as price check, goods receipting, stock inquiry, transfer stock movement (for example, QI to unrestricted), stocktake, bin locations, and price label printing. Officeworks decided to roll out the complete solution in three separate phases.

The solutionSky Technologies was engaged to provide a solution, which was a ‘second generation’ SAP mobile deployment that required new functionality not available through the existing legacy system.

According to Sky, the SkyMobile solution reduced the time and complexity of existing tasks performed by team members, but also presented them with additional functionality, such as the ability to give feedback about the application directly to the IT department. This feedback provided the IT Department with information and suggestions on ways to improve the system, as well as confirmation that the application was of benefit and working successfully.

The SkyMobile application also allowed team members to perform label comparisons to ensure the product label and shelf label were compatible. This was done by simply scanning both labels with the handheld device. Similarly, a batch price check could be performed by scanning 10 products in a single pass, with any pricing errors displayed on the device screen. The application not only shortened existing manual steps in the business, but also automated some existing processes.

Business benefitsSome of the business benefits for Officeworks included an increase in the number of team members able to perform stock enquiries simultaneously and without leaving the sales floor. The Sky solution utilised existing hardware without the need for an upgrade, and with more than 700 devices deployed across more than 120 stores, the cost saving of this measure was substantial.

The internal IT team at Officeworks worked very closely with Sky engineers on the implementation. This helped the organisation realise the value of implementing a mobile framework that would manage all mobile transactions inside SAP. Having just one data source which was not replicated or duplicated on other devices would ensure true and accurate information at all times.

Matt Gurrie, general manager, IT and supply chain, Officeworks, says, “Being able to perform stock on hand product enquiries on our mobile devices is just one example of the great benefits we are seeing in moving to an online mobile application.”

The framework also provided the team with the knowledge that their system could evolve over time as their business needs changed and would support any device they decide to utilise in the future. The Officeworks IT team is now capable of enhancing and updating their mobile solution, thereby reducing the cost of ownership and their reliance on a vendor to make continued changes. This case study was prepared by Sky Technologies.

CASE STUDYOFFICEWORKS

Officeworks goes mobile for inventoryOffice products retailer Officeworks sought an online mobile inventory system to increase visibility, accuracy and productivity.


BackgroundQR National is both a young company and a very old company – once a single entity under QR Limited with a 145-year history, QR was separated into two companies in July 2010.

QR National moves more than $50 billion worth of freight by rail each year, has 756 locomotives and 16,000 wagons, and maintains around 2300 kilometres of network.

Presenting at the recent SAP Australian User Group Plenary in Brisbane, Peter Downey, manager LMS support, information services division, application delivery - enterprise for QR National, says, “We work in an industry that carries with it a number of safety obligations, a lot of governance and heavy regulation, so looking for a solution that addressed those requirements was key.”

These safety obligations are being formalised through a national rail safety worker competence framework. Under these requirements, rail transport operators must ensure that each rail safety worker on their operations is deemed competent to carry out their work, as measured against qualifications.

“As we move towards that, we have in our systems been working towards reporting on compliance requirements,” Downey says.

Fortunately, QR National is already a registered training organisation (RTO), offering rail operations and rail infrastructure units and qualifications, as well as first aid and construction qualifications.

With an extensive SAP landscape in place, Downey says QR National was able to integrate the LSO through the Finance and HR/Payroll components.

“We already work under a position-based learning mode. We developed, using BI and BW, compliance reporting and deployed functionality to managers to report on the compliance status of the workforce.

“We also initiated the use of appraisal functionality in SAP, customised some SAP workflow, and utilised course program structures and unique qualification groupings,” Downey says.

Some of this functionality is available as standard through the SAP LSO, while other components have been custom developed.

Ensuring staff carry required qualifications and accreditationsUsing a position-based learning model, QR National was able to assign qualifications to each type of position, with reports showing management which staff members are compliant against a qualification required for the position.

By accessing the LMS portal, workers are able to see whether they are compliant or non-compliant and the proficiency levels they need to obtain. It also shows a timeframe for when they need to be compliant, or when an existing qualification is due to expire.

This is maintained through Position Management, with tight control of the master data.

Using an SAP Business Warehouse (BW) custom compliance report, over 220 administrators within the business – those responsible for booking training – are able to see the qualification status of particular people, who needs to obtain a qualification, when qualifications expire and so on.

As Australia’s largest rail freight operator with a workforce of over 9000 staff across Queensland, QR National has stringent requirements around staff training and accreditation, and has used SAP Learning Solution (LSO) to manage organisational compliance. Freya Purnell reports.

Maintaining training and accreditation compliance

CHANGE MANAGEMENTQR NATIONAL


“It provides administrators of the business with an immediate way of accessing those qualifications that need to be monitored and addressed,” Downey says.

Managers needed similar information, but at a snapshot level instead, so a dashboard was developed in BW, which shows compliance by qualification groups, and forecasts when qualifications will expire. Within the dashboard, managers are also alerted if someone is booked for training, in order to help with workload planning.

“Managers can run a report in the dashboard about the compliance of every person in that organisational layer,” Downey says.

Using the HR system, this graphical report is delivered to managers that have direct reports. While the security is currently managed manually for these reports, Downey says they are looking at implementing role-based security in the future.

With a large number of contractors working on the QR National network, the company was also able to run safety sessions for around 1500 contractors and track these and the resulting qualifications in the LSO.

Appraisals on the goBecause the QR National workforce is very diverse and works across some quite remote areas, reaccreditation of workers can be a challenge.

“For example, the best way to assess a train driver is for the assessor to get on the train,” Downey says. “We wanted to empower our assessors to conduct that role without any hindrances, without having to bring them into the classroom.”

To streamline this process, QR National established a number of appraisal templates within SAP, accessible through a portal. These templates pull through the qualification requirements for certain positions, and the assessor can use the portal to store all assessment material, including assessment documents. By allowing the assessor to complete the process of determining the assessment outcome and impart the qualification if someone is competent, an additional administrative function is eliminated.

This process ensures that assessors are always using the most up-to-date appraisal document with the appropriate version control. As a dynamic document, the assessor is able to check if the worker has a current qualification or if it has expired.

“We have about 150 appraisal documents in SAP for assessors and instructors to access for various functions, including classroom delivery,” Downey says. “It eliminates the risk that people will be accredited using outdated criteria.”

Through the implementation of the Knowledge Management module, QR National was also able to retire half a dozen legacy document management systems across the organisation.

WorkflowQR National implemented a number of workflow items relating to qualifications. Managers and individuals are reminded 90, 60 and 30 days out from qualification expiry, and were given access to the learning portal and information

on how to renew qualifications. This system provides a self-enrolment functionality for

workers, as well as a capability for a manager to enrol an individual if they haven’t taken action to address a qualification requirement.

