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Moving process automation into the cloud
ReadSoft CEO Per Akerberg joined the company in November last year, having spent the last 15 years in the software space, most recently with Swedish company Enea. Since joining ReadSoft, he has restructured the business and has some ambitious plans for growth beyond the company’s traditional SAP-focused software solutions into the cloud and other enterprise systems. He spoke to Freya Purnell. Read more .....
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What makes an excellent SAP recruitment consultant?
Getting the right SAP resources on your project can start with finding the right recruitment consultant for the job. Shane Morgan explains some of the attributes which distinguish the best from the rest. Sometimes you hear successful business people say to be the best in the business, the focus should not be not so much on making money, but more on providing the best quality product on the market. Do this, and the money is more likely to come. The way to excellence in SAP recruitment consulting is a lot like this – the focus needs to be on providing the best service possible, and not just on getting a result and therefore improving the bottom line. So what does an excellent SAP recruitment consultant do that’s so special?
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Mentions: SAP
SAP improves SRM interface
SAP has released an add-on for the SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) application designed to make its user interface more user-friendly. The add-on, which will be demoed at SAPPHIRE NOW + SAP TechEd in Madrid, gives the SAP SRM application the familiar look and feel of an online shopping web page to allow casual procurement users to create purchase requests from catalogues with little or no training. Features that have been added include type-ahead search terms, browse by category, filtering, detailed product information and ratings enables users to search across internal and external catalogues to quickly find the products and services they need to order. Companies can customise the user interface to their specific branding and procurement processes.
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SAP releases Precision Retailing solution
SAP AG has announced the availability of the SAP Precision Retailing solution, which allows companies to deliver personal and relevant offers to customers based on their preferences. The cloud-based solution enables retail and consumer product companies to influence the customers’ decision at the point of purchase through multiple channels, including mobile devices, in-store kiosks and websites. “SAP Precision Retailing is launching at a time when companies are struggling to create direct relationships with consumers while still having to deal with the pressure of increasing marketing efficiency and promotions spending,” said Herve Pluche, vice president, retail consumer mobile initiative,
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SAP opens Mobility Design Center
To keep up with the growing costumer demand for individualised mobile solutions, SAP AG has announced the opening of a new Mobile Design Center at its Palo Alto campus in California. The centre allows companies to collaborate with a team of designers, architects and developers to create customer-specific mobile solutions so they can better connect with their employees and consumers. The end user is the main priority throughout the development process, with Technology Business Research enterprise software analyst, Elizabeth Hedstrom-Henlin, saying the most important thing is that these solutions are easy to use. “Usability is more important that ever, and the ability for an app to connect seamlessly to the backend and function flawlessly over time is a business imperative,” she said.
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Mentions: SAP Sanjay Poonen
IBM battles with SAP and Oracle in HR software market
IBM has announced the acquisition of human capital technology specialist Kenexa for $1.3 billion. The move is likely to increase competition with SAP and Oracle, following their respective acquisitions of HCM vendors SuccessFactors and Taleo. Kenexa specialises in recruitment solutions that integrate cloud-based technology and social business solutions. IBM is looking to leverage Kenexa’s expertise in social media and front-office process solutions, to bolster its social business capabilities. Kenexa supports more than 8900 customers across a variety of industries, which includes more than half of the Fortune 500.
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Mentions: Oracle Salesforce.com SAP
SAP unveils new BI solutions
SAP has announced two new business intelligence innovations: the Feature Pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions and the 1.0.1 release of SAP Visual Intelligence software, equipped with powerful analytics tools. The announcement was made at the SAP Analytics Forum North America earlier this week.
