Podcasts about searchsap

SOA is having a major impact on how SAP professionals look at the skills they need going forward. But why does SOA matter to SAP in the first place? Is SOA SAP-manufactured hype, or is SOA going to be a real factor on SAP project sites. What skills will be needed in order to succeed in the NetWeaver and eSOA era? And how does NetWeaver BPM fit into the picture? In this SAP-SOA skills podcast, Jon Reed shares his take on these issues with Demir Barlas of SearchSAP.com.

In this thirty minute podcast, David Foote of Foote Partners reviews his firm's latest 2,000-employer benchmark survey data on trends in pay and availability of SAP enterprise application skills. Hear what's hot (and by how much), including which SAP skill has seen a 57% increase in market value over the last 12 months. Also included: strategy advice for employers deploying SAP applications, and career advice for IT professionals building SAP careers over the next two years. Kicked off by Demir Barlas of SearchSAP.com, this podcast begins with David Foote's overview of his latest SAP skills findings, including what's hottest in 2008. Jon Reed of JonERP.com weighs in toward the end of this podcast, asking David several questions about how SAP professionals should apply his findings to their own skills transitions.

What is at the root of the customer frustration with SAP's maintenance fee increases? And what does RunSAP and Solution Manager have to do with it? To get at these questions and many more, listen in with Jon Reed and SearchSAP.com Site Editor Demir Barlas as they interview Robert Max, ASUG Evangelist for ASUG, Americas' SAP Users' Group. Formerly the SAP Infrastructure Manager for a Fortune 500 Company, Max has played a leadership role in many ASUG groups, including serving as as the Chair of the ASUG Solution Manager Community. During this podcast, Robert explains how SAP customers can achieve a greater value from SAP support by maximizing the use of Solution Manager, RunSAP, and end-to-end process optimization. He also talks about the skills needed by project teams (and individual consultants) if they want to take advantage of these emerging post-go-live opportunities.

The value of SAP certification for SAP professionals might be the most frequently asked career question of all time. In this special edition podcast, co-hosted by Demir Barlas of SearchSAP, Jon discusses the key issues in SAP certification with Sue Martin, Global Certification Portfolio Manager for SAP. During the podcast, Jon poses the "hot button" SAP certification topics that he always wanted to ask, including Sue's take on the relevance of SAP certification to hiring managers, and the value of SAP certification for those trying to break into SAP. Sue also explains the new three-tiered SAP certification program, the latest efforts to make SAP certification exames more location-accessible, and what's coming up for SAP certification at TechEd 2008. By the time the podcast is over, Jon and Demir get Sue's take on many of the questions JonERP.com readers have posed about SAP certification - including Sue's news that more than 80 percent of SAP hiring managers surveyed say that certification factors heavily into their hiring decisions.

Foote Partners conducts some of the most extensive skills-based SAP (and IT) salary and skills/modules pay surveys on the market today. In this podcast, hosted by SearchSAP.com, Jon Reed interviews David Foote of Foote Partners and gets David's views on the extent of the SAP skills gap, which skills are in demand (and which are not), the value of certification, and other SAP skills trends after Sapphire 2008. The so-called "SAP skills gap" was one of the biggest topics of discussion at Sapphire again this year. David Foote was at the center of this discussion, asking SAP executives about the extent of the skills gap and how they plan to respond. During the podcast, David details his concerns about SAP's ability to meet the skills demand caused in particular by midmarket expansion. He also gives provides insight into how larger economic trends impact SAP skills demand, and he also tells us why the best SAP professionals have a narrow, rather than a broad, skills focus. During the discussion, Jon also gets David's take on how SAP project teams can attract (and retain) the best SAP talent. David shares how the data he gathers at Foote Partners ties into the overall trends he observes in terms of the value of IT certifications. The limitations of certification when it comes to measuring the emerging "business process expert" skill set are also discussed. In terms of which SAP skills are most in demand, David cites the following areas as trending towards "hot": SAP ERP 6.0 upgrade skills (Financials, HCM, Materials Management) NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM) NetWeaver Application Server NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI) Areas that are getting a bit colder in Foote Partner's latest findings (which are issued quarterly): ABAP Development Payroll NetWeaver Process Integration (PI, formerly XI) Sales and Distribution (SD) By the time you're done listening to this thirty minute podcast, you'll have an excellent feel for how Foote Partners views the skills trends in the SAP marketplace, and how SAP professionals can best respond to these skills trends.