“Anything that is a mandatory requirement bypasses an approval process from the manager,” Downey says. “If someone has been told they have to do something, we’re not going to put a barrier up.”

Course programs and unique qualification groupsFor the RTO component, course programs work the same way that they do in tertiary institutions. Courses are grouped into different stages and learners can find out how the course is structured, what units of competency it aligns with, and dates when a course is offered.

“From the back end, we can track who is where in the program structure, and follow up with them,” Downey says.

One challenge, when using the LSO, was how QR National’s RTO could report on national units of competency through SAP, which doesn’t have this functionality natively.

The company overcame this by creating a national unit of competency group separation, which makes it easier to report for compliance purposes.

“You need to think ahead and do your planning to work out how you want to report on it, and what you want to report on,” Downey says.

Key learningsDowney says some of the key considerations for those seeking to implement a similar solution are to ensure position profiles are clean and well-maintained, if using position-based learning; focus on communication across the organisation about functionality such as dashboards to ensure maximum take-up; and monitor the system to understand how staff are using the tools and resources and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

“Now that we are moving torwards the rail safety requirements, we need to look at what we could be doing better, but considering now we have a lot of this infrastructure in place, the move towards that is not such a great leap.”


CHANGE MANAGEMENTPROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Realising the full benefits of financial process transformation investments

Transformation of financial processes, particularly accounts payable and procurement through automation, has proven popular amongst most large and multinational organisations seeking to improve governance and working capital while reducing operating costs. Touting a return on investment (ROI) of 12-18 months, IT and financial managers succeed in selling the benefits to the executive, but don’t always think and execute the project through to full benefits realisation.

Often overlooked or underestimated by business, IT and project managers in general, is the people aspect of large software implementations and the subsequent transformation that takes place, both at an operational and psychological level. From IT’s perspective, making sure the technology does what it is supposed to do is the number one priority. Thus, the term “project management” largely focuses on the methodical implementation of the software. While accounts payable automation isn’t considered in the same league as an ERP implementation, the impact of the process change on people is almost equally broad. Failing to adequately consider the needs of those impacted by the process change leads to frustration for managers and AP staff, reworking of solutions by IT, and slow adoption of the new solution by the organisation. The net result is another IT project failing to live up to its promises, and sidelined careers.

During a study of five large implementations of accounts payable (AP) automation systems, including both publicly traded companies and government organisations in Australia, it was conclusive that those considering automation could realise the benefits of the software much faster and make the transition far easier, with dedicated people, leadership plans, and improved process adoption and organisational training plans.

In addition, there is significant opportunity for specialist software vendors to create a point of difference with new customers to reduce overall project risk. By sharing their

understanding of the pain points experienced by existing customers around change management and working with them during the implementation to manage these issues, vendors are able to demonstrate true commitment to achieving real business value for new customers.

There are five key things that an organisation can do to manage the preceding change-related challenges based on the experiences of the most successful implementations.

1. Human resources capability: get the right people doing the right things quickly Objective selection and assessment prior to go-live can ensure that you have the right players in your AP team. Benchmarking the cognitive abilities, motivation, and the personality traits of the most successful operators and management in the new AP environment can be very valuable. Objectively assessing your team’s suitability (or lack thereof) based on industry best practice is important in the delivery of the organisational value promised in the business case.

After the Shared Services or Finance Manager ensures that adequate resources and support are provided to the team, the Project Manager (PM) becomes pivotal in setting the pace and approach to the project.

The PM determines the level of interaction with stakeholders, motivates the delivery team, works with AP and executives to deliver communication, and mitigates risks by understanding both capabilities and hurdles. Selection of an appropriately skilled, open and influential PM is critical to the start and successful achievement of project goals.

Matching your changing AP team’s needs to existing profiles and ensuring you have the right balance can undermine trust and build resistance unless managed in an open environment. AP teams are well aware that one of the aims of an automation project is to reduce staffing numbers, so organisations need to be straightforward in setting individual expectations. Those you desire to keep

Investing in a new solution to automate processes is one thing; ensuring you achieve the desired objectives is quite another. In this paper, Don Holley and Frank Volckmar discuss how you can successfully realise the benefits promised by this type of project.

Passion for Excellence. Commitment to Delivery.

Lodestone is a global management consultancy, committed to designing and delivering solutions that enable international, national and local companies to thrive in today’s complex business environment. We help our clients define measurable business benefits that we will achieve together, using our teams of client-focused consultants, who combine a passion for excellence with strong process and SAP skills and deep experience of transformational change in their industry.

To find out more about Lodestone call 02 8571 8300, email [email protected] or visit us at www.lodestonemc.com

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Solution Definition - turning established business

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Solution Implementation - designing and delivering solutions

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should be identified early and kept involved in the project development and implementation. Others need to be retained until the team has adjusted to the new workload and initial “double invoice” volumes have been processed. This is often necessary while AP team members are learning the new process and receiving new invoices from suppliers and old invoices from line managers.

2. Get executive support not just for the business case, but also the change plan Make sure that your project plan incorporates a pre- and post-implementation communication strategy with support and directive from an executive leadership level. Communicating the importance of the project and explaining the organisational benefits from this level down, opens the road to easier and quicker acceptance and cooperation from the organisation.

It is an unusual organisation that is able to lead significant change from middle management without executives communicating the vision. A measured commitment of support from the line of business executive greatly assists the implementation team in encouraging feedback, participation, and adoption by managers.

Often changes such as this are treated as a discrete technology project. However, both benefits and impacts, as is the case with AP automation, are far-reaching across the organisation. Without executive support and buy-in, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the PM and the project team to get traction and manage resistance if and when it is encountered.

Best practice is for the executive sponsor(s) to review, challenge, and support the change management plans to ensure they are appropriate in terms of risks, scope, capabilities, pace and resources. If your internal change capability does not have the adequate competencies,

some outside specialist assistance should be considered. Commitment from the executive team is important as this transformation can take up to 12 months.

Create an Executive Steering Committee which consists of key Finance and IT executives, executive(s) from the vendor, and PM, to discuss implementation, resourcing issues and progress towards business outcomes. This Committee is key to ensuring adequate support and attention is paid to process adoption and training challenges. Such steering committees lift the focus of project teams beyond implementation milestones to business outcomes and short circuit implementation delays, by ensuring both client and vendor implementation teams are in sync.

3. Engage the critical mass: people don’t learn change, they allow it Involve key stakeholders early in the change process.

Facilitating key stakeholder group sessions to gain their input and feedback as well as develop a greater understanding of the impact of the change process, will significantly improve adoption of the new technology. These workshops should be positive, collaborative and interactive, and are best facilitated by a professional who can provide the format that both excites the participants and allows them a greater degree of comfort about the change process.