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Banks collaborate with SAP on cloud platform
By Anne Widjaja SAP AG has announced plans to work with Citi and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to co-innovate a cloud-based services platform, designed to integrate banks with their corporate customers. SAP will utilise its expertise in enterprise resource planning, treasury management software and cloud services, and leverage the industry expertise of Citi and RBS in order to create a new solution for corporate banking. According to SAP, this new solution aims to overcome the isolation of each bank’s IT architecture model. Historically, the isolation of banking institutions has become entrenched as a result of differences in size, complexity and the non-standard use of legacy systems. Businesses and banks have therefore been burdened with high connectivity costs because of the need to develop multiple relationships with financial institutions. "We are working toward a solution with SAP to remove integration barriers and facilitate greater connectivity to Citi's global network of more than 90 countries and over 100 currencies," said Naveed Sultan, global head, treasury and trade solutions, Citi. Sultan also commented that leveraging cloud technology was part of Citi’s goal to be the world’s 'Digital Bank'. “Through our pioneering work here, we hope to bring ... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: SAP Sanjay Poonen
Why I think Portal on Device (PoD) has potential
Simon Kemp gives his view on the new NetWeaver Portal on Device functionality. The new SCN platform has given me that extra boost of inspiration I needed to get going and write a piece about the Netweaver Portal and in particular about the new Portal on Device functionality that is being developed. If you haven't heard anything about Portal on Device (PoD), then I suggest you take a look at these first: Portal On Device Introduction: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-16320
Webinar Replay:
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http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-13260
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New society for SAP professionals in Australia formed
A group of SAP professionals in Australia, frustrated with the current models for recruiting and resourcing trained SAP staff, have banded together to form the Australian Society of SAP Professionals (ASSP). Keith Wallis, head of solutions, strategy and development, TAMS and one of the founders of the ASSP, said many of those working in the sector are disappointed with the calibre of consultants being placed on SAP projects, and feel that there needs to be more regulation of the market, as the skills shortage has led to recruitment and rates getting out of control.
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Attracting the right talent for your team
In the face of stiff competition to secure the best SAP resources, a best practice talent attraction strategy might make all the difference, as Adrian Everett explains.
As we move forward into the new financial year, it is no surprise that one of the key challenges for organisations undertaking SAP projects remains that of talent attraction. For those selling services, how do you grow without additional resources to sell? For those looking to lower overheads or increase revenues through improved efficiencies, how do you achieve this if SAP resources are already tied up on other projects?
If you want to attract the right talent for your organisation, you need to ensure that your strategy meets the goals of your organisation. In this article, we explore the various avenues by which to attract talent, and ultimately to define a best practice process by which to attract the best SAP talent for your organisation.
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Fleshing out a mobility strategy
Embarking on an SAP mobility strategy requires some technical decisions to be made early on. Here Danielle Cullen explores the key focus areas for SAP customers. The first stage in embarking on any SAP mobility strategy is to determine the what, where, who, how and why. (Read Full Article)
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SAP services provider market: Forrester
In its latest Forrester Wave report, SAP Services Providers, Q2 2011, authored by Liz Herbert, the researcher summarises significant changes in the SAP services market over the last two years, with acquisition and consolidation running “rampant” and new delivery models changing the game for buyers and providers. Recent major developments, some even materialising during the course of the Forrester analysis, suggest an imminent changing of the guard, with established players falling by the wayside and hungry up-and-comers jostling for supremacy.
During the several months of research for the Forester Wave analysis, a number of significant acquisitions took place, including the NTT Data Group acquiring Keane, Accenture securing Ariba’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) operations and Atos Origin announcing plans to take over Siemens’ IT business. Forrester’s analysis points to continued acquisitions by larger multinationals – including Accenture’s acquisition of CAS, IBM’s purchase of Cast Iron Systems, the acquisition of Diamond by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and Deloitte buying up ClearCarbon, steady investment by the India-based giants and an increase in Japanese service providers buying up companies as strong evidence the systems integrator (SI) landscape around SAP is experiencing drastic change.
The report’s 65-criteria evaluation of SAP service providers reveals ...
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Cloud to become a mainstream business enabler: IDC
While it might be the buzzword of the moment, analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2015, the cloud will no longer exist as a standalone concept, and it will instead be integrated into every facet of a business's service delivery. IDC also predicts that the technologies of cloud will become intrinsic parts of the IT infrastructure landscape and an essential component of any IT environment. Chris Morris, Associate Vice President for Cloud Technologies and Services at IDC Asia/Pacific says, "In enabling the enterprise move to this future, it is likely that IT executives will choose to help end-users meet their escalating business needs by offering IT 'as a service' rather than as a technology platform. In delivering these services to the business, the CIO will source more and more of these services externally – from the public cloud, from Virtual Private Clouds (VPC) hosted by an ICT service provider and from traditional outsourcers, which will also be using cloud technologies to deliver these services." These moves will result in CIOs being required to manage a hybrid environment comprising on-premise, outsourced, managed and cloud-sourced services. Morris adds, "In the past two years, we have seen a rapid maturation of users ... (Read Full Article)
SAP to invest US$2 billion in China
SAP AG will spend more than US $2 billion through to 2015 to grow its business in China, demonstrating its long-term strategic commitment to the world's second-largest economy.
