13. Training vs educating (Just Saying…)

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that training a user is different to educating a user. Most often in an ERP implementation, a training on how to do stuff in the new system takes precedence over educating the user on why they’ve got to do that, this, in turn, leads to (in most cases) the users not understanding the overall process and they’ll not bother about what happens elsewhere, its human mentality after all. So, when training make sure you educate the users on the entire process rather than just showing them what to do in their area, give them a sense of ownership of the entire process, however there will always be those users who don’t want to do more, well that’s where a good consultant can make a world of difference. Remember, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, if its weakest link breaks the whole purpose of the chain is lost, just saying….

What is S/4 HANA Finance ?

Given that I've been working on the latest version S/4 HANA Finance, I thought I'll share with you all some sneak peeks of the latest version without making it sound more complicated than it actually is.

SAP S/4 HANA Finance (formerly SAP Simple Finance) is a comprehensive finance solution based on SAP HANA. To keep it simple "SAP HANA" is an innovative in-memory data-platform where d application logic can be done within the in-memory engine (more on this topic can be found on SAP.com)

Now coming back to how S/4 HANA Finance came to be, SAP had decided to take the key components of the previous FI/CO suite and re code them to be able to harness the full advantage of running SAP FICO on a SAP HANA Database.

Initially, SAP Simple Finance (version 1.0) was released in 2014, then came SAP Simple Finance 2 in 2015. The version 1503 was followed by 1505, 1508, and 1511, the releases are versioned based on the year of release (first 2 numbers) and the month (last 2 numbers),

From September 2015 onwards the term SAP Simple Finance was made redundant and was renamed to "SAP S/4 HANA Finance".

S/4 HANA Finance has been designed to be easy to use, it can deliver instant insight for finance professionals. It enhances the current finance solution portfolio from SAP, preserving its functional strength while enabling no disruptive migration (more on how it does this is future posts).

SAP S/4 HANA Finance, on premise edition covers SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA and SAP Cash Management powered by SAP HANA, and is complemented by SAP HANA Live content, SAP Fiori apps, and SAP Smart Business apps designed for SAP Simple Finance.

That is basically a wrap-up of what S/4 HANA Finance is.

Your questions , comments & suggestions are welcome at ssurenlk@msn.com.

12 - Are you more productive working from home ? (Just Saying…)

So, this is a question that’s always discussed, working from home tends to be very productive if the task involved is something that needs absolute focus, because you can work in a quieter environment. You can start early using your commuting time, and more often than not while working from home people tend to work until the end of the day. Studies suggests that taking short breaks at home in your own environment helps the mind relax and energizes your brain, this is because when you are home you are the most comfortable which in turn fuels your ability to be more efficient simply because you are in your own zone. Studies also suggests that working from home can be more productive, however not everybody is disciplined enough to do this, but if they can be it’s a win-win situation for both employers and employees, some of the best ideas started off in a garage, that is home right!!  Just saying……

"11 – The Acronym Consultant also known as “TAC” (Just Saying…)

Very recently I met a consultant who definitely knew what she was talking about but found it very hard to accept the fact that others in the room didn’t all know all of the acronyms, that to her, seemed pretty basic. 

One thing I found out after a quick survey of the other consultants around in the room was that the “TAC” was difficult to understand, and if these consultants who are in the same industry found it hard to understand just spare a thought for consultant's clients. A wise man once told me, no matter how knowledgeable you are, if you don’t know how to articulate what you want to say without using much jargons or acronyms, then the sole point of being a consultant is lost, just saying…… 

10 - Cloudy future ??? (Just saying...)

If you are organization is contemplating going to the cloud, first and foremost a good idea would be to draw up a “Cloud Road-map” for the various systems currently on premise. Once this done, make sure you cross check this with the existing “Strategic System Road-map” you had in place for the existing on-premise systems. Then it’s the process of doing some analysis and putting it all together, a catchier term for this process is “Cloud Choreography “this will help make a good call on which of the systems are cloud extendable & cloud ready and which are not, just saying….

The battle for “In-Memory Computing” dominance

As you might already know, In-Memory computing is what is on most of the architects and consultants lips these days. It’s true, it’s a damn good architecture that could change the way business analyse data and make decisions.

Reducing the time to make decision, could fast-forward world economies at a tremendous rate.

So in this post, I thought I’ll share with you what the vendors out there have in their arsenal to fight it off in the “In-memory” computing battleground.

SAP SAP HANA - SAP HANA is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system (RDBMS) that’s designed to support transactions and complex query processing on the same data set  

Aerospike - A Distributed NoSQL Database that delivers both speed and scale. Key-value focused operations on whi 

DataStax Apache Cassandra, a NoSQL database - Apache Cassandra is an open source distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure.

IBM IBM DB2 - IBM DB2 is a family of database server products developed by IBM. These products all support the relational model, but in recent years some products have been extended to support object-relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and XML.  IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration is an in-memory columnar data platform that speeds up real-time and ad hoc analytical and operational workloads on IBM DB2.  

Kognitio Kognitio Analytical Platform -  Kognitio Analytical Platform is a scale-out in-memory, Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) Not-only-SQL that is optimized for low-latency data load and high-throughput complex analytical workloads.  

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 - SQL Server 2014 provides a new in-memory capability for tables that can fit entirely in memory (also known as Hekaton). Whilst small tables may be entirely resident in memory in all versions of SQL Server, they also may reside on disk, so work is involved in reserving RAM, writing evicted pages to disk, loading new pages from disk, locking the pages in RAM while they are being operated on, and many other tasks. 