Most organisations find a two or three phase program, with the first phase being a pilot, is best to ensure the new process is tested and refined before rolling out to the entire organisation. Together with champions, facts and an inclusive approach, phasing a project will “snowball” the adoption of a new process.

The most common pitfall made in “engaging the critical mass” is to focus the conversation and training on the “new system” rather than the “new process”. Adopting a new process is much more than learning how to use the new software and requires an understanding of which behaviours need to change and why. Vendors are well equipped for system training and have numerous manuals on offer. The majority of your end users however, do not have time to review the manuals and need a simpler, higher level approach. Best practice is to review the process thoroughly, and identify in detail, the behavioural changes and possible objections that are required. A framework for process adoption, together with business metrics/KPIs, is then executed to foresee and manage any adoption risks.

4. Tailor your training to your organisation Most software vendors will provide technical manuals and assist in the technical training. Investing in a tailored training program, using organisation-specific examples, would be most effective based on our research. This is often left to the AP team, which is heavily involved in working with the new system, but may not be experienced

Accounts Payable -

Managers and Staff

Stakeholders of accounts

payable process

Suppliers to the

organisation

Line Management

CHANGE MANAGEMENTPROCESS TRANSFORMATION

training developers. Managing this process can also minimise errors and frustration for line managers, once again realising benefits faster.

Using the input from the stakeholder assessment, a detailed training strategy including both expert and casual users may be developed. While the expert users benefit from involvement in process design workshops and user acceptance training (UAT) during implementation, designing the solution for casual users and making it intuitive to use is critical. Organisations consider a combination of solutions including direct training, quick reference cards, online training and process manuals. The appropriate solution for your organisation depends on the number and distribution of stakeholders, cultural propensity to conform to processes, access to online systems, and process understanding.

5. Focus on and communicate the business benefits With niche solutions such as AP automation, sometimes the benefits of the software to the entire organisation can be overlooked. Not just what the software does, but the broader business value that can include financial, efficiency, productivity, and governance benefits.

Appealing to different stakeholder groups and outlining ‘what’s in it for them’ is recommended. Expanding your communication plan to incorporate such considerations will also accelerate acceptance.

Identify and measure metrics reflecting the performance of your new process against the manual process and your business targets, and stay with the project until the goals are achieved.

Leveraging and respecting feedback from champions from each user group in an inclusive manner improves the process, increases buy-in and communicates successes. Maintaining a structured feedback loop with the user community does take extra effort by the implementation team, but ultimately lifts overall performance for the business. Follow Mark Twain’s wisdom, “I made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter”, and spend a little more time getting to understand stakeholders and planning to streamline your end result.

Don Holley is managing director of Mindset Group, and Frank Volckmar is managing director of ReadSoft Pty Ltd (Australia), This is an extract of the white paper, ‘Making Change Happen’, published by ReadSoft. To download the full version of this paper, visit http://info.readsoft.com/au_changemgt_WPoffer_2012aprLP.html.


TECHNOLOGYTHOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Next Generation CIO: Four radical shifts transforming the CIO’s roleIn this article, Norbert Kettner, Oliver Klein, Christian Bartsch, and Kris Ammann of Lodestone Management Consulting discuss the changing role of the CIO, supported by recent studies and Lodestone’s own consulting experience.

The role of the Chief Information Officer has fundamentally changed over the past years. Long gone are the days as the key responsibility of a CIO consisted of fulfilling the business’ technical requirements. His sphere of influence is expanding continuously, moves closer to the business and increases in complexity. The CIO of today has to contribute to corporate strategy and processes in line with applying new and relevant technology, in order to optimise business performance. As a consequence, the Chief Information Officer role as we know it today will undergo a radical shift to a Chief Integration Officer with a stronger business orientation and global responsibilities.

Since the 1970s, several technology leaps impacted the CIO’s role and scope of duty consistently. Within the ‘Mainframe Age’ – lasting until the early 1990s – the CIO was merely considered to be a data centre manager overseeing mainframes and early standard systems – such as R/2 – and processing crude accounting data. The first financial software applications enabled process automation and replaced manual accounting. With the rise of Client/Server technology, this role changed dramatically. The next technological cycle with integrated ERP systems became available and provided consistent technological structures, stringent application logic, high performance and increased usability.

SAP R/3 started to replace its mainframe predecessors. The ‘Client/Server Age’ triggered the commercialisation of computers and pushed process automation to the next level. Standardisation of the clients, for example by rolling out graphical user interfaces, enabled technological harmonisation across the enterprise.

The advantage of harmonisation was that companies had profound knowledge about the software employees were working with. As a consequence, system landscape consolidation was fairly easy and IT controllable. Consolidation will not be as straightforward anymore, as the ‘Network Age’ is about to change the status quo.

The ‘Network Age’ is characterised by highly flexible and

scalable architectures, multiple platforms, network-oriented organisations and technologies, collaborative processes and a CIO understanding and evaluating these technologies.

Mobile devices, apps, cloud computing, open source, blogs and social networks already have a huge impact on the way companies control and manage applications and data. Completely new data management models are required, which has a clear consequence: the Next Generation CIO will have to find answers to more integrative and strategic questions and needs to assure that IT excellence is transformed into measurable business value.

This finding is underpinned by a variety of reviewed studies. In the following sections, the focus will be put on the latest results of the survey conducted between March 2011 and June 2011 by Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences (UAS)1.

The representative study primarily covers the feedback of CIOs working for multinational enterprises (MNEs) in manufacturing, service and commercial industries, with a total revenue of more than one billion euros and employing more than 1000 people. The CIOs were surveyed with respect to a potential change of their role in the future. This study in particular (primary research) as well as further studies published by recognised analysts and consulting companies (secondary research) between 2007 and 20112-10 draw a clear picture about the future CIO’s role: the role of the CIO is inevitably about to change, for which the following four radical shifts are assumed to be the strongest impulses.

I. Enterprise Resource Planning shifts to Global Resource PlanningToday’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are increasingly replaced by Global Resource Planning (GRP) systems. In other words, the number of ERP systems within enterprises will decrease significantly over the coming five years, according to the study of Ingolstadt UAS. Only approximately 50 per cent of surveyed companies

employ less than five ERP systems, while the rest still operates 20, 30 or more systems, which in many cases are neither aligned nor integrated. One of the reasons for this tremendous number is the increasing complexity of organisation structures, with enterprises being regionally organised, consisting of divisions and subsidiaries.

In today’s closely interlinked world, corporations are strongly influenced by global processes. This requires integrated global systems, which consequently leads to a consolidation of the ERP systems landscape. Already today, a majority of IT projects aim at harmonising multiple ERPs. The Ingolstadt UAS study quantifies the share of MNEs operating less than five ERP systems to 75 per cent.

At the same time, none of the surveyed enterprises will continue to employ more than 20 systems. Therefore, as the consolidation of multiple ERPs becomes a key success factor for strengthening competitiveness, CIOs have to focus on the integration of existing business processes – throughout all regions, divisions, subsidiaries and departments.

