InsideSAP Issue 9 May/June 2010

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The independent magazine for SAP professionals

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www.insidesap.com.au

May/June 2010: Issue #9 Australia & New Zealand

Financial Services special What’s driving change in the banking sector?

Plus Superpartners case study

Event highlights From SAPPHIRE and CeBIT Australia

Whole-of-government ICT workforce strategy The response to Gershon

LATEST NEWS NEW PARTNERS, PRODUCTS

GRC IS ‘BIG BANG’ THE WRONG APPROACH?

ON THE MOVE WHO’S GOING WHERE

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contents [12] SAP news: 2010 off to a strong start for SAP

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[13] SAP news: The Sybase acquisition [14] SAP news: Living in an OnDemand world [15] News in focus: R&D tax incentive revamped

Event roundup [16] CeBIT Australia 2010 [18] SAPPHIRE NOW 2010

Industry feature: Financial services [22] Banking on success: Where financial institutions saw threats, SAP saw opportunity – and the GFC only made the case for core banking system upgrades stronger.

[26] Case study: Superannuation fund administrator Superpartners implemented SAP BPC to improve its ability to meet government and financial reporting requirements.

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[29] Case study: Following a series of acquisitions, Dutch insurer Achmea needed to consolidate and streamline its business processes on a common platform.

[31] Case study: Improving lending capabilities through an SAP implementation allowed the dairy-farmer owned Murray Goulburn Cooperative to better serve its members.

[32] Case study: DuluxGroup has slashed manual processing time with a Sales Order Processing solution.

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Columns [33] Governance, Risk and Compliance: Stuart Dickinson questions the sustainability of the ‘Big Bang’ approach to implementation.

[34] HR/Payroll: Phillip Barwell outlines a range of options for labour costing.

[36] CRM: Jens Tonn discusses the ins and outs of Interaction Records in CRM 7.0.

[38] Supply Chain Management: Sandeep Prahan explains how businesses can increase supply chain visibility with SAP Event Management.

Careers

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[40] Careers: Freya Purnell examines the detail of the recently released Federal Government ICT workforce strategy plan.

[43] On the Move

REGULARS [4] From the Editor [6] News [45] Tech Toys

[49] Partner Directory [48] Events

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Inside SAP Managing Director

Adrian Everett t. (02) 9394 8550 m. 0414 417 786 adrian.everett@insidesap.com.au

Managing Editor

Freya Purnell t. (02) 9929 5465 m. 0412 602 579 freya.purnell@insidesap.com.au

Journalist

Nathan Dukes t. (02) 9394 8550 nathan.dukes@insidesap.com.au

Journalist/Editorial Assistant Elizabeth Kelleher t. (02) 9929 5465 elizabeth@flapjack.com.au

Creative Director & Production Manager Justin Knights t. (02) 9929 5465 m. 0425 292 075 justin@flapjack.com.au

Advertising Sales

MW Media Darren Matthews t. 02 9029 6028 m. 0411 259009 darren@mwmedia.com.au Stuart Whitmore t. 02 9029 6028 m. 0403 003 703 stuart@mwmedia.com.au

Contributing Writers

Stuart Dickinson, Phillip Barwell, Jens Tonn, Sandeep Prahan

Inside SAP Editorial Advisory Committee

letter from the

Editor

More than 18 months on from the GFC and the world is again nervously anticipating the fall-out from the latest crisis – this time it is not just the banking sector, but entire economies trembling under the weight of huge amounts of sovereign debt. Only time will tell what the outcome is this time around, but in our financial services feature this month, Nathan Dukes examines how the GFC drove the banking sector towards massive core system upgrades, in a bid to manage risk, remove reliance on legacy systems and remain competitive in a changed industry and consumer landscape.

Some of the biggest implementations in progress in Australia are happening in this sector, and while it might be years before we see the final analysis of projects at CBA, NAB and the like, Superpartners told InsideSAP about its recent BPC implementation.

While ‘big bang’ implementations which typically take years to complete are the norm at the moment in the financial services sector, in this month’s GRC column, Stuart Dickinson, questions whether this is a sustainable approach for the consulting and implementing community going forward, or if a series of smaller projects, progressively providing value and managing risk along the way is a better way. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so email me at freya. purnell@insidesap.com.au and we’ll publish your views in our next edition.

Published by

It’s event season as well, with SAPPHIRE NOW held concurrently in Frankfurt, Germany and Orlando, Florida in mid-May and CeBIT Australia most recently in Sydney. We bring you a round-up of the key SAP announcements and unveilings at both events, including video and links to webcasts, so you can experience the presentations for yourself.

This magazine is produced with technology from WebMag Factory www.webmagfactory.com.au

We also take a look at SAP’s new BI OnDemand offering, recently launched to the SME market, the final form of the R&D tax incentive, announced in the May Budget, and its implications for software development, and find out more about the Federal Government’s recently released whole-of-government ICT workforce strategic plan, which aims to address capacity constraints and the issues with workforce planning raised by the Gershon Review.

Iain Macleod, CSC; David Johnson, Cubic Group; Amber Lundy, Extend Technologies; Stuart Dickinson, Oxygen Business Solutions; Phil Cook, PCW Solutions; Peter Sertori, SAP ANZ

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Inside SAP is published six times a year by FlapJack Custom Publishing under licence from Terrace Media Group Pty Ltd. ©2010 Terrace Media Group Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publishers. Terrace Media Group Pty Ltd makes no representation or warranties with respect to this magazine or its contents including, without limitation, material communicated by third parties. Terrace Media Group Pty Ltd does not warrant that the information available in this magazine is accurate, complete or current. Opinions expressed are those of the respective authors and not necessarily of the publisher. Neither Terrace Media Group Pty Ltd nor any persons involved in the preparation of this publication will be liable for any loss or damage as a result of use of or reliance upon advice, representation, statement, opinion or conclusion expressed in Inside SAP magazine.