SAP development is changing rapidly, and this technical evolution is impacting both technical and functional SAP professionals. To get an inside look at the future of SAP development, Jon interviewed Thomas Jung, NetWeaver Product Manager with SAP Labs and an influential blogger on the SAP Developer Network. Jon asked Thomas about a number of "hot button" topics in the SAP development space, including the innovations of the CE environment and the modeling tools needed for eSOA-driven development, the impact of outsourcing and how to make your skills "outsourcing proof," why ABAP development is alive and well, and how's SAP's SDN and BPX communities are affecting how SAP professionals interact with SAP and enhance their skill sets. In this thirty-three minute interview, hosted by Jon Franke of SearchSAP.com, "the two Jons" and Thomas cover the following topics: - Thomas' role at SAP Labs and how his NetWeaver Product Management team is involved with the rollout of the NetWeaver product line and the interaction with SAP users at events and seminars. - Why the online communities have had such an effect on SAP development and how knowledge about SAP products and skills trends is disseminated. - Jon asks Thomas to explain why his presentation on "Updating Your ABAP Skills to NetWeaver 7.0" has been so well received at SAP conferences, and what the key adjustments a 4.6 SAP developer has to make to be effective in NetWeaver 7.x and eSOA environments. Thomas points out that one key aspect of the "SAP developer of the future" is simply mastering object-oriented programming and ABAP Objects - something you can get started on even while working on 4.x projects. - Frequently, Jon his from readers who ask him "is ABAP dead?" Thomas puts these fears to rest once and for all by explaining that ABAP is still very much a part of the NetWeaver development environment. He describes some of the situations where ABAP is more useful and some where Java-based tools are more relevant. ABAP works best for powering high-volume, core transactions and Java is ideal for "edge programming" where SAP is extending its functionality via Enterprise Services. But ABAP can be "opened up" as well, and many new SAP components are built partially or fully in ABAP. - The impact of offshoring - Thomas gives his take on which SAP projects are better suited for outsourcing and which development projects are more effective to have in-house. Thomas doesn't believe that it makes sense to outsource all SAP development projects, and he goes on to describe some of the ways that SAP programmers can make their skills "outsourcing proof": don't build a "wall" between you and the rest of the team, keep up on your knowledge, stay visible, and become known as the person who learns the latest SAP technical tools and shares them with others. - Thomas shares the highlights of the SAP Composition Environment (CE), including the integration between CE and the Enterprise Services Repository (ESR), Visual Composer, Guided Procedures, and the other bells and whistles of this EE 5 environment. - What is the makeup of the ideal SAP project team? Thomas puts on his CIO hat and talks about the kinds of people he would put on his SAP technical project team. More than anything, he'd be looking for self-starters who aggressively educate themselves through their involvement with SDN and other learning communities. He'd want to see a mixture of Internet, Java, and ABAP skills on the team, but more important than specific tools is an SAP technical team that can adapt to the pace of innovation. - In terms of "soft" business skills, Thomas places a high value on those who get outside their cubicles and interact with the project team, making an effort to transfer knowledge to other team members. Thomas believes that you can't get away with being a "cubicle coder," anymore. If you aren't needed on site, then you run the risk of being outsourced. One way to differentiate yourself is to know enough about the business to be able to help business users define their requirements and what they want to accomplish technically. - Thomas explains why the latest batch of modeling tools are catching on and why modeling is having such an impact on SAP development. There are two types of modeling tools: those that help business users model processes on a higher level without needing to program (Visual Programmers), and those that help programmers reduce repetitive programming tasks (Web Dynpro for Java being one example, and other modeling tools added to the NetWeaver Developer Studio and the ABAP Workbench being other examples). - Jon asks Thomas about SAP's eSOA strategy and how it is impacting development. Thomas agrees that eSOA will allow companies to build Enterprise Services using the language and platform of their choice, but he also notes that SAP is building some of the best SOA development and consumption tools on the market. - Jon Franke of SearchSAP asks Thomas about how business users can get more involved in these trends, and Thomas points out the BPX community, and how business users can get involved in a variety of ways, including through BPX's industry vertical communities. - Jon points out that Thomas' "Update Your ABAP Skills to NetWeaver 7.0" seminar is available on the Virtual TechEd '07 track on SDN (for a fee), and Thomas shares the forward schedule for when this workshop will be held next. - Thomas wraps the podcast with a compelling argument to avoid career panic in the face of new SAP technologies. He makes the point that SAP developers should follow their passions, and when you are the best at what you do, that's an excellent way "outsource-proof" your skills.