“We have successfully grown our business in China over the past 20 years and now want to scale our operations to fully meet the needs of both enterprises and our ecosystem,” said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP AG. “Our SAP Labs and SAP Research facilities there will continue to drive innovation for our Chinese customer base. We will also create more research and development facilities, hire thousands of people, train more experts and consultants and bring our world-class benchmarking methodology to China — all aimed at helping drive sustainable growth through 'informatisation'.”
SAP plans will see spending and investment in four key areas:
1. Creating solutions: The company plans to drive further alignment between SAP and Sybase in China, with SAP Labs in China to be the primary innovation centre for the development of new solutions tailored to meet country requirements.
2. Delivering solutions: SAP said growing its business in China will require a significant increase in market presence, and to this end, SAP aims to hire around 2000 people through 2015, open ...
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SAP introduces “enterprise-ready” app store
SAP and Sybase have unveiled the next wave of mobile apps for business, and announced the introduction of an SAP Store for mobile apps, at SAPPHIRE NOW and SAP TechEd in Madrid.
Among the new apps are the SAP Electronic Medical Record mobile app, which provides instant access to patient records in the healthcare environment; 2.0 versions of the SAP Field Service, CRM Sales and Retail Execution apps; SAP Citizen Connect, for communication between citizens and government; SAP Strategy Management mobile app and SAP BusinessObjects Mobile software for mobile analytics; and for mobile workers, the SAP Transport Notification and Status, Transport Tendering, GRC Access Approver and GRC Policy Survey mobile apps.
The app store, to be accessible via a website and initially through an on-device app for iOS, with versions for Blackberry, Android and other operating systems to follow, will make it easy for enterprise-based customers to access apps quickly. With SAP apps and certified apps built by the broad SAP partner ecosystems available through the app store, customers will initially be able to download and evaluate the apps before they buy, with plans for SAP to enable direct purchase via the SAP Store soon.
Moving forward, SAP expects ...
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Mentions: Blackberry SAP
CIO insights: visualisation key, cloud overhyped, social media not important
Australian CIOs are generally optimistic despite challenging times, according to the first Insights Quarterly report, commissioned by Fujitsu and Microsoft Australia. Surveying 200 Australian CIOs, the report showed that alignment of ICT with business aims remains their primary objective. Many of the CIOs noted that business issues are often stronger drivers than technology issues in the Australian landscape, with business requirements taking precedence over technology. Almost half (46.2 per cent) saw these changing requirements as the most difficult challenge, ahead of protecting and securing the network, optimising and controlling costs, and improving service responsiveness. Virtualisation is shaping up to be the most relevant future technology, nominated by two-thirds of CIOs, followed by integrated enterprise-wide access, with 42.5 per cent saying it was of high interest, highlighting the importance placed on improved access to information. Business intelligence remains an area of significant investment, and while cloud computing was named as one of the most important technologies, it was also regarded as “overhyped”. However cloud remains attractive from the CIOs’ perspective due to its ability to move ICT from capital expenditure to operational expenditure, coupled with flexibility. Other current challenges for CIOs include the trend towards ‘Bring Your Own Device ... (Read Full Article)
An InnoJam experience – getting hands-on with HANA
Sarat Atluri was part of the winning team at this year's InnoJam, held as part of the SAUG Summit in Sydney. Here he tells what it was like to work 30 hours straight and learn HANA overnight. "Success is 99 per cent failure." - Soichire Honda. During the 30 hours non-stop bliss, we failed more times than we succeeded, so did all the other teams. In the end, the lessons we learnt from the failures are the ones that led us to produce a successful prototype while enhancing and enriching our knowledge. Winning the trophy was a bonus. If I think back to the reasons why I attended InnoJam, in the order of my priority, they were: 1. If not for InnoJam, I may not have been able to get my hands on HANA for a few more years (unless I enrolled for a training course, paying a few thousand dollars). 2. For 30 hours I can have face-to-face interaction with the best SAP brains on the planet 3. I can work on HANA without the hassle of having to install it. 4. The opportunity to meet like-minded people in the SAP community. 5. Feel and share the passion that ... (Read Full Article)
Throwing down the gauntlet: Gartner on HANA
While SAP's HANA-based architecture will force competitors to show their hands on their application infrastructure strategies, selling its most conservative customers on the potentially disruptive impact of its HANA-led architecture will be a key challenge ahead, according to a new Gartner report.
The report, titled 'SAP Throws Down the Next Generation Architecture Gauntlet with HANA', discusses SAP's long-term application infrastructure strategy, based on in-memory computing, mobility and cloud.