I hope you enjoy this edition.

Freya Purnell Managing Editor, Inside SAP

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news ]

By Nathan Dukes

Consulting Networks expands

Frucor chooses SAP for process integration

SAP partner Consulting Networks, part of the CN Group, has doubled its team of consultants, following its win of a major contract with the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET).

Leading drink manufacturer Frucor has implemented SAP Process Integration, which SAP said will “dramatically reduce the time to integrate new customers into Frucor’s automated ordering system”.

Contracted as prime partner in the SAP HR/Payroll Program, CN leads a consortium of three SAP system integrators in the DET’s HR/Payroll implementation.

The new system is also expected to improve customer order and fulfilment accuracy.

Group CEO Brian Pereira said the organisation had brought in around 30 new consultants to cater for the new business.

Frucor is already using the solution with one major grocery chain in New Zealand and will roll it out with further customers in Australia and New Zealand in the coming months.

“[DET is] a significant contract for us. We’re utilising 15 of our 60 people for that project. That’s why we’ve skilled up so heavily,” Pereira said.

CN will lead with the roll-out of HR/Payroll systems for NSW TAFE, in this phase of the program.

In another boon for the organisation, the group was recently awarded SAP hosting certification in Australia, and is the first local Australian SAP Systems Integration partner to receive the official stamp of approval.

The solution was implemented by SAP system integrator, Tango Group.

Paul Miller, CIO, Frucor said because of the complexity of its operations, it made sense to leverage SAP to provide interfaces between the core ERP and customer order exchange.

“SAP Process Integration opens doors to customer information that would have remained complex and slow to integrate. We really didn’t want to compromise on this,” Miller said.

CN will offer hosting services for all SMEs, including SAP’s Enterprise, SAP All-In-One and SAP Business One customers.

CN Group utilises local purpose-built data centres to avoid data sovereignty issues and client concerns about company data being held overseas.

Pereira said the certification is confirmation of the end-to-end relationship they can offer to customers to optimise their SAP investments, freeing up capital for innovation and extension of the solution stack.

“Already 50 per cent of Frucor’s sales are going through the interface. It means improved clarity in our communications and transactions, fewer errors and faster issue resolution.”

The other key benefit for Frucor was cost: Miller said the cost of keeping the old system running was greater than implementing a replacement.

Stream signs SAP partnership SAP Australia has announced the signing of Stream Consulting Services (StreamCS) as a new SAP Reseller Channel Partner for SAP Business All-in-One and SAP BusinessObjects.

“They demand solutions that address specific business issues whilst providing a platform for future growth delivered on time, on budget and on value.”

StreamCS will focus on providing SAP Business All-in-One Fast-Start solutions to the mid-market.

Gerber looks forward to the success of the relationship, which he believes will be influenced by the combination of market awareness and strong local growth.

The company leverages the combined experience of directors Dawie Gerber and Joel Stehr, who together have more than 15 years experience delivering SAP Business All-In-One solutions to SME organisations.

Gerber, managing director of StreamCS, said SME organisations are very much value-focused. >> www.insidesap.com.au

“We’re obviously very excited about it. On one hand we have SAP which continues to achieve strong growth in the region. On the other we have the StreamCS knowledge and experience of the midmarket combined with a hand-picked team of very talented people. We believe we have something special to offer the market,” he said.

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TIK tackles data transfer issues in Victoria Police implementation

By Nathan Dukes

TIK Consulting has successfully transferred more than three million records from Victoria Police’s legacy IT systems into their new SAP system with virtually 100 per cent accuracy.

The data transfer was part of Victoria Police’s implementation of SAP HR/Payroll modules.

David Irvine, director,TIK Consulting, who led the data transfer, said all of the conversions were performed through an auditable and automated process using the Nexus Suite Data Conversion Module.

Prior to the commencement of the project, one of the major concerns of Victoria Police was the high level of complexity that would be associated with converting all of their legacy systems.

For this reason, SAP, the implementation partner, called on TIK Consulting to partner with it for this project.

Irvine said the Nexus Suite was suitable for the project because it allows users to transform and load information from any legacy systems into SAP using any combination of configurable translation rules, tables, and variables.

Irvine confirmed the data was converted with a failure rate of 0.0003 per cent, which was a result of previously identified data cleansing issues deemed acceptable by the business.

This success was due to Victoria Police being able to see their transformed data from very early on in the project.

“Once you’ve determined the underlying integrity and the associated logic of the conversion, configuring this within Nexus is a quick and easy process,” Irvine said.

Victoria Police also used the Payroll Verification Module, another Nexus Suite tool, to compare and analyse payroll results between the legacy payroll system and SAP, to ensure that the data was converted accurately and the new Victoria Police SAP payroll system was paying employees correctly.

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SAP maintains lead in BI: Gartner Gar tner statistics released recently reveal SAP remains the leading revenue maker in the business intelligence, analytics and performance management market.

According to Gartner, SAP made US$2.08 billion in 2009, increasing market share by 1 per cent.

SAP’s next competitor is Oracle, who made just over US$1.3 billion, closely followed

by SAS Institute and IBM. Gartner said the industry as a whole surpassed US$9.3 billion in 2009, a 4.2 per cent increase on 2008 revenue of US$8.9 billion.

“Even though growth was nowhere near the levels of 2008, and by no means immune to the recession, BI showed that it is not as cyclical as many other software areas, recording healthy growth in one of the toughest years recorded in software history,” said Dan Sommer, senior research analyst at Gar tner.

By Nathan Dukes

ASG acquires Courtland IT services company ASG Group has entered the SAP market with the acquisition of Cour tland Business Solutions.

The move also sees ASG’s strategic entry into the lucrative West Australian market.