Over a year ago, I had a post in which I discussed how difficult it is for a custom application development person like myself to get adjusted to projects based on a packaged application like SAP. It had the somewhat humorous title How to Talk to an SAP Consultant (If You Must). If you keep reading this post, you will see that I am now starting to understand some of the SAP terminology which once seemed so incomprehensible. I hope you will find this post helps accelerate your own understanding of SAP if you are thrust into it like I was. I now have become all too familiar with the SAP interfaces for external system known by the name "IDoc". SearchSAP.com provides the following definition: IDoc (for intermediate document) is a standard data structure for electronic data interchange (EDI) between application programs written for the popular SAP business system or between an SAP application and an external program. Being relatively new to the SAP world, these complex documents reminded me of database schemas generated by the old Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools with many cryptic table names and field names that only an automated tool could keep track of. For example, suppose you want to create an order from an external system in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module of SAP. What would you expect the interface to be called? How about something like "Create Order"? Wrong! My client's CRM team first instructed us to use a standard IDoc going by the rather unintuitive name of "CRMXIF_ORDER_SAVE_M02". Shortly later, they decided that this standard IDoc would not meet all their business requirements and they created a new IDoc from the standard one and gave it a name they prefixed with a "Z" and added a different ending. I will stick with the standard create order IDoc for this post, however. Ok, suppose you get past that detail, get into the right IDoc and start looking for the data representing the order header. Do you find it under something like "Order Header" or "Order"? No! Try looking for something SAP calls a "segment" and whose name is "E101CRMXIF_BUSTRANS". help.sap.com has this to say about segments: Segments form the basic building blocks of an IDoc type and are used to store the actual data. A segment type is the name of a segment and is independent of the SAP release. The segment definition is the release-specific name of a segment. By combining the segment type and the release, the required segment definition can be determined: This way, you can assign segment definitions from previous releases to an IDoc type in the current release. This may be necessary if, for example, the partner is using an older release which supports your current IDoc type but not your current segment definitions. You then have to "reset" these in the Partner profiles . This segment type name is not completely random but is based on the phrase "business transaction" instead of order. I believe the addition of "E101CRMXIF_" to the beginning makes the segment type release-specific and specifies the segment definition. Each segment can in turn have multiple fields. Some of these fields can contain data defined by another segment. These can be optional or mandatory. One segment can have a 1:1 or 1:n relationship with another segment. For example, the standard E101CRMXIF_BUSTRANS segment looks like this when I look at it in the XML editor of Rational Software Architect v7 (though truncated to what would display on my screen and still be readable): Note that the order segment has many individual elements (mostly strings) followed my many references to other segments. The graphical representation looks a lot like an object model or database design. An entire SAP IDoc can be huge! The entire IDoc for orders includes well over 200 IDoc segments. After I used my XML editor to format the XML schema of CRMXIF_ORDER_SAVE_M02 so that it was neatly indented and had line feeds before each level of nesting, the resulting XML schema file was a mere 38257 lines long. If your next project takes you down to the implementation level of SAP, I hope you're a detail-oriented person. Copyright © 2007 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