MemSQL - MemSQL is a distributed In-Memory Database that lets you process transactions and run analytics in real-time, using SQL.  

Oracle - Oracle Database In-Memory / Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database

Oracle offers a mature, in-memory database product called Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database as well as Oracle Database In-Memory, an option that extends Oracle Database 12c to support in-memory.

So there we go, a whole lot of products out there to cater to the needs of “in-memory computing”, it all comes down to who can sell better and who can keep the innovation lab churning out new ways of analyzing big data faster.

Hope you found this post informative, have a nice day.

"Freeze the base" - Importance of a Scope Baseline Plan

In most projects, one thing that generally hits the project managers hard is to define what is in scope and what’s not. This is by far one of the most important sub-project plan since it determines the work involved, the resources required, budget required, the final project deliverable and sign-offs required to close the project. Given all these you need to make sure all the elements that make up a scope baseline are addressed at the earliest and communicated to the stakeholders of the project.

Drawing up a Scope Baseline.

The 3 most important documents that should be part of a Scope baseline are:

1. Work Breakdown Structure - The WBS defines each deliverable and further decomposes in deliverable into smaller work packages.
2. WBS Dictionary - The WBS Dictionary contains the actual detailed description of the work required, and is often a very detailed and technical description of each work package.
3. Scope Statement -The Project Scope Statement includes the product scope description and the project deliverable, and it also defines the product user acceptance criteria.

Once the deliverables are confirmed in the scope statement, they need to be developed into a work breakdown structure (WBS) of all the deliverables in the project. The scope baseline includes all the deliverables produced on the project, and therefore identifies all the work to be done. The following should form part of the scope baseline plan:

• All the activities and individual tasks that need to be done to achieve the deliverable identified.
• The resource required for each of the tasks identified. Likely resource constraints, their involvement and ability to execute each task in the available time frame.
• Part of the time management plan e.g. time required for the tasks identified.
• Estimated cost of resources for each tasks based on some notional unit of calculation.
• A complete schedule linking all tasks, resources and time estimates. With start and end dates clearly laid out.
• Identified dependant tasks and their involvement in the critical path.
• Setup a cost baseline which should include a time based budget as well, i.e. a milestone based budget gateway taking into account the cost of resources and cost of time taken to complete the tasks in the WBS dictionary.

With all the above in a scope baseline plan it’s easier to control the momentum of the projects progress.  However, there is always a likelihood that Scope changes are required as the project goes forward, that’s because not everything can be determined upfront, so educate your project sponsors of the likely area a scope creep could occur and always plan to keep some project budget available for these scope additions, after all, these could end up being project deliverables that are an absolute must to achieve the company’s objectives.

I’ll like to think that every Project is like a "Skier" sliding down a “snow slope“which can be thought of as the Scope, if you have a locked in scope that would equate to a good body of snow with the right density, then you will most likely cruise through the project deliverable s and close the project successfully, but if not, then get ready for a wobbly ride ahead !!

Hope this helps. Drop me your queries & comments on ssurenlk@msn.com.

9 - Analyzing too much for the sake of it (Just saying...)

When made responsible to analyses a process and come up with solution, keep in mind the final key deliverable of what needs to be done to make the solution work. Don’t get too bogged down on the intrinsic details of the connecting systems that do not have any direct impact on the final outcome. There are too many consultants out there who like to analyze for the sake of it and don’t deliver the final outcome, with all the connecting systems these days it’s not “attention to detail” that matters but it’s more about “attention to the details that matter”.  Don’t become subject to “paralysis by analysis”!!

8 - Solution first, pollution later (Just saying...)

There will always be instances in a project or tasks, where things go wrong, when it does, the PM or the consultant need to first work on a solution to the issue rather than getting bogged down with the details on who, what and why it occurred, the time and negativity arising out of such a discussion without focusing on a solution, just leads to "pollution" in a project. This in turn might also have an impact on the quality of solution put forward because people become nervous and might mess up again. No one wants to make a mistake, but if and when it happens, first thing on everyone's mind should be to solve it, just saying....

Cloud Ready or Not !!

Many business these days are considering a move to the cloud, some want to get there but lack a could strategy, some want to stay partly "on-premise" and partly in the cloud,  and some don't know where to be, well this article is to provide some tips that management could consider before deciding  if "Cloud" is for them or not.

Some of the key items I've come across when considering a cloud move are listed below:

• Cost of current software licensing, performing tuning, upgrades, fixes, patches & equipment maintenance are some of the cost of an on-premise solution that needs to be considered and compared with the cost of moving to the cloud. A TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis is vital before considering the move.

• Understand the business areas and process that can be broken down into smaller chunks before moving to the cloud. Phased approach seems to be the most widely used cutover model used by most organizations, make sure you go for something small that can be pulled back at an early stage if things go "pear" shaped.

• Make sure that the organization has the ability to be able to manage roles for people in the cloud. Most of the cloud solution these days focus on user experience which states the fact that its mostly going to be user role base. 

• Choose the right partner - Like any IT implementation, make sure you choose the right vendor who is going to support you throughout your organization's transition to the cloud.

• Be open and honest about what is available currently within the organization. IT infrastructure has got to change, people's thinking needs to change and the businesses need to have an adoptive culture, if none of these can be done, cloud is not for you at least not until you get these issues sorted first.

• Get the business involved, this is an extension of my previous point, make sure you get the business users to also buy in on the cloud move. Moving to the cloud is not just an IT Strategic decision is also a business operating decision , keep in mind that this is something that's going to have an impact on the entire business & its operating style.

Hope you found these tips useful, this is by no means an exhaustive list but I believe this is a good starting point to address if your business is "Cloud Ready" or NOT.