Consulting Facts

Methodology is often discussed in consulting, but approach not so much.

Does Your Consultant Keep an Open Mind?

While I specialize in SAP SCM consulting, I am not in favor of 100% SAP solutions. There are many things that SAP does not do well, and will probably never be able to compete in an open marketplace. Because of SAP’s marketing muscle and the fact that they have co-opted so many advisory firms with consulting revenue, SAP end ups being used for many functions for which it is completely the wrong tool. Companies are overly satisfied with inferior solutions. And this drastically increases the likelihood for project failure. I see this happen too often when there are perfectly good solutions that go unused simply because SAP has such an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

Dealing with SAP Gaps

There are a number of vendors that can help fill the gaps that SAP cannot fill, and it is a far better value to go with a “blended” approach than go down with the ship “that is make an ideological commitment to SAP and then use custom code and special configuration to twist the system into pretzel for the purpose of keeping SAP satisfied.

Integration is not as bad as SAP would like to make it appear, and SAP’s own applications are less integrated than they seem. It is certainly not a reason to go with a vastly inferior but “integrated solution” as the case is often made.

Integration

Thus I approach projects with the idea of bringing the best solution based upon requirements, and not based on the idea, which is actually an ideology, that SAP should be used simply because it is an “integrated” solution. I have performed enough integration to SAP with external systems, and had to integrate SAP to SAP systems, to know that this line of reasoning is most often not in the client’s best interests.