Based in Per th, Cour tland has established customer relationships across a range of industries including the mining, oil and gas, engineering, construction and infrastructure sectors, which ASG Group intends to leverage heavily.

“The acquisition and resulting availability of a wider range of software will provide us with greater flexibility and optionality in devising tailored solutions for our clients,” said ASG CEO Geoff Lewis.

“We are also par ticularly pleased to be increasing our exposure to the mining and oil and gas sectors that are showing strong activity that is expected to continue well into the future.”

As an existing Oracle and Microsoft par tner, ASG Group said its entry into the SAP market will significantly enhance its product offering, creating a source for future growth.

The acquisition follows ASG’s purchase of Melbourne-based IT firm, Dowling Consulting.

Deloitte joins mhm Deloitte last month announced that partners and staff of mhm, an SAP partner, would join Deloitte’s Adelaide and Perth offices.

Mhm’s consulting division, which includes SAP relationships, will be integrated into Deloitte’s consulting practice from the start of next financial year.This will create a consulting team of over 60 staff in South Australia and over 170 staff in Western Australia.

Mhm will supplement Deloitte’s business process and industry knowledge with expertise in SAP and enabling technologies.

The union between mhm and Deloitte is expected to strengthen the service offerings from strategy through to technical implementation of both transactional application and business intelligence solutions.

Deloitte will also be able to capitalise on mhm’s partnerships with SAP, including Gold SAP BI partnership, Associate Business All-In-One partnership, and a Business Objects partnership. >> www.insidesap.com.au

CIBER extends hosting capabilities CIBER has announced the expansion of its hosted offerings to SME customers in ANZ. The hosted offerings allow midsize companies to implement and run SAP Business All-in-One solutions without the need to hire and train dedicated IT staff to implement and manage the software.

CIBER Australia director Jonathan Bucktin said it would leverage the company’s global hosting certification partnership with SAP, and utilise data centres across USA, UK, Europe and Asia.

Bucktin said the subscription-based relationship they are offering is very different to the standard SAP model, and looks forward to providing customers with more flexibility in managing their IT costs through SaaS solutions.

Guenter Winter, CEO of CIBER Australia and New Zealand, added that CIBER is one of the only channel partners in Australia to offer subscription-based hosting services.

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Harvey Norman outlines roadmap Harvey Norman chief operating officer John Slack-Smith presented a roadmap for its IT overhaul at the CeBIT exhibition and conference in Sydney.

Harvey Norman is currently implementing SAP ERP across the company, as part of Project Reload, including systems in their 245 stores across retail chains in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Northern Ireland over the next three years.

The project, expected to cost in the vicinity of $50 million, was put on hold during the global financial crisis.The company has since ramped up the project again, and is currently replacing their merchandising and supply chain management systems.

Although the company is progressing strongly with its SAP implementation, Slack-Smith revealed the company was not yet ready to implement online retailing, a concern for shareholders as competitors begin using the space more heavily. New projects will be placed on hold until the SAP project is complete, according to Slack-Smith.

New Zealand will likely be the testing ground for this new channel, and will be used as an indicator for potential success in Australia.

Read more about CeBIT Australia in our special on page 16.

Queensland Health project draws criticism Payroll issues at Queensland Health have put the spotlight on IBM’s recent implementation of SAP and other software, completed in late March.

According to a report by KPMG, compiled for the Queensland Government, “A number of issues related to the payroll systems were identified, related to the system performance, functionality, usability, and a number of other system-related issues.” The report said these problems resulted in thousands of staff being overpaid, underpaid and sometimes not paid at all.

IBM told The Australian newspaper it was working with partners to make expert assistance available to work through the issues.

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news ]

By Freya Purnell

SAP certifies Lodestone’s Expense Management System SAP AG has cer tified Lodestone Management Consultants’ Expense Management Solution (EMS), just months after the global management consultancy completed a successful roll-out for Transfield Ser vices.

Lodestone managing par tner, Bradley Bur t, said the company began developing the solution three years ago in response to requests for a more efficient and cost-effective expense claim and corporate card process for enterprise-wide procurement.

“We recognised that reconciling all these expense and corporate card procurement information outside SAP was a fairly cumbersome, time-consuming process,” said Bur t. “There is a huge overhead in accounts depar tments to reconcile and get all this information into SAP. There wasn’t really any module within SAP that focused purely on expenses and card procurement, so we decided to develop a solution within SAP that would solve that problem for businesses.”

Lodestone said the EMS cuts costs and time spent on manual processing and General Ledger reconciliation, in addition to providing a complete audit trail of all corporate card procurement.

The cer tification of the solution is now a differentiator for Lodestone, according to Bur t.

“It’s a niche oppor tunity for us and our clients; it is a fairly innovative solution. For us it means we are not competing just on service delivery and price alone.

We have a true end-to-end solution that addresses

business needs and allows us to engage with our clients.”

The success Lodestone has had already with the EMS is indicative of the appetite of global companies for enterprise-based solutions and common processes which can be rolled out on an SAP platform across multiple geographies.

Lodestone is currently engaged in various global and Asia Pacific region SAP template roll-outs, recently announcing a new two-year project with Olympus Asia Pacific, beginning in Singapore and reaching Australian operations in mid-2011.

“We’re also currently working with Johnson & Johnson Medical developing and rolling out a SAP regional template which will continue for at least another 18 months. So we’ll have two large Asia Pacific programs running concurrently, which will underpin our business for the next couple of years,” said Bur t.

Lodestone director, Scott Foley, said the business has also focused its effor ts on the public sector, with a Canberra-based national team.

“As the Government continues to look for ongoing savings, shared ser vices and deliver y reform is becoming more prevalent. Lodestone has been working with the Commonwealth Depar tment of Human Ser vices (DHS) on an SAP consolidation strategy to ensure the por tfolio’s goals for ser vice deliver y reform can be achieved,” said Foley, adding that he believes this is just the “tip of the iceberg” for reforms of this type at the Commonwealth level.

