Q: I bought a ton of SAP software. I do not know why. I do not even know if they work and who uses it and how. What can I do to get some business value out of my SAP investments? My BW system was last refreshed in 2022. No one knew those data extraction jobs were terminating. And we are paying license fees for it religiously. My managers must be dumb to not know that the data is not even refreshed from source systems in 2 years. What a useless CIO I am! I can’t even pretend to have a real job.
A: As a CIO, you need some framework for deriving business value from your SAP investments. SAP is not going to help here beyond a point. No free consulting. Its not a product problem. It’s a consulting or consultants’ problem.
You need to have your own framework and roadmap to make SAP work for you.
Here is one possible framework (I should possibly patent it) for Business Value Maximization from your existing SAP or other Enterprise IT investments.
– DIGITALIZATION driven business value (Digitalization is just a means to an end. It can’t ‘transform’ your org. Whatever that means). This can mean all nature of integration, collaboration and automation going beyond the four walls of enterprise. Irrespective of whether it is making business sense. You can digitalize a wrong business process and that doesn’t result into any business value per se.
– BUSINESS PROCESS (re) ENGINEERING driven business value. (e.g. using BPM tools like Signavio or even manual analysis of what’s screwed up with your ERP). This will tell you where you deliveries got stuck or why the production order took so long to complete!
– ANALYTICAL INSIGHTS driven business value (Math and Stats that help you see through the patterns and relations). This might tell you which 3 products sell well together or how to more intelligently price your products based on real time market information.
Customers MUST and rightfully so DEMAND Business Value from their tech investments. Not esoteric UI and buzzwords. Several firms have bought millions of dollars of software and did really nothing with it. At best they were typewriters for manually inputting some data that exactly one and a half guys in the firm used it. Pathetic Economics. I feel like crying. Though it’s not my money. A criminal waste of money and intellect that exists in the firms.
“I am an IoT expert, and I do not know what procure to pay is all about”. I am not sure what to do with such a guy!