According to HfS Research13, 59 per cent of the companies expect an increase of in-house shared service centres over the next years, while only 15 per cent believe that services will be delivered from locally integrated providers. This trend, which will dramatically change the existing ERP landscape and drive business process transformation, can be explained with the great potential of cost savings and efficiency increases, for instance through higher degrees of standardisation across company and geographical boundaries for standardised functions such as finance, accounting or HR. A requirement for this, however, is globally integrated systems.

In highly competitive industries, as, for instance, the automotive supplier industry, services have already been outsourced to achieve additional cost savings and stay competitive. Of the companies surveyed by HfS, 73 per cent expect outsourcing to increase significantly as well. In any case, both shared service delivery as well as outsourcing fundamentally require an evaluation of the number of locations, size of the service provider portfolio, the sourcing strategy as well as the business process execution.

II. Network Value Chain shifts to Enterprise Value ChainThe second shift that will radically change the CIO’s role is the transformation from classical Enterprise Value Chains (EVC) towards value delivery from global networks – or Network Value Chains (NVC). Business functions will be executed by customers, suppliers and business partners who can

deliver professionally and at lower costs across regional and divisional company boundaries.

In the future, the IT’s business value contribution is measured by integrating customers, suppliers and business partners. The result is that the trend towards outsourcing will remain and CIOs will increasingly focus on the integration of external applications and infrastructures. Through this, entire divisions will be outsourced and the capability to integrate all business partners and their infrastructures will become a critical success factor for businesses.

In the automotive industry, experts estimate that suppliers will become the main engine of job and value growth in the future. By 2015, 70 per cent of the value within automotive industry will be generated by suppliers14. This high number can be explained by the producers’ acquisition of manufacturing capacities and know-how in order to decrease their own average percentage completion rate – due to cost constraints or the strive for reduced market entry barriers.

IT and logistics lead outsourcingThe US-based producer of sports apparel, Nike, is a good example for sustaining a Network Value Chain, as they outsourced the entire production and logistics to business partners and only keep marketing and project management in-house.

While a decade ago Nike was the exception, this

operating model is nowadays increasingly observed among traditional companies as well.

The consequences of this on IT are tremendous: ERP systems that have been customised for a value chain are “torn apart” in order to be able to exploit the full potential of synergies from completely integrated external business partners in the value chain. Highly standardised data structures, processes, contracts and service classifications are examples which contribute to the optimisation of the business value.

Looking at the current business value contribution of IT, Ingolstadt UAS demonstrates that the analysis of business processes and the processing of resulting information are attributed the highest value and accordingly, are supposed to contribute the largest share towards business profitability.

Second comes the automation and standardisation as well as the design of business processes. IT finishes fifth and sixth only for the integration of business partners as well as suppliers and customers. A possible reason for this is an incomplete integration of key stakeholders, as it is often the case. This, however, also points to a great potential to increase the IT’s value proposition.

The outsourcing landscape shows an interesting picture: More than 65 per cent of the companies surveyed by Ingolstadt UAS outsource at least parts of their indirect processes, while IT shows the highest degree of outsourcing with 91 per cent.

Yet, also in product communication, legal, communication, HR and finance, parts of the processes are outsourced by the companies. Only 17 per cent outsource more than 40 per cent of the functions, however, which

also shows great potential for optimisation. With direct processes, the values are significantly lower, as only

about half of the surveyed companies outsource, especially in logistics (86 per cent), services (71

per cent) as well as manufacturing (63 per cent). The fourth, fifth and sixth runner-

up are procurement, R&D and sales processes. At the same time, only 9

per cent outsource more than 40 per cent of the functions.

In both direct as well as indirect processes, the

degree of outsourcing still has great

potential and will increase

in the years

to

come. Approximately 75 per cent of surveyed companies expect a moderate to high increase through 2015, which will drive the shift towards Network Value Chains.

In the future, outsourcing and the operation of a Network Value Chain will be inherent building blocks to maximise competitiveness on a global scale. Even though this process will probably not be perceived as radical by many CIOs, its consequences certainly will. The CIOs will have to prepare for a far closer collaboration with a broader diversity of business partners, whose processes and data structures might diverge considerably. If the CIOs do not plan for this shift, parts of the IT’s business value contribution will be lost, even though outsourcing to external service providers entail cost advantages.

III. Projects shift to portfolioIn the ‘Network Age’, the complexity of emerging technologies increases dramatically. This is primarily caused by intensive use of smartphones, tablet-PCs and other mobile devices. The internet has a share in this as the use of blogs, forums and social networks establishes new forms of communication and collaboration. New technologies such as cloud computing are a consequence of this trend. In this context, more than 50 new technologies need to be analysed and evaluated with respect to their costs and benefits as well as practical feasibility.

The implication for companies and their CIOs is that their employees need to be trained in order to provide answers to the following questions in the future: who requires which business processes on the iPad or any other mobile device? What is the overall business value of mobile business processes and where can it be realised? Are service orders to be processed by employees or bank transactions by clients on mobile devices? Is it required that the products can be ordered from the mobile device? If yes, which users are eligible to do so? How can mobile business processes be integrated into the overall system landscape? Does a company need to pay attention to product and service comments published in social networks and can this have an impact to the business? Is a business function allowed to use a cloud-based CRM system without IT approval? IT departments have to provide sustainable and reliable answers to these questions in a standardised and demanding manner.

It’s all about technologyThe Project to Portfolio Shift is a significant change compared to the ‘Client/Server Age’ where the only question to be answered used to be: do we need to roll out Microsoft, Oracle or SAP or should we use other, smaller software providers? Decision-making about tools was primarily based on the features of standard ERP systems provided as the technological basis was rather identical. Today, things are different. The email example shows that companies take

TECHNOLOGYLEADERSHIP


The Next Generation CIO will act as a mediator and integrator between technology and the business

driving innovation and information intelligence.Lodestone Management Consulting CIO Study 2011

strategic decisions not only about the target application itself but also on completely new technologies. It will make a difference if the company uses a client-based Microsoft Outlook or a web-based service such as Google Mail.

According to Capgemini12, virtualisation technologies are still a top priority on the CIO’s agenda. Although master data and risk management as well as integration of standard and customised software are very popular as well, the degree of implementation differs by far. A highly mature virtualisation technology implementation does not necessarily imply that an adequate master data and risk management is in place. If technologies such as cloud computing, mobile devices, user interfaces or smartphones, including different operating systems and combined with social media topics, are added on top of an IT environment, system complexity increases dramatically. To complicate matters further, the half-life of new technologies is becoming shorter and shorter (sometimes changes on a yearly basis) and some do not have the maturity level in order to meet compliance requirements: for example, the iPad is still far from fulfilling adequate security standards compared to a full-grown notebook operating system.

