Category: Competency Center

ABAP is an ever-evolving language, and one where as a developer, you have to continue to learn the new functionality. This was something that didn’t concern me until I moved to the SAP training department and started teaching ABAP. When I first started programming in ABAP in 1995, we didn’t have ABAP objects. Now, most of the development here at SAP is done in this programming style. It is difficult for most procedural programmers to make the transition to object oriented programming. That being said, not just SAP, but the whole world is moving to object oriented programming. We here in the SAP training department have entire class devoted to the subject: BC401 ABAP Objects. It’s one of our fundamental core classes and the pre–requisite to almost every other ABAP class.

One of the key SAP project success factors is to use a steering committee made up of key business stakeholders. They can meet once a week or once a month, but generally they are involved to provide business level guidance to an SAP project or IT programs. The most effective steering committees include at least one executive and several senior leaders from throughout the business.

The idea behind shared services is to create centralized service centers that become more efficient at providing services, in part by automating many components. Here's how it works.

Getting best work from current staff is one of four key people-related business challenges business leaders face. To meet the goal of “get best work” – sometimes translated to “create a high performance culture” – organizations turn to performance management practices and systems. However, these tools are largely counterproductive – both in detracting from real work getting done and demotivating staff from doing their best.

One key to achieving SAP ROI is through convergence or integration of the SAP staff into the business. I’ve started down this path as part of a follow-up to the recent ASUG Atlanta conference presentation I did on “Beyond Business to IT Alignment – Creating Convergence in the SAP Enterprise.”

Many social networks already exist in your organization. You don't need to create new networks - what you really need to do is understand and leverage the networks that already exist. Watch this video to see how SAP StreamWork can help you plug into the social networks in your organization.

Even veteran SAP practitioners should be forgiven if they have a tough time discerning the difference between an SAP Competency Center and an SAP Center of Excellence, not to mention the SAP-preferred term, Center of Expertise. The distinction matters.

Slides from the BI Competency Center Workshop at ITWeb BI Summit 2011