As part of his ongoing podcast series with SearchSAP, Jon Reed interviews Ori Inbar, Senior Vice President of SAP NetWeaver, for a groundbreaking interview on the SAP skills needed for success in the NetWeaver and eSOA era. In this frank discussion, Ori acknowledges that SAP faces a significant skills gap that needs to be addressed for NetWeaver to realize its promise. Ori then analyzes the skills gap, explains how SAP plans to address it, and most importantly, highlights the skills needed for NetWeaver and SAP eSOA project success. This is the first podcast we know of where a high-ranking SAP executive goes beyond talk of the skills gap and the "NetWeaver jobs of the future" to detail the specific "next phase" skills and roles that SAP professionals can pursue, not in the future, but right now. Ori also announces a new plan for SAP certification that will be unveiled at TechEd '07 in Las Vegas. In this twenty-five minute interview, Jon and Ori cover a series of critical topics, including: - How Ori broke into SAP and how his SAP career has evolved into his current NetWeaver leadership role. - The significance of SAP Enterprise SOA (eSOA) and why it impacts every SAP product. - The estimated "SAP skills gap" of 20,000 SAP professionals and how SAP intends to fill it. Ori explains the importance of "the SAP ecosystem" to filling these gaps and how consultants can anticpiate where SAP is going next. - Ori's take on the four new SAP roles that are emerging on project sites, and his assessment of the skills required for each of the four: NetWeaver Systems Admin, Enterprise Architect, and Business Process Expert and NetWeaver Developer (Enterprise Services Developer). - Ori explains why the NetWeaver era means the "end of the functional silos" and why SAP skills will be business process driven from here on out.