Projects will therefore be managed as a portfolio of investments including the full scope of activities required to generate business value. Evaluating and managing complex global IT portfolios will replace simple project sequencing. Additionally, a portfolio is closely related to the pursued strategy (innovation, market leader, and so on). As a result, a consequent and holistic portfolio management must become the new paradigm to be able to measure, control and manage diverse and complex application and infrastructure landscapes including related processes. A multi-dimensional and holistic evaluation model (including costs, benefits and security) is required to perform adequate analysis and provide a sound basis for decision-making.

The ‘Network Age’ will require IT portfolio management to assess the value, applicability and risk of new technology. In the future, a set of portfolios (service, application, project, vendor and so on) needs to be managed holistically and, to generate best results, measuring and communicating the value of IT investments will be very important.

IV. Secondary shifts to primaryThe fourth radical shift will upgrade the status of IT within companies. Due to its increasing importance, IT must not be considered as an indirect function (cost centre) within the business value chain anymore. IT features similar characteristics to logistics, indirectly adding value to a product. In fact, IT should be considered a direct function,

as it contributes directly to business value generation. As Ingolstadt UAS confirms, the change of the mindset has recently started. Approximately a quarter (27 per cent) of the interviewed CIOs consider themselves to be drivers of business process optimisation, whereas the remaining CIOs (69 per cent) see themselves in a supporting function or not contributing at all (4 per cent).

This is a remarkable finding considering that IT is a key success factor for realising business processes and increasing business value. The degree of IT penetration will increase from 59 per cent today to 88 per cent in 2015, indicating that companies will be more IT dependent in the future.

As a consequence, IT has to prove, more than ever, that IT investments deliver value to the business and gain the expected return on investment.

Measuring process costsDue to this ‘new’ importance of IT, it will become essential to measure IT process costs effectively and efficiently. In the future, almost every activity in the primary value chain will mainly depend on IT. This is required in order to provide the right level of aggregated information for making decisions with respect to vestments in new technologies such as cloud computing. Personnel expenses used to be the main cost pool, whereas nowadays, this role has moved to IT. Hence, IT should be able to prove the increase in efficiency for every business process.

Referring to the study by Ingolstadt UAS, IT departments have no exclusive responsibility for costs within a company at all. Thirty-two per cent of the business functions have single responsible for IT costs whereas 42 per cent share cost responsibility between IT and the business. Twenty-six per cent of the interviewed CIOs responded that no IT process costs are collected at all. This situation will change as soon as CIOs gain more accountability for processes. CIOs being part of the board and reporting directly to the CEO (31 per cent) can operate more strategically than their colleagues reporting to the CFO (41 per cent) or COO (8 per cent). The overall business benefit as well as the IT contribution to the business value is higher and CIOs can act as innovation drivers more efficiently. Therefore, CIOs should directly report to CEOs in order to leverage the shift from IT being a secondary to becoming a primary process.

IT has to be shifted from a support function to a primary function in the value chain with increasing business importance. Within the value chain, IT will become a core enabler for business process integration and execution. In addition, CIOs are change request takers in almost 54 per cent of the cases. Whilst today, the fulfilment of business

requirements by the IT department still is based on a formalised requirements process, the CIO’s importance in contributing to the overall business strategy will increase in the future.

ConclusionThe role of the Chief Information Officer has fundamentally changed over the past years. Long gone are the days as the key responsibility of a CIO consisted of fulfilling the business’ technical requirements. His sphere of influence is expanding continuously, moves closer to the business and increases in complexity. The CIO of today has to contribute to corporate strategy and –processes, in order to optimise the performance of the business.

References1. Raab, A. The future CIO’s role. University of Applied

Sciences, Ingolstadt, Germany, 2011.2. Aron, D. & McDonald, M. Reimagining IT: The 2011

CIO Agenda. Gartner, 2011.3. Wang, R. The Four Personas of the Next-Generation

CIO. Harvard Business Review, 2011.4. Brown, E.G. & Van Metre, E. Role Profile: The CIO.

Forrester Research, 2008.5. Gartner. Meeting the challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda.

Gartner Executive Program, 2009.6. Cameron, B. & Peters, A. CIOs Are Transforming IT

To Enable Business, Cut Costs, And Become More Service-Focused. Forrester Research, 2010.

7. IBM Corporation. The New CIO: Change Partner and Business Leader, 2007.

8. Mahoney, J. CIOs Must Seize the Emerging Role of Connecting All Digital Technologies in the Enterprise. Gartner, 2010.

9. Fersht, P. The Evolution Of Business Services, HfS Research, 2011.

10. Symons, C. The Five Essential Metrics for Managing IT. Forrester Research, 2008.

11. International Data Corporation (IDC). Swiss IT 2011, 2011.

12. Capgemini. IT-Trends 2011, 2011.13. Fersht, P. & Filippone, T., et.al. The evolution of global

business services: Enhancing the benefits of shared services and outsourcing. HfS Research, 2011.

14. Dannenberg, J. & Kleinhans, C. The Coming Age of Collaboration in the Automotive Industry. Mercer Management Journal 17, 2007.

This paper was authored by Norbert Kettner, CEO, Lodestone Management Consulting (LMC), Germany; Oliver Klein, director, LMC, Germany; Christian Bartsch, senior consultant, LMC, Germany; and Kris Ammann, consultant, LMC, Switzerland. www.lodestonemc.com

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TECHNOLOGYPERFORMANCE

Maximising performance of your SAP system

SAP application performance (speed and availability) is becoming a major focus as companies increasingly rely on their SAP systems to support employee productivity, partner collaboration, customer relationships, revenues, brand equity and growth.

Traditionally, SAP solutions were installed on-premise; that is, the software was installed locally at each customer’s facilities. In this scenario, there was software installed on a server (the core application functionality and the database), as well as on the client machine (each user’s computer). While SAP still offers these on-premise solutions, they also offer pure web-based solutions, available on-demand. In such a scenario, the software is hosted at an SAP data centre and every user accesses the system through a web browser over the internet.

Undoubtedly, SAP’s service-oriented architecture can help provide significant business advantages including increased efficiency, adaptability, flexibility and openness. But moving to a service-oriented architecture for your ERP system can create challenges, because SAP software can only do the job it is designed for if the overall IT infrastructure is stable and reliable, and able to quickly respond to users’ requests. In order to ensure that SAP technology runs effectively, everything from the computing platforms to database and network connections must be running with maximum efficiency. SAP-driven business processes will be successful only if all these components work properly, in unison. This can pose nightmares for IT teams that are responsible for managing SAP application performance and ensuring positive user experiences.