Stonebridge appointed SAP partner for Open Text Stonebridge has been appointed by SAP as an official implementation par tner for the new Open Text suite of products.

SAP has recently extended its agreement with Open Text to include Extended ECM for SAP, Digital Asset Management and Employee File Management. This increases the previous offerings from Invoice Management and Document Access and Archiving. >> www.insidesap.com.au

These extensions now increase SAP’s Open Text offering into a number of impor tant functional areas including Supplier Management, Project Management, Quality Management, Customer Service, Records Management, Plant Maintenance and Human Resources.

Craig Broadbent, Stonebridge director, said, “These extensions are all designed to provide out-of-thebox integrated solutions for the next generation of ECM integrated

into SAP business processes. Open Text offers unmatched integration into SAP along with an enterprise content management system with the ability to manage unstructured data inside and outside of SAP. ” As an existing Open Text par tner, Stonebridge has extensive experience with the Open Text product suite and the appointment will see Stonebridge suppor t SAP with the implementation of Open Text products for its customers.

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SAP news ]

2010 off to a strong start for SAP

By Nathan Dukes

Continued growth in the local markets has put SAP in a strong financial position after the first quarter of 2010.

In its annual results, SAP AG reported software revenue grew 31 per cent year on year, and software and software-related services revenue grew 16 per cent during the quarter.

Helen Masters, general manager for SME enterprise and indirect sales at SAP ANZ, presented an overview of the results to journalists at the SAP SME Summit in Sydney earlier this month.

Her presentation also highlighted a large number of new local signings, including Olympus, Asics, OPR, Osaka Gas, Minol and Alphapharm.

One of the largest growth markets for SAP locally was revenue from indirect sales, which grew 180 per cent.

Masters said this segment covers revenue of both SAP and SAP BusinessObjects solutions sold by channel par tners in ANZ, and also includes all sales of SAP Business One and SAP All-In-One packages.

In addition, BusinessObjects revenue grew 31 per cent and revenue specific to SAP Business One (for small enterprises of between 10 and 30 users) experienced revenue growth of 350 per cent year on year.

SAP ANZ communications director Peter Sertori qualified the results by noting the large gains were recorded against a backdrop of tough economic conditions for the same period last year.

“Q1 last year [January-March 2009] was a slow quar ter,” Ser tori said. “That was when we were most impacted by the GFC. We saw the back end of (2009) improve dramatically.”

SAP’s results in the SME market show at the end of 2009 SAP had 73,000 SME customers representing 77 per cent of their customer base. This market has show significant growth over the last three years, with the total number of customers growing threefold.

Global results released late last month also indicate the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region is leading the way in terms of both software and software-related services revenue. >> www.insidesap.com.au

Software revenue grew by 23 per cent on 2009 in the APJ region, significantly higher than both EMEA (5 per cent growth), and the Americas (13 per cent growth).

APJ also posted 16 per cent growth for software and software-related services revenue, and total revenue growth of 9 per cent as a region.

SAP AG co-CEO Bill McDermott said the strong international figures could be attributed to comparably young markets like APJ. “The first quar ter growth was made possible by all around solid execution in both our large, well established markets and our fast growing emerging markets,” he said.

Masters highlighted that deal sizes had risen significantly, with 27 per cent of new deals signed this quar ter reaching over €5 million, compared with only 12 per cent in Q1 2009.

“We’re seeing a return to some of the large deal transaction volumes which we didn’t see last year in Q1.

Average deal size was also up 36 per cent year over year,” Masters said.

As a company, SAP AG announced first quar ter software revenue growth of 11 per cent, and services revenue growth of 12 per cent.

Total revenue for the quar ter tipped over €2.5 billion, up 5 per cent on 2009 figures.

“We are excited by our strong momentum and our return to growth in the first quar ter,” said SAP AG chief financial officer Werner Brandt.

“A solid top-line performance in combination with an increasing operating margin puts us on track to achieve our financial objective of profitable growth over the long-term.”

The company’s financial outlook remains unchanged from figures released in January following its full year repor ts. Expectations are for full year 2010 software and software-related services revenue growth of between 4 and 8 per cent on 2009 figures.

“We saw strong results from the rapidly expanding demand for SAP BusinessObjects solutions, as well as in our small and mid-sized enterprise business. We were also pleased by the strong performance in our focus industries as our customers are turning to SAP to help their businesses run better,” McDermott said.

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[ SAP news

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SAP acquires Sybase

By Freya Purnell and Nathan Dukes

SAP America has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase, Inc for US$5.8b, in a bid to stake a claim in the mobile space.

SAP has made an all-cash tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Sybase common stock at $65.00 per share, a 44 per cent premium over the three-month average stock price of Sybase. The Sybase board of directors unanimously approved the agreement and recommended that Sybase’s stockholders tender their shares.

The acquisition will be funded from SAP’s cash on hand and a €2.75 billion loan facility with Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank. It is one of the largest acquisitions made by SAP, with the largest being the BusinessObjects acquisition in 2007 for US$6.8 billion.

According to a joint statement by the companies, the move represents a significant step from SAP into the mobile space, enabling the company to accelerate the reach of its solution across mobile platforms and drive the realisation of its plans for in-memory computing. For Sybase, access to SAP in-memory technology will provide the opportunity for performance improvements to its analytic processing capabilities, and take its event processing and analytics expertise, built in the financial sector, to other industries and markets.

SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe believes mobile is the platform of the future for businesses.

“The combination of SAP and Sybase will give users the option of running their operations from leading mobile devices and will unleash the full power of mobility, including messaging interoperability, content delivery and mobile commerce services, across all companies and roles and in any location. In addition, innovation around Sybase’s established database business will pave the way for ‘real’ real-time analytics and finally remove the decade-old barrier between business applications and business intelligence,” Hagemann Snabe said.