Continuing his ongoing podcast series with SearchSAP, Jon Reed interviews Marco ten Vaanholt, Global Director of the SAP BPX Community, for a compelling look at the changing SAP skill set and what it takes to become a "Business Process Expert." During the podcast, Marco describes his work with the SAP BPX community, and how BPX is working collectively to help define the skill set that SAP professionals will need to stay relevant on both the functional and technical side. Jon asked Marco to be on this podcast because during TechEd 2007, Marco's presentation on becoming an SAP Business Process Expert (BPE) provided the most practical "next steps" for how an SAP consultant can evolve their skills that Jon had yet seen. Marco came through on this podcast with an excellent overview of how the SAP market is changing, how BPX is supporting the SAP skills transition, and what consultants can do to keep their skills in line with the market. By the time the podcast is over, there is a clearer sense of how the SAP professional of today can involve themselves in the BPX community, honing their own skills while also contributing to SAP's product evolution. In this thirty-one minute interview, hosted by Jon Franke of SearchSAP, Jon and Marco talk about the following points: - How Marco got involved with SAP and how he wound up in his current role as the Global Director of the BPX community. - The origins of the SAP BPX community in 2006, and how it has achieved phenomenal growth (200,000 + members) through a grassroots approach to community building. Marco also shares the vision of BPX, the emergence of the industry forums, and the "horizontal and vertical" areas of BPX built around SAP's Business Suite, core ERP, and GRC products. - Marco explains why the BPX community has been so compelling to SAP professionals, by tapping into their desire to evolve into BPE (Business Process Expert) consultants and be better prepared for the eSOA era. - Marco also describes how the collaborative BPX community has also helped SAP partners reduce the "cost of ownership" around educating their consultants about eSOA. SAP customers have also turned to SAP BPX to help support their employees working on the SAP "Business Process Platform." - The SAP BPX community also influences SAP through its product management cycle. Marco explains how the SAP BPX world can serve as a feedback channel to SAP and also support the launch of new product initiatives going forward. - Jon asks Marco about the importance of the Business Process Expert (BPE), and why this person is going to be so important to the SAP implementations of the future. Marco shares the BPX community definition of the BPE: "This business process expert has both the business knowledge and IT savvy to make business process innovation happen in real time, by adapting, composing and executing business processes, using best practices, composition software, and enterprise services." - Marco explains that while there are many different definitions of BPEs, they most commonly describe themselves as having "one foot in IT, and one foot in business." Marco highlights the range of job roles that fit in under the Business Process Expert "umbrella role." - Jon brings up one of the most riveting aspects of Marco's TechEd presentation on becoming a BPE: the argument that both ABAP jobs and core functional configuration jobs are going to go away. Marco clarifies this point, and reframes the discussion to step back from the "shock value" of Jon's statement. Marco explains that ABAP and configuration jobs are not going to go away, but that it's important for all SAP professionals to acquire composition skills, especially technical consultants. - Marco talks about the evolving SAP Composition Environment (CE) and why both technical and functional SAP professionals will want to get experience with the CE going forward. He also hones in on the importance of "soft skills" and provides concrete examples of the types of "soft skills" that will be crucial, including industry expertise. - Marco emphasizes the importance of process modeling skills, and he mentions some of the modeling tools of today (Visio, Visual Composer, ARIS for NetWeaver) and tomorrow that both technical and functional SAP folks will want to get a handle on. - Jon and Marco agree that the "alarmist" view that the current SAP job roles are going away is not the right mindset. The right attitude is to make a commitment to transforming your skill set along with SAP. - Marco talks about other key skills of the "BPXer," including Business Process Management (BPM) methodology know-how and BPM tools like Six Sigma. He tells us why Web 2.0 and community-building skills are so important for the BPE, using blogging, wikis, and collaborative forums to "evangelize" your solutions throughout a global project. - Jon and Marco talk about how SAP professionals now have access to free resources to self-education. Since cost for training is not a barrier, it's more of a mindset shift: (1) getting access to new SAP technical information, and (2) joining communities like BPX to share "best practices" and lessons learned. - Marco makes some distinctions between sharing processes at "process level zero" versus "process level three," and why there is a difference between collaborating on "commoditized processes" versus working on more "disruptive" or strategic (level three) areas. This latter type of collaboration would likely take place in a closed area and shared with the broader community as appropriate. - Jon asks Marco about how today's "SAP functional configuration expert" and "SAP application consultant" of the present needs to evolve to become a BPE. Marco explains how the CE and other Business Process Platform modeling tools will change the relationship between functional and technical teams. He also talks about eSOA, and how, alongside the Enterprise Architect, the functional specialist will be working with SAP eSOA resources like the Enterprise Services Repository.   - Jon Franke asks Marco about how to improve your soft skills, and Marco gives a "big picture" response that starts with how you carry yourself on client sites and work with executives and project teams, and goes on to include various areas of formal and informal education such as organizational change management, process modeling tools, Web 2.0 technologies, and Enterprise SOA. - Jon tries to put Marco on the spot by asking him to explain how the "disruptive innovation" he is advocating can exist alongside of SAP's customer message of "innovation without disruption." Marco explains that there is not a contradiction because the kind of innovation he is advocating takes place in a closed environment that does not involve disrupting the transactional system. - Marco also explains that the distinction between commodity processes and strategic processes comes into play when understanding the cycle of disruptive innovation. He uses the example of Nike's product rollouts and the cycle of innovation in the mobile technology space to describe the difference. - Marco issues a formal invitation for all listeners to get involved with the SAP BPX community. There is a robust "getting started" area to get new members involved quickly with the issues and projects that the BPX community is tackling. Marco also highlights the SAP upgrades area within SAP BPX as a great resource for project teams. - Jon wraps the podcast by talking about the shifting trends in SAP employment, and how it's easy to end this podcast because the next step is to sign up with SAP BPX and get further involved in your SAP skills transformation.

SAP NetWeaver jobs: What the future holdsWith NetWeaver upgrades going strong and enterprise service-oriented architecture (ESOA) projects becoming a reality, it is an exciting time to be an SAP professional. In this podcast, SearchSAP.com career expert Jon Reed and Ori Inbar, SAP's senior vice president of solution marketing for NetWeaver, discuss emerging SAP NetWeaver job roles and explain where talent shortages are expected in the future. Also, Inbar offers a sneak peek at TechEd 2007.Download the podcast here

The market for SAP jobs is hot, with some SAP skills paying premiums over the general IT market. In this podcast with David Foote, president of Foote Partners LLC, find out which modules have a particularly rosy outlook and which ones aren't expected to fare as well. Foote also discusses how outsourcing could affect SAP professionals and gives a general market update and predictions for the upcoming year.Download to your favorite mobile device.