Key requirements for an SAP performance management solutionAs SAP continues to provide invaluable tools to facilitate business process and collaboration, regardless of how it’s delivered (on-premise or Software-as-a-Service), insight into SAP user performance becomes imperative. Without understanding how performance impacts end users and in which locations performance issues frequently arise, your SAP investments won’t deliver on their promises. There are three elements to consider when evaluating SAP performance management solutions:

1. End-user experience: End-user experience monitoring is the first step in a comprehensive, end-to-end application performance management approach. In recent years, the focus has moved to real end-user experience monitoring, as opposed to capturing some proxy of that end user experience. Utilising synthetic transactions is still seen as valuable in a supplementary way, but the main event around end-user experience monitoring is being able to capture what is actually going on when an end user is accessing the system.

To identify SAP application performance problems and their impact on the business, you need to know what end users are accessing which areas of your SAP application and what levels of performance they’re experiencing.

2. Deep-dive analysis: Identifying that there is a problem is a start but to fix problems requires locating the root cause. Only a tool with functionality that can dive deep under the many layers of today’s complex systems can uncover the all too often elusive root causes of SAP performance problems. Conducting a deep-dive analysis is a multi-step process involving:

y Runtime application architecture discovery, modelling

With many companies running their critical business processes on SAP, high availability and acceptable speed of the business software environment are essential requirements.

and display – software and hardware components involved in application execution, and their communication paths, are studied to establish the potential scope of the problem;

y User-defined transaction profiling – examining user-defined transactions as they move across the paths to identify the source of the problem; and

y Analytics, to establish meaningful patterns and ultimately anticipate future issues that may impact end-users.3. Unified dashboards: To rapidly resolve SAP

performance issues requires an easily understood single source of truth which all lines of IT and business can use to collaborate quickly.

Companies can only be successful if their business processes are efficient. A disruption of a critical process can result in a financial loss due to, for example, unproductive working hours, lost sales, or delays in production, order fulfilment or logistics.

Companies worldwide have been making major investments in SAP software to improve business-critical processes. Consequently, SAP software is a vital asset for these companies. Any problem with the application,

such as unavailability or delayed completion of tasks, poses a significant financial risk.

Effective SAP performance management offers an instant, in-depth insight into the performance of an SAP environment. Without such a solution, it is very difficult to quickly detect the root cause of performance problems as they occur and to resolve the issues with minimum disruption to SAP end users.

Unfortunately, when SAP users encounter performance problems they generally fall back on using traditional manual processes that existed before the application was implemented. This can, in turn, impact any expected return on investment (ROI) from implementing SAP. For this reason, it is vital that SAP customers keep a close eye on their SAP environment’s performance. Proactively gauging and understanding the end user’s real experience is the first critical step.

For further enquiries, contact Compuware on (02) 8875 5000 or www.compuware.com.au.

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TECHNOLOGYPERFORMANCE


CAREERSON THE MOVE

Here we bring you our regular round-up of who is going where in the industry. If you have changed jobs recently or hired some new staff, email us at [email protected]. By Anne Widjaja.

On the Move

Joshua Fletcher, ASG GroupIT business solutions provider ASG Group has recently appointed Joshua Fletcher to the position of national practice manager.

Fletcher’s role will involve driving the growth of ASG’s BusinessObjects capabilities, with a focus on extending and developing operations within a national model. Fletcher will also be responsible for leading the growth in ASG’s capabilities around HANA, Sybase IQ and mobility.

With more than a decade of professional experience with SAP BusinessObjects and as an active member of the SAP BI community, Fletcher appears to be the perfect fit for his new role. Fletcher regularly contributes to podcasts as part of the DSlayer.net podcast network and has also presented at SAP conferences both domestically and internationally.

Commenting on ASG’s recent expansion, Fletcher believes that his new appointment has come at a good time. “With ASG’s recent acquisitions of Courtland Business Solutions and Progress Pacific, it is the right time to join ASG’s SAP line of business,” said Fletcher.

Fletcher also spoke about the great potential for ASG’s future in the SAP market.“ASG’s SAP team has great talent and experienced people, topped off with an

excellent culture. I am excited to have the opportunity to shape the growth and success of ASG’s SAP business, making ASG the SAP partner of choice,” he said.

Mark Baker, SAP Australian User GroupMark Baker has joined the SAP Australian User Group (SAUG) in the newly established role of chief executive officer.

The position was created following a third party strategic review of the organisation’s business model, undertaken in late 2010. In recognition of the growing size, complexity and changing focus of the SAUG, the 2011 SAUG committee initiated the implementation of the review’s recommendations, which included a restructuring of the organisation.

Baker brings to the role significant experience in events, business management and particularly, working with member associations.

Prior to joining the SAUG, Baker was the general manager, exhibitions, for the Australian Gift and Homewares Association (AGHA), a national self-funding not-for-profit organisation. He was responsible for sales, marketing and the staging of the AGHA’s three annual Home & Giving trade fairs, which were among the largest trade events in Australia.

Baker previously served as general manager of the Exhibition and Event Association of Australasia, and has also worked in the areas of publishing, media buying and sports marketing.

With the SAUG’s flagship event, the Summit, coming together with the SAP Forum for the first time this year, Baker said one of his priorities is continuing to strengthen the relationship with SAP, while still maintaining SAUG’s independence, and growing the benefits to members.

Brought to you by the SAP people specialists

Kimmi Siu, Extend TechnologiesKimmi Siu has been appointed to the role of marketing campaign manager at Extend Technologies Australia. Siu will be working in the Extend Technologies national sales and marketing team with a focus on campaign delivery into strategic accounts and digital marketing uptake.

Siu has channelled her passion for global marketing throughout her 11-year career, with seven of those years in marketing roles within the IT industry. Beginning her career in the Queensland public sector and then moving into IT, Siu has held pivotal roles in leading change management and implementing long-term strategies for business sustainability, lead generation and stakeholder engagement for organisations such as CIBER and CSC Australia. Siu also spent four years as the APAC field marketing manager for Gartner Research. Throughout her career, Siu has executed over 250 strategy-driven business acquisition campaigns with impressive ROI achievements.

Nikki Van Winden, national marketing manager, Extend Technologies, is thrilled to welcome Siu to the Extend family.

“Kimmi’s experience and knowledge, teamed with her existing industry and partner relationships, not to mention her incomparable energy, is sure to be an asset to our team,” said Van Winden.


Lisa Christy, SAP ANZSAP Australia and New Zealand (SAP ANZ) has appointed Lisa Christy as director of human resources.

With more than 20 years of professional HR experience, Christy joins SAP from Microsoft where she was a senior HR manager, focusing on developing leadership capabilities and management excellence. Previously, she was senior HR director at Gartner Asia Pacific, managing the HR strategy and operations across 12 countries, and prior to joining Gartner, worked at Oracle as HRBP and compensation and benefits manager for five years.