The two companies will maintain separate operations, but Sybase will trade under the name ‘Sybase, an SAP company’.

SAP stated that it would continue to support each organisation’s product roadmap, and that the both companies’ development organisations would remain intact, although opportunities for cross-collaboration would be explored.

From left to right: Raj Nathan, chief marketing officer of Sybase, John S. Chen, chairman, CEO and president of Sybase and Bill McDermott, co-CEO and president, SAP Global Field Operations.

SAP and Sybase also suggested that the acquisition will expand opportunities for both ecosystems, by making it easier for software and implementation partners to create, deliver and manage mobile enterprise applications.

While the emphasis is certainly on gains to be made in the mobile space, some analysts have hailed the acquisition as a win for SAP in the analytics and database management area.

Forrester senior analyst James Kobielus wrote on the Forrester blog that the acquisition provides key solution components that SAP needs to compete effectively with competitors Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.

SAP’s missing pieces, Kobielus said, were an enterprise-grade, database management system, complex event processing tools for real-time analytics and transactional computing, and in-database analytics features to allow for more advanced operations in its data warehousing platform.

“This is just as important an acquisition for SAP as BusinessObjects was two years ago. It will prove just as pivotal a move for fending off aggressive enroachment by Oracle into SAP core account,” Kobielus said.

SAP also received some criticism on what some regarded as the high price of the deal, but during the Sapphire conference in Orlando, SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott defended the price, reportedly saying, “Exceptional assets don’t come cheap. This gives us the number-one position in mobility. This is a dynamite transaction for both sides and we’re very, very confident it will play out that way in the marketplace.” >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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SAP news ]

Living in an OnDemand world

By Freya Purnell

With process improvements high on the priority list for businesses everywhere, at the SAP SME Summit held in Sydney in early May, SAP ANZ launched locally an SaaS Business Intelligence (BI) offering specifically for the SME market.

Although SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand had been available in the Asian Pacific Japan (APJ) market for two months prior to the Summit, the official launch provided a forum for the announcement of the pricing model and a demonstration of the solution, which is targeted at small enterprises looking for BI capability in a flexible, scalable, entry-level product.

According to SAP ANZ director – industry and solutions group, John Goldrick, using the new solution business users can quickly access, explore, report, visualise and share data.

For SMEs, the benefit of the BI OnDemand solution is that it brings together business processes and analytics with an improved user experience, allowing users to see clearly how their business is performing.

“Customers can be up and running quickly with no prior experience or training. BI OnDemand provides a whole new market for SAP channel partners,” Goldrick said.

Some of the features of the new solution are: access to SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, for data exploration; the ability to access on-demand and on-premise data, including data from SAP, Salesforce and MYOB, to create dashboards, reports and interactive visualisations; and information sharing both inside and outside the organisation. The solution can be offered as both an on-premise and an on-demand solution.

SAP has also provided a flexible pricing model, allowing SMEs to scale its use up or down as necessary. While the entry level version is free, with customers able to upload their own data set to explore and manipulate, two more comprehensive offerings provide varying levels of security and data storage. According to SAP, the pricing model should help SMEs without data warehouses to begin with an SaaS BI system and gradually add back-end capabilities such as a hosted data warehouse and development environment.

On-demand services and solutions provider Sqware Peg has entered the SAP space for the first time, signing with SAP as the first local partner to offer customers the solution. >> www.insidesap.com.au

Sqware Peg managing director Shawn Stilwell said the partnership with SAP eventuated at the right time, as the business had been considering building an analytics practice to better serve its customer base for some time.

“This new solution is a natural fit for customers that are using cloud computing or a mix of cloud and on-premise solutions, and this is an opportunity for us to stitch together all the ERP cloud computing solutions that we offer,” Stilwell said.

With SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand to be made available through the PartnerEdge program in the channel partner ecosystem later in the year, Helen Masters, SAP ANZ general manager, growth markets, said, “This is a massive opportunity for our channel partners to take advantage of two rapidly growing market segments: Business Intelligence tools and on-demand software delivery. Analyst research shows there is strong demand for SaaS BI tools that are easy to use and acquire. The on-demand model will provide a solid annuity stream and a healthy margin for channel partners.”

Currently around 77 per cent of SAP’s customer are SMEs, with around 90 per cent of the SME market owned by the channel network.

Speaking at the launch of the solution, Tom Kindermans, senior VP, SME, SAP APJ, said on-demand products such as this will play a key role in SAP’s overall product strategy, and in fact, for SMEs, will be a critical component in the provision of core business systems.

Kindermans also made reference to SAP’s other longawaited SaaS play, Business ByDesign. After an aborted launch in 2008, it has now been piloted in six countries.

While Australia is expected to be part of the next wave, no release date has been announced yet, although Kindermans said it will probably be some time in 2011. An announcement on enhanced features in a new release of Business ByDesign and SAP’s plan to leverage the partner ecosystem for its distribution were made at SAPPHIRE NOW (see story on page 20).

Business users can try SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand free at http://bi.ondemand.com.

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[news in focus

15

R&D tax incentive revamped

By Elizabeth Kelleher

In the 2009/2010 Federal Budget, the Government announced plans to replace the R&D Tax Concession with a new, streamlined tax incentive designed to drive productivity and economic growth. Recognising that companies may be reluctant to invest in costly R&D when the knowledge generated could “spill over” to the benefit of other firms, the amendment provides a tax offset for expenditure on R&D conducted in Australia as well as for the decline in value of depreciating assets used for eligible R&D activities. Eligible entities whose annual turnover exceeds $20 million will be entitled to a 40 per cent nonrefundable tax offset, while a 45 per cent refundable tax offset will be available for firms with less than $20 million in annual turnover.