"This initiative is a bold attempt to effect a generational change for the company, and to allow it to compete with industry and thought-leading architectures. The vision is very ambitious, and, at the same time, consistent with users' aspirations," the report said. "SAP's vision will force megavendor competitors to respond by clearly and openly articulating their cloud and in-memory computing strategies."
However, Gartner also highlighted the hurdles ahead for SAP in making its new strategy a success.
"In addition to addressing formidable technology and go-to-market challenges, SAP will have to introduce its highly innovative vision in a way that will be acceptable to the most conservative part of its customer base."
Despite these challenges, the report indicated that the HANA architecture "likely will have a significant industry impact", and ...
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Mentions: SAP Hasso Plattner
The consumerisation of It – beware common assumptions: IDC
The technology might exist to provide employees with access to applications and data while mobile, but do they want it? Organisations should be aware of making assumptions about the consumerisation of IT, according to IDC, as recent research shows that some commonly held views do not reflect the preferences, perceptions and usage of technology by enterprise employees in Australia and New Zealand. "The consumerisation of IT story is not yet grounded in hard and fast data on the vast majority of enterprise employee preferences, usage and expectations around IT in ANZ," said IDC senior analyst, Trevor Clarke. "However, the sustained and vocal consumerisation narrative currently reverberating around the industry and the solutions being proffered for addressing it will effectively become the target state for many organisations unless they proactively formulate a long-term workspace strategy that addresses the desires of the employee majority balanced with key or vocal influencers' views and organisational goals." In its recent report, The A/NZ enterprise employee survey: Testing the top 7 assumptions about the consumerisation of IT, IDC deconstructs seven of the key assumptions about the consumerisation of IT. The assumptions tested as part of the survey included: employee preferences for consumer devices and applications ... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Australia
Greg Tomb to head SAP's on-demand organisation
Former SAP senior executive Greg Tomb has rejoined the company to head its new global on-demand sales and go-to-market organisation.
In this new role, Tomb will report to Rob Enslin, president of global field operations and a corporate officer of the SAP Group, and according to SAP, will "help ensure that the needs for this high-growth business are addressed globally", playing a critical role as SAP expands the on-demand solution portfolio.
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The challenges of mobile device management
Simon Kemp get the lowdown on mobile device management in this Q&A session with Calvin Anderson. With the uptake in use of mobile devices (smart phones and tablet devices) there is an increasing demand by employees to use their personal devices for work. Managing the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is a reality that many companies are starting to get to grips with, but even where employees are provided a mobile device to use, there are many challenges to take into consideration. Security of information, of course, is one of these concerns and rightly so, but privacy is also a concern for users. Companies are now facing how to achieve a balance between supporting employee demands for access and the need by companies for appropriate control. Given the fast rate of adoption of smart phones, tablets and the various models involved, all of a sudden complexity in this issue has become a burden for IT departments and a challenge for company executives. In this blog, I wanted to start with the basics and ask some of the questions I have about mobile device management (MDM), and I thought who better to ask than Calvin Anderson. Cal has worked ... (Read Full Article)
New apps for HR on the go
A series of new HR-based mobile apps to help managers and employees execute HR requests on the go are among the latest releases from SAP.
SAP said the new mobile apps will increase employee and manager productivity while connecting people any place at any time to perform a wide range of HR-related activities, including interviewing job candidates, managing employee performance, entering and approving leave requests and accessing corporate KPIs.
Managers will be able to search for and view employee profiles, initiate and act on HR-based processes and workflow, collaborate on decisions and events, and access critical data - all from mobile devices.
The new apps, planned for general availability in the fourth quarter of 2011 are SAP Manager Insight, which will provide managers with quick access to HR data, reports and KPIs and facilitate collaboration on HR topics, and SAP Interview Assistant, which will allow managers to access documents, capture information during interviews and collaborate to act quickly during the hiring process.
These apps join four others previously announced at SAPPHIRE 2011, which will also be available in the fourth quarter - SAP Employee Lookup, SAP Leave Request, SAP Timesheet and SAP HR Approvals.
SAP Manager Insight and SAP Interview Assistant will ...
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Sap Ag appoints CMO
SAP AG has appointed Jonathan Becher as its chief marketing officer (CMO), reporting directly to co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. Becher joined SAP through the acquisition of Pilot Software, where he served as president, CEO and chief marketing officer. Since joining SAP four years ago, Becher has served as executive vice president of marketing, focused on streamlining field, solution, and partner marketing. (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Bill McDermott SAP Jim Hagemann Snabe
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