As a member of the SAP ANZ senior executive team, Christy will play a significant role in driving people initiatives to enable business success and achieve positive employee engagement across SAP ANZ. She will be responsible for enabling the success of the organisation through its human capital management. This involves recruiting and retaining top talent, developing and leading employee engagement, and building leadership readiness through career development plans.

“SAP is a company with great people, talent and culture. With the recent acquisitions of Sybase and SuccessFactors, as well as with our innovation strategy, it is the right time to be at SAP,” said Christy. “I look forward to contributing to the company’s success, and being part of the journey of making SAP ANZ the Employer of Choice.”

Gavin Ning, ICON IntegrationSenior NetWeaver/technical consultant Gavin Ning has rejoined former colleagues at leading SAP delivery solutions specialist, ICON Integration.

Ning has spent the last decade developing SAP mobile applications and middleware interfaces. He delivered radio frequency (RF) and logistics solutions with SAP mobile solutions consultants, Consulting Principles, for more than five years. Ning has also worked as an ABAP developer for many large organisations that already run SAP, especially in the FMCG and distribution industries.

Having worked for HCL Axon for the past two years, following its acquisition of Consulting Principles, Ning has decided to return to ICON in the role of senior ABAP consultant. He will continue to pursue his passion for mobile-based SAP solutions in his role at ICON.

CAREERSON THE MOVE


Grant Slinger, IQX Business SolutionsIn a move to better service its rapidly growing customer base, IQX Business Solutions has appointed Grant Slinger to the role of director of consulting services.

Slinger joins IQX from UGL Limited, where he held the role of business systems manager. He has had 13 years of SAP experience in a variety of roles including finance practice lead, project manager and application manager. During his dynamic career, Slinger has been able to develop strong technical, commercial and consulting skills in the areas of strategy and governance, as well as in the design, integration and delivery of SAP-based solutions.

Slinger believes that his role at IQX will allow him to follow his passion for delivering solutions that help organisations fulfil business goals.

“I have always had a passion for delivering solutions that achieve business outcomes and adoption by users,” he said. “While working at UGL, I delivered several such solutions that simply and effectively leveraged the existing IT asset base of SAP and SharePoint to deliver high value user centric solutions with exceptional commercial benefits.

“The opportunity to deliver similar outcomes for other SAP customers was my primary motivator to join IQX,” Slinger said.

Inside SAP JobsFor all the latest jobs in SAP, check

out the Inside SAP jobs board www.jobs.insidesap.com.au


Dereck Daymond and Jeremy Goddard, SAP ANZSAP Australia and New Zealand has appointed two key solution portfolio sales executives, Dereck Daymond (top) and Jeremy Goddard, to its leadership team. Daymond and Goddard will both be heading national teams of specialised sales executives.

The appointments are part of a move to reshape SAP ANZ’s management structure. The change aims to enhance support for SAP’s innovation strategy, which is focused on five market categories: applications, analytics, database and technology, mobile and computing.

Dereck Daymond has been appointed as general manager, database and technology, SAP ANZ. In light of SAP’s recent acquisition of enterprise and mobile technology provider, Sybase, this division now includes a combination of database and technology solutions from Sybase and existing SAP technology. This includes solutions such as SAP HANA, SAP Sybase ASE, SAP Sybase IQ and SAP NetWeaver.

As the previous managing director of Sybase, Daymond’s experience developing and executing its business strategy for Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, will equip him for his new role.

Alongside Daymond, Jeremy Goddard has been appointed general manager, business solutions and cloud, SAP ANZ. Goddard will be driving the strategy for a number of SAP’s innovation solutions, including mobility, business analytics, line-of-business solutions and SAP’s cloud offerings. Goddard previously held the role of director of services, SAP ANZ, where he was responsible for demand generation activities across the services business in Australia and New Zealand.

We’d love to hear about them.

Moving jobs? Hiring new staff?


Send your ‘On the Move’ news to [email protected]

Garry Tuckwell, WiproWipro Technologies has recently appointed Gary Tuckwell to the role of director of natural resources.

Tuckwell has had 25 years of experience in a variety of senior roles across the retail, financial services and mining and utility industries. He has worked on a vast range of cutting-edge projects such as developing network and distribution strategies for Citipower/Powercor. Tuckwell also spent 10 years with IT outsourcing giant, CSC, as the vice president of the natural resources industry sector. In this dynamic role, he serviced corporations such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and AMP.



EVENTS

SAUG Canberra Forum ‘121 May 2012CanberraThis one-day annual event provides a forum for public sector professionals to discuss challenges unique in their SAP landscape. Attendees include representatives from Australian federal, state and local government agencies. Whether you are an SAP programme director, a business process manager or a solution architect, this event will hold information that is valuable to your role. Join the Canberra public sector community at this event.w: www.saug.com.au/Events_Calendar.aspx?mode=overview&id=346

The PPM Revolution: From Strategy to Execution8-10 May 2012Brisbane, Sydney, Perth Focusing on four industry sectors, capital intensive, engineering and construction, government and IT this conference will enable your organisation to define your Projects and Portfolio Management (PPM) Roadmap to Success. The event has been designed to allow busy executives to attend a morning Executive Overview Session and the chance to ask the expert panel questions. Others wanting more in-depth knowledge can attend the full day event and learn more about the topics covered in the morning session. These sessions will be synchronised to the business process and will include live demonstrations of specific functionality.w: www.assp.com.au

SAP Innovation Forum Australia8-31 May 2012Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney Learn how to use real-time insights from business data, leverage breakthrough technologies such as cloud computing or in-memory databases, and empower your mobile workforce. Get the latest on SAP solutions while networking with industry thought leaders, SAP customers, solution experts, and your peers. Test-drive the latest business analytics, mobile, and in-memory technology. Attending the SAP Innovation Forum Australia is free but space is limited.w: www.sap.com/australia/campaigns/innovationforum/index.epx

SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference 201214-16 May 2012Orange Country Convention Centre, Orlando, Florida, United States Join the ANZ delegation at the world’s premier business technology event. Hear directly from global and local customers about their challenges and successes. Make the most out of the opportunity to meet one on- one with SAP experts and ask detailed questions about SAP solutions and your business. Try out applications and get an in-depth look at future SAP applications that will support your strategy.w: www.sapandasug.com

Mastering SAP Financials21-23 May 2012MelbourneA vibrant and thriving community where Business and IT people have important conversations, form lasting relationships and pinpoint new and different ways to use SAP for financial reporting, planning, compliance and governance – to get business results. Focus on general finance topics and SAP ERP Financials.w: www.masteringsap.com/financials/

Mastering Business Intelligence with SAP 20126-8 August 2012MelbourneSpecially designed to enhance decision-making and organisational performance using SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. Includes presentations and sessions from local and international companies, roundtable discussions and special sessions and SAP Business Intelligence partners showcase.w: www.masteringsap.com/biau

Mastering SAP BusinessObjects 20126-8 August 2012MelbourneA three-day program for SAP BusinessObjects professionals. The event will focus on how to create effective business solutions for businesses of all different sizes and needs. Topics will cover the use of BusinessObjects products such as SAP BusinessObjects analytic apps for industries, BI solutions, EIM solutions, EPM solutions for small/midsize companies, and GRC solutions.w: www.masteringsap.com/bobj

SAP Summit 2012 and SAP Forum Australia21-23 August 2012Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

SAP Australia and SAUG have joined forces this year and will hold the SAUG summit and SAP Forum Australia concurrently over three days. The SAUG Summit will feature: a paid, two-and-a-half day component that includes presentations by international and domestic keynote speakers, SAP technology experts, SAP customer case studies and panel discussions. The SAP Forum will feature: a half-day forum featuring the latest SAP innovation, with content directly from the May 2012 SAPPHIRE NOW conference. w: www.saug.com.au/Events_Calendar.aspx?mode=overview&id=348

Mastering Supply Chain Management with SAP 201217-19 September 2012SydneyA three-day program coordinated with the purpose of enabling supply chain excellence. The event will provide SAP partners, customers and business management with the chance for networking, learning and sharing ideas about SAP Supply Chain Management tools.w: www.masteringsap.com/scmau

Mastering Project & Portfolio Management with SAP22-24 October 2012SydneyA three-day program for networking, training and development for business managers and project professionals. The ideal event for project, engineering and finance people to discuss effective ways to use SAP Portfolio & Project Management tools.w: www.masteringsap.com/ppm

2nd Annual SAP Ecosystem Foundation Regatta for Redkite2 November 2012Middle Harbour Yacht Club, SydneyHave a great day out on the water and raise much-needed funds for Redkite, a charity supporting children and young people with cancer and their families. Network with other members of the SAP ecosystem in the name of a good cause. w: www.sapef.org

What’s OnEach edition of Inside SAP includes a diary of upcoming events for the SAP community around Australia and internationally. To have your event listed, email [email protected].


PARTNER DIRECTORY

ASGAs a growing local Australian business, ASG offers the latest SAP and associated technologies designed specifically around the needs of our customers. With experience spanning more than 15 years, ASG delivers some of the most effective SAP projects and services for enterprise and mid market organisations Australia wide.

CompuwareFor nearly 40 years, Compuware has delivered software, experts and best practices to make your applications work well and deliver business value. Our people and software ensure that critical technologies work like they should – all the time – for 7,100 customers around the globe.

Consulting NetworksConsulting Networks boasts a team with over 100 years combined experience in SAP consulting. Consulting Networks is a SAP SI partner and a SAP hosting partner. We are Australia’s First SAP Business byDesign Partner, offering a scalable, virtualised SAP offering for SMBs the benefits of enterprise-grade virtualisation and cloud computing applications.

Esker AustraliaEsker is a recognised leader in document process automation solutions for SAP. On premise software solutions and SaaS solutions include: sales orders processing; accounts payable; e-Invoicing; e-Procurement; and enterprise faxing and mail services. Customers achieve significant operational efficiencies, cost savings and measurable ROI in less than three months. Since 1997, over 1,700 companies in ANZ have trusted solutions from Esker Australia.

Everjoy ConsultingThe leading SAP recruitment specialist in the ANZ recruitment marketplace. As an SAP specialist consultancy, you can be sure that your recruitment consultant at Everjoy has a deep understanding of the roles that you require and can work with you to meet your organisational goals and targets with effective people solutions. For the best people or the best opportunities in SAP, contact Everjoy Consulting today.

IQXIQX provides SAP customers with packaged & bespoke business solutions delivering enhanced Business Insight, Collaboration & Productivity benefits by leveraging Microsoft Technologies. We improve the user experience across all core functional areas of SAP for all user types. IQX solutions include Excel add-ins, SharePoint Web Parts, SharePoint Forms, K2 & Nintex solutions and native mobile apps for SAP. See, Share and Do more in SAP via IQX.

LodestoneLodestone is a global management consultancy, committed to designing and delivering solutions that enable international companies to thrive in today’s complex business environment. We help our clients to define the measurable business benefits that we will achieve together, using our teams of client-focused consultants, who combine a passion for excellence with strong process and SAP skills and deep experience of transformational change in their industry.


PARTNER DIRECTORY

SUSEEstablished in 1992, SUSE is the original provider of the enterprise Linux distribution and the most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing. With a portfolio centered around SUSE Linux Enterprise, we power thousands of organizations around the world across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Now operating as an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group, SUSE continues its unwavering focus on the benefits of open source and the needs of its commercial partners and customers.

ReadSoftReadSoft is a world leading supplier of Document Process Automation solutions, specialising in Accounts Payable Automation for SAP. Their AP automation solution seamlessly integrates with SAP and has been selected by an impressive range of multinationals seeking to improve control, efficiency and overall performance, along with an attractive ROI. We invite you to contact us for a free consultative workshop and to “squeeze more from SAP”.

RetarusRetarus is a leading global provider of professional messaging services. Faxolution for SAP is a certified, secure, fully integrated cloud fax service for SAP systems. Any document that appears on the SAP fax queue will be retrieved by Faxolution for SAP and transmitted anywhere in the world via one of our 4000+ fax lines.

Sky TechnologiesSky Technologies provides code-free “configure once, run anywhere” mobile enterprise applications to mobilise any SAP process. Sky’s solutions are backed by more than 13 years of mobility experience, deployed in over 35 countries, and available on-premise or via the SkyCloud. Mobility made easy – it’s what we do.

Systems and PeopleSystems and People specialise in providing SAP resourcing solutions for SAP-run organisations across Australia. We offer a complete SAP resourcing service encompassing SAP Recruitment, SAP Consulting and Contractor Management. Systems and People can help you to unlock the true value of your SAP investment with the right SAP people, build your internal SAP expertise with experienced contract and permanent SAP resources and reduce overhead with a contractor management solution for your contingent workforce.

To get the best in the business working for you – call Systems and People.

Utopia IncUtopia, Inc. is a global data strategy and consulting firm employing its proprietary Enterprise Data Lifecycle Management™ (EDLM™) methodology. Utopia’s offerings include strategy development, master data management, data migration, data archiving, data quality, and data governance. By treating data as a key asset, clients can reduce overall costs and improve efficiencies.

WiproWipro has been successfully delivering SAP consulting and system integration to large enterprises in ANZ for over a decade. Wipro’s SAP Practice is recognised among the leading global service providers with core strengths in Utilities, Natural Resources, Government, Manufacturing, BFSI and Service industries across ANZ. Wipro’s integrated services across the SAP application and technology landscape enables customers create robust business architecture, transform processes and innovate – to build successful and adaptive businesses.

inside sap magazine issue 17 autumn 2012

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