The first draft of the Tax Laws Amendment (Research and Development) Bill 2010 was released in December last year and contained a number of provisions which were seen to be fundamentally disadvantageous to the ICT industry, first and foremost in its definition of R&D. Under the draft legislation, R&D activities were categorised as either “core” or “supporting” and were required to be “experimental, systematic and investigative” and involve “high levels of novelty and technical risk”. In its submission, the IT Industry Innovation Council (IIIC) argued that this provision was discriminatory against the software industry on account of the fact that “software development is not ‘experimental’ in the usual sense, where the occurrence of previously unknown or unexpected physical phenomena represents much of the technical risk”.

The draft legislation also explicitly excluded software services other than software development from qualifying as R&D. Under this provision, integrating off-the-shelf or open source computer software could not be classified as either a core or supporting R&D activity. Tim Ebbeck, president and managing director, SAP Australia New Zealand, criticised this provision in a submission and noted that it could cause a significant “diminution in the future level of software R&D carried out by SAP Research”.

Describing the legislation as an “old economy” view of the world, Ebbeck argued that excluding claims for integration of open source and off-the-shelf software was unrealistic in an industry trending towards opening systems that realise

the benefit of business networks.

Another provision criticised by Ebbeck was the multiple sales test, which excluded in-house software development from being considered core R&D by requiring that software be created for the purpose of supply to at least two other entities. This concern was shared by ICT industry leaders such as the IIIC, the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), the Australian Computer Society and the Internet Industry Association.

As a result of these criticisms from the ICT sector, the Federal Treasury has released a second exposure draft of the legislation which adopts a more principles-based approach to software R&D. Under the revised legislation, core R&D activities are defined as experimental activities “whose outcome cannot be known or determined in advance on the basis of current knowledge, information or experience”. Experimental activities that qualify as core R&D are those which employ “a systematic progression of work that is based on principles of established science and proceed from hypothesis to experiment, observation and evaluation” in order to reach a logical conclusion.

Distinct from activities that would be undertaken for normal operational reasons, supporting R&D must have an immediate relationship with core R&D and be conducted for the express purpose of supporting it.

Software now also falls under the same criteria as all other kinds of R&D and will no longer be subject to a multiple sales test. In-house software developed for the internal administration of business functions will, however, be excluded from consideration as core R&D under the new tax incentive. Significantly, this exclusion does not extend to software developed in-house that is of an applied nature or when software activities are undertaken to support a larger R&D project and in which case the activities may qualify as supporting R&D. According to the Federal Government, this exclusion “reflects the fact that such software activities are site-specific, can usually be expected to be undertaken by the relevant business without an incentive, and that consequently, the additional public benefit from subsidising such activities is limited”.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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events ] CeBIT

A glimpse of the future CeBIT Australia 2010 set the stage for SAP to present some of its latest ideas and innovations to customers and partners, including a glimpse of the latest products to reach the market, but some of the prototypes and work-in-progress from across the globe.

Nathan Dukes presents some of the highlights.

The future of retail While the technology is not ‘bleeding edge’, SAP showcased some of the advancements it has made in the retail space using radio frequency identification (RFID).

In Switzerland, SAP has built a shopping centre which relies on RFID in a range of functions, from distribution and stock warehousing, to logistics and customer interaction. For example, shoppers place items in a trolley which immediately updates their item list and cost on a digital screen attached to the trolley. When leaving the store, customers simply pass through an RFID reader which tallies the total cost, and allows you to pay using a credit card, without checkouts or queues.

See more in SAP’s video here.

Text analytics Text analytics is another technology SAP has showcased before, but at CeBIT, it was demonstrated in a new prototype.

For the uninitiated, text analytics is a technology which allows end users to automatically analyse unstructured

data sources, like email, and convert them into data to fit into the confines of a structured SAP system. A great example is Yowie, a Google Wave extension, created at SAP Research in Brisbane, which allows users to collect data from email. The tool seeks out keywords and phrases to assist the end user to take the required action. Keywords like names, phone numbers, order requests and stock items can all be recognised and linked back to the SAP system. See more of Yowie in the video below.

Collecting this unstructured data will become a priority in the future. SAP sales specialist Nick Harris says by 2012, 2500 billion gigabytes of data will have to be managed by businesses globally, and around 80 per cent of that data will be unstructured.

SAP also offered a brand-new proof of concept of text analytics at CeBIT, called Compareviews. Based inside Amazon.com, the tool pulls keywords from customer product reviews to map what SAP calls ‘sentiment analysis’. The tool collates reviews into positive, neutral and negative based on the keywords and rating provided, and drills down into customer language associated with specific functions.

For example, a customer may be in the market for a laptop. Not only can they compare and rank any number of laptops on the site, they can drill into the customer sentiment for particular features such as battery life, and re-rank the items based on favourable keywords for that feature.

Wasim Sadiq, deputy research director of CEC Research at SAP Research in Brisbane, says the tool has benefits beyond retail systems.

“You can use this technology is several scenarios in an organisation, where you have a CRM system and people are giving you feedback – whether they are happy or unhappy about the product – and you can collected all that information,” says Sadiq, adding that SAP is also working on a mobile prototype.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

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On a tour of CeBIT Australia, The Hon. Robert Schwarten MP, Queensland Government Minister for Information and Communication Technology, checks out the latest SAP solutions. Photo: CeBIT Austyralia.

The future of Business Intelligence

and schedules of initiatives.

SAP showcased its new Business Intelligence solution, BusinessObjects BI On-Demand. Aimed at the SME market, the online tool allows customers to access, explore, report, visualise and share data. The primary interface allows users to upload data from local files, and covert that into graphs and charts and illustration so the data. Users can also combine multiple data sets.

Karen Copeland, principal constituent and social services, sustainability at SAP Public Services APJ says the program could also have uses beyond the public sector. Socially and environmentally responsible businesses could use the tool to manage human resources objectives or manufacturing plants, for example.

Read more about SAP BusinessObjects BI On Demand on page 14.

See the SAP Sustainable City Management video below.

Sustainable cities SAP public sector experts were also on hand to demonstrate a new tool from SAP Research in Germany which allows cities and councils to manage their community in a holistic way â&#x20AC;&#x201C; combining social, economic and environmental risk factors and objectives.

Called Sustainable City Management, the tool allows councils to visualise demographics and trends across a city, and compare the data to average statistics to highlight problem areas. The example in the demo shows how the tool can analyse the use of renewable energy across several suburbs. Using visualisations, the tool can identify problem areas based on statistics, and manage actions and initiatives to help balance areas of inequality. You can also view the data from an organisational standpoint to see budgets, responsibilities >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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18

events ] SAPPHIRE

SAPPHIRE NOW 2010 SAG AG held its annual conference, SAPPHIRE NOW from 17-19 May 2010, concurrently in Frankfurt, Germany and Orlando, Florida. Featuring such luminaries as Sir Richard Branson, founder and president of Virgin Group; General Colin L. Powell, former US Secretary of State; and SAP AG co-founder and supervisory board chairman Hasso Platner, the event was also the setting for some important updates on what is happening in the world of SAP. Here we present some of the highlights and key announcements. By Freya Purnell.

Co-CEOs chart the course 18 May marked 100 days since SAP AG co-CEOs, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, took on their new roles, so it was the perfect time to set the scene on their vision for the future. They acknowledged that a convergence of market forces – including globalisation, industry consolidation, mobility and an explosion of data – is changing the world of business, and consequently, business leaders need unwired and sustainable operations to run their businesses better in real time.

In their address, McDermott and Snabe outlined SAP’s product strategy, under the three strategic pillars, onpremise, on-demand and on-device.

Speaking live from Orlando, McDermott highlighted the importance of sustainability, an unprecedented level of insight in real time, and mobility of applications.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

Snabe expanded on the technological implications of these key business shifts. While companies are willing to share infrastructure in cloud computing environments, they still also want to own the on-premise infrastructure and processes and capabilities that provide competitive differentiation. A demand for speed at all levels of business is another change, and enabling those throughout the organisation, not just at the top, to have access to information for better decision-making is critical.

Snabe underlined SAP’s unique commitment to ensuring consistency across all on-premise, on-demand and ondevice applications, designing and orchestrating them to fit together as “networked solutions”, and reiterated SAP’s desire to become the leader in both the on-demand market and in mobile business applications.

To watch the co-CEO keynote, click here.

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The technological vision SAP chief technology officer and executive board member Vishal Sikka and SAP co-founder and supervisory board chairman Hasso Plattner told audiences how SAP AG aims to eliminate the divide between transactional and analytical applications with in-memory technology. Together they highlighted the next wave of ‘real’ real-time computing technologies that will enable new applications and increase the reach of SAP systems through the mobile platform.

Sikka announced SAP’s plans for a high-performance analytic appliance to enable real-time analytics on live transactional data (in SAP Business Suite and SAP R/3 software) and to “supercharge” the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse component and SAP BusinessObjects solutions. In addition to speeding up existing SAP systems with real-time computing, Sikka spoke of SAP’s aims to extend the reach of these systems, announcing a project code-named ‘Gateway’ to create a product that would attach to any existing SAP system so that all types of developers from customers, partner companies and SAP could build and deliver simple applications that liberate the SAP application functionality and content for diverse mobile devices and presentation technologies.

Plattner spoke about the development work behind these innovations, enabling what he calls “the real ‘enterprise 2.0”. Plattner presented the in-

memory end result: that all users across the entire organisation can directly access SAP software to pull the information they need immediately to take appropriate decisions and actions. “This new type of enterprise interaction will change the behaviour of boardroom interactions and place a greater emphasis on executives asking the right questions, not waiting for the right answers,” said Plattner. “As a result, executives no longer use energy and time to speculate or debate about what the question is, and instead get to the problem quickly.”

To watch these executive keynotes, click here.

Innovations 2010 SAP unveiled a number of industry-specific and line-ofbusiness enhancements across multiple products including SAP Business Suite software, the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio, the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, solutions for governance, risk and compliance, industry packages, and solution extensions and social collaboration, design as “switch on” software enhancements to address specific demands.

These enhancements also focus on addressing common issues across all industries, including: • Managing a lean enterprise through shared services for simplified business support, improved engagement and standardised corporate practoces.

• Harnessing the collaborative power of social communities to provide differentiated customer experience.

• Transforming business models for growth through the transfer of best practices from other organisations and industries.

• Accelerating business information for faster, smarter decision-making.

For more information visit www.sap.com/innovations2010.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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case study ] SAPPHIRE

In-memory innovation SAP outlined its plans for a new combined hardware appliance and software solution that will dramatically increase the availability and speed of business information, enabling companies to make better decisions faster.

To power the next generation of business intelligence, business planning and business analytic applications, SAP is now working with leading hardware partners to deliver an in-memory software and hardware appliance optimised for real-time analytics using data from operational systems, data warehouses, real-time events and the web.

The SAP Business Analytic Engine will use in-memory technology with a powerful calculation engine, combined with business-centric data modelling tools and data management tools. According to SAP, the software will enable business users to instantaneously access, explore, model and analyse transactional, analytical and web-based data in real-time in a single environment, without impacting the data warehouse or other systems. To further enhance performance, SAP will offer a new high-performance analytic appliance comprising the SAP Business Analytic Engine delivered on optimised hardware from strategic vendors across the SAP ecosystem.

SAP has selected HP as one of the first strategic alliance partners to provide converged infrastructure technology for the new high-performance analytic appliance.

“Customers need to be able to turn data into information, information into insight and insight into advantage,” said Tom Hogan, executive vice president, enterprise sales, marketing and strategy, HP. “The combination of SAP Business Analytic Engine with HP’s server portfolio helps customers harness the power of information to create business insight and drive better decision making for their organisation.”

Watch an interview with Hasso Plattner, chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board about the “next big thing” – inmemory technology – here.

Peter Lorenz

Business ByDesign: latest release announced SAP AG announced the latest release of the Business ByDesign solution, its on-demand software suite designed for midsize companies. According to SAP, the new release allows users to run sophisticated analyses in real time through in-memory analytics, provides enhanced usability through customisable reports, forms and user interfaces, and support for mobile scenarios. Customers have the choice of selecting a single or multi-tenancy model.

SAP also plans to provide a development environment for SAP Business ByDesign, which will allow partners to deliver additional services, scenarios and industry-specific functionality, with a variety of engagement opportunities for solution resellers or solution partners.

SAP Business ByDesign is currently available to around 100 midsize charter clients in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, China and India, with further geographic expansion planned for early 2011.

“With the upcoming innovations in SAP Business ByDesign, we aim to make a huge step forward in scalability and innovation while we enable our users to collaborate more effectively make better decisions and improve their productivity,” said Peter Lorenz, executive vice president, small and midsize enterprises, and corporate officer of the SAP Group.

To watch a panel discussion on the SAP Business ByDesign Roadmap, click here.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

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SAP Pinnacle Awards 2010 Winners of the SAP Pinnacle Awards 2010, SAP’s global partner award program were also announced at SAPPHIRE NOW, recognising SAP partners who excelled in developing their partnership with SAP by providing quality products, solutions and services to customers.

Award Category

Winners

Service Revenue Contribution Services Partner

Accenture

Global Partner Service Innovator

Tata Consultancy Services

Ramp-up Partner of the Year

Deloitte

Customer Satisfaction of the Year

CSC

Business Suite 7 Adoption Partner of the Year

IBM Capgemini

Software Solutions Global Software Solutions Partner of the Year

HP

Software Solutions Innovator of the Year

Open Text Stream Serve

Software Solution Newcomer of the Year

Sabrix

Technology Global Technology Partner of the Year

IBM

Technology Innovator of the Year

Sybase

Outsourcing BPO Provider of the Year

NorthgateArinso

IT Outsourcing Partner of the Year

Wipro

Volume Business Unit Volume Business Unit for Distribution Partners

Insight – North America

Communities Communities Leader of the Year

Capgemini

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) SOA Thought Leadership Partner of the Year

Accenture

Sustainability Sustainability Partner of the Year

CSC

Watch other webcasts from SAPPHIRE NOW, including: Improve the return on your investment: a panel discussion on successful ways to drive short- and long-term ROI with focused technology investments.

Collaborative innovation with customers, partners, and SAP: a panel discussion on the current state and future of innovation at SAP, led by Peter Kawalek, professor at Manchester Business School.

Return on sustainability: Hear expert opinions on how companies can identify an appropriate sustainability strategy and leverage IT to improve their operations.

The power of one – engaging the business user: learn how putting information in the hands of the user can help drive results in your business.

Click here and register to view the webinars.

Support Run SAP Partner of the Year

Wipro Technologies

SAP Enterprise Support Integrated Award

HP

Small and Midsize Enterprise (SME) EMEA SME Partner of the Year

VCD Business Intelligence BV

NA SME Partner of the Year

Navigator Business Solutions, Inc.

APJ SME Partner of the Year

Extend Technologies

LA SME Partner of the Year

SofOS

SME Global Volume Partner of the Year

Itelligence

SME Global Fastest Growing Partner of the Year

Contax

SME Global Innovation Partner of the Year

Trimergo

SME Global Best Newcomer Partner of the Year

Dynpro

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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feature ] Financial services

>

Banking on success Five years ago, with core banking systems around the world in dire need of upgrade, SAP saw opportunity and focused its attention on the financial services sector.

Nathan Dukes reports.

Back in 2005, in a bid to understand future trends in the banking industry, SAP in partnership with Accenture conducted research with banking executives the world over.

What they found was perhaps cause for concern amongst the executives, but which undoubtedly represented opportunities for SAP. They concluded that the legacy infrastructure at the core of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest financial institutions would not be able to sustain more advanced operations in the future.

The list of problems was long: high maintenance costs, lack of integration between tools, complexity and old age, among them. At the time, SAP asserted that the combined effect was that banks could not remain competitive in the changing banking landscape.

Their prediction was that one-third of financial organisations globally would replace their core banking systems within the next five years.

This represented 30 per cent of companies in Europe, 35 per cent in the Asia-Pacific, and more than 20 per cent in North America.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

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feature ] Financial services

Two years later, in 2007, the European Financial Management and Marketing Association (EFMA), along with SAP, released the results of a survey which reported more than 46 per cent of banks worldwide still viewed their IT infrastructure as a strategic disadvantage, and that 80 per cent of banks were pursuing similar strategies, primarily to achieve competitive differentiation.

On the survey results, Patrick Desmarès, EFMA secretary general, said: “With eight out of 10 banks pursuing the same strategy driven by customer insight, gaining competitive edge will mean being able to follow through on initiatives to improve customer information systems.”

EFMA found that when surveyed in 2003, 57 per cent of retail banks expected to be performing regular and consistent analysis of customer data by 2007, but only 20 per cent had made the mark. The study also revealed that a mere 14 per cent of banks claimed that they were making full use of customer segmentation strategies in 2007, an increase from only 7 per cent from 2003.

A Forrester Research report from senior analyst Jost Hoppermann, released in January last year, suggests a number of new deals in 2007 specifically were “driven by financial services firms’ urgent need to renew their application landscape with manageable cost and risk”.

Now in 2010, five years on from the original predictions, financial companies across the world are undertaking large-scale change projects – updating their systems and digitising their records in line with new delivery models and new industry challenges. Several are