SAP remote consulting is being increasingly adopted by customers globally. There are major benefits for SAP customers such as access to high quality SAP consulting services, access to high quality SAP talent, access to SAP consultants for fractional requirements, reduced consulting rates compared to local rates and many others. SAP outsourcing and SAP remote consulting services is being adopted as a central strategy by many large customers globally.

Understandably, customers have hesitation and lack of clarity on how to work with their service provider for remote SAP consulting services. Customers would tend to pay higher to get local SAP consultants rather than “try” this new method of getting SAP development and support services.

There are challenges of timezone, language and the absence of physical face-to-face meetings which are the immediate concerns of any customer. Many service providers are located in India, and they are several hours ahead of the customers in Europe and the Americas. The consultants are fluent in spoken and written English, and have exposure to major European languages. We are able to address these challenges through hiring of local consultants that interact with the customer locally. Our teams work on flexible hours to match the working hours of the customer; we use collaboration tools like instant messenger, screen sharing and video conferencing.

Many large customers have been operating internally across their distributed global offices, and they are comfortable operating across languages and timezones. SAP AG, for instance, has the development teams distributed across Walldorf, Germany and the development centers in India and other locations.

Many mid-size SAP customers in the USA and Europe are now seriously considering the option of remote consulting and remote support development due to the access to expert SAP skills and compelling cost advantages. These SAP customers are the mid-size organizations that have traditionally used the local SAP consultants; they are now reaching out to SAP service providers to start a pilot for remote consulting and remote support services.

Conclusion

SAP remote consulting has challenges but it is a practical and cost effective option for getting effective and dependable SAP services. Many SAP customers are able to develop a deep partner relationship with their service providers. SAP customers should attempt to make use of this remote consulting service to complement their existing SAP service processes.

Category: SAP | No Comments »

SAP SOA is now a mainstream architectural strategy being followed by SAP customers for providing future proof integration to SAP and non-SAP systems. However, customers are not clear on the SAP SOA guidelines, and how to truly model, design and develop enterprise level services. Continued »

Category: SAP | No Comments »

Background
Most SAP customers have enterprise applications developed in other mainstream development platforms such as Microsoft, Java and others. Many customers have existing legacy applications built on multiple technologies and platforms (too numerous to list here).

Going forward, SAP customers are tending to standardize on the SAP platform for running their core business operations. However, for development of custom applications, customers do not have a clear approach towards selecting SAP NetWeaver or the other mainstream platforms for development. Continued »

Category: General | No Comments »

In most organizations, the SAP infrastructure is maintained through a team of SAP consultants sitting full time in the head office. The SAP team looks after all SAP functional areas, SAP technical development, SAP BASIS maintenance, and interacts with the business to resolve all their SAP issues. Continued »

Category: SAP | 1 Comment »

In our experience working with customers who want to adopt Enterprise SOA in an SAP environment, many customers tend to believe that SAP PI is a prerequisite to enabling and consuming enterprise services. Since SAP’s service management tools of SAP ESR and SAP SR are provided by the SAP PI infrastructure, customers tend to believe that they need to use SAP PI in all service interactions.

In this blog, we would present guidelines and best practices for usage of SAP PI in an Enterprise SOA environment. Continued »

Category: SAP | No Comments »

Independent Software Vendors (ISV) are companies that have niche product offerings for a certain industry area. ISVs typically have acquired their deep understanding of an industry through years of working in their particular focus areas. You would typically find the ISVs to have “champions” and well know industry experts in their area of expertise. Hence, these ISVs are extremely well known in the industry, and they may enjoy comfortable market share in the particular industry vertical in a certain geography. Continued »

Category: SAP | No Comments »

SAP NetWeaver projects are characterized by a high degree of core development activities, and less of business re-engineering or process re-engineering or SAP systems configuration. Hence, the extent for interaction with the customer’s Business team is much less as compared to a “traditional” SAP development project. Continued »

Category: SAP | 1 Comment »

In today’s dynamic business environment, IT departments need to remain agile so they can align IT strategy with shifting business,market, competitive and economic conditions.  Outsourcing is one way to adapt resources to suit an ever-changing landscape but can also introduce risks if the right partner is not engaged or the partnership is mismanaged.

Companies rely on SAP deployments to run their core business operations.  As a result, outsourcing decisions must contemplate security controls and allow the IT department to maintain operational control. Continued »

Category: SAP | No Comments »