In the kick-off to his new podcast series hosted by SearchSAP, Jon interviews Dan Lubin, Director of Information Technology at Abiomed, about the lessons learned during Abiomed's SAP All-in-One implementation. Hosted by Jon Franke of Search SAP, this podcast is a straight-talking review of the "human side" of Abiomed's SAP implementation. Listen in as Jon Reed asks Dan Lubin how Abiomed managed to implement SAP in 28 weeks, overcoming team burnout and hitting all their milestones. In this thirty minute interview, "the two Jons" and Dan cover key topics such as: - The scope of Abiomed's SAP implementation and how this Danvers, MA company leverages SAP for its international medical device business. - The winning formula Abiomed used to staff its SAP project, and how it combined external consultants with internal team members. - Why offshore resources are important for Abiomed and other midsize companies to fill skills gaps on their SAP project, and how Abiomed used an onshore/offshore mix to meet their "blended rate" cost targets. - Why the typical functional consultant tends to have too narrow a skill set for Abiomed's project and what the skills profile of their ideal functional consultant looks like. The importance of understanding the integration points between modules is emphasized. - How users honestly responded to the new SAP environment and what Abiomed did to ensure that users were on board with a more standardized and structured approach to handling their business processes via SAP. - What the Abiomed team did to overcome burnout and help users get through the most labor-intensive parts of the implementation cycle. - What types of SAP full time employees were recruited to the project and what kinds of expertise they brought with them that rounded out the Abiomed team in areas such as security, validation, and testing. - The "lessons learned" from the SAP implementation and why internal investment in project management is crucial. The results of following (and not following) SAP best practices, the impact of training and why the mundane but vital task of user documentation is of critical importance. - Tips for success: Dan clarifies the difference between knowledge transfer and training and explains how to approach both from the standpoint of managing a budget and making sure that knowledge transfer is an organic result of a well-run implementation. - Would Dan implement SAP again? Dan clarifies a quote Jon cited from SAPPHIRE, challenging Jon on its accuracy, and explains why he would absolutely do the SAP implementation over again and why Abiomed has gained so much from its SAP install and the user community "ecosystem." Dan closes by noting the anticipation for the pending Abiomed European implementation.

In Jon's first-ever podcast appearance, Jon is interviewed on a podcast hosted by SearchSAP.com. (Original version can be heard on SearchSAP.com). This 18 minute "State of the SAP Job Market" podcast features Jon's take on where SAP consulting is headed as we begin the "upgrade era." The focus of the podcast is an in-depth look at the changing SAP job market. Jon's portion of the interview begins at the three minute mark. During the 15 minute discussion, Jon comments on: - How the SAP job market has evolved since the year 2000 and how SAP has overcome the challenges it has faced since Y2K. - How SAP triumphed over the best-of-breed market in CRM and other area and why that's good news for SAP consultants. - Why the era of "enforced upgrades" should be a good one for SAP professionals and why software markets are at their healthiest when there is a carrot (new functionality) and a stick (fees for extended maintenance). - The potential impact of SOA and Web Services and how consultants can anticipate these technology trends. - Why the "death of ABAP" is premature and why SAP is still invested in the future of ABAP. - What the "SAP Programmer of the Future" will look like. - What the impact of outsourcing will be on technical (and functional) areas of SAP. - Why RFID hasn't taken off as an SAP consulting niche and how consultants can position themselves in this emerging area. - The impact of CRM On-Demand Solutions and whether there will be a good consulting niche in this area. - Why Sarbanes-Oxley and "Compliance Consulting" has not been especially popular, and how SAP consultants can incorporate compliance and regulatory skills into their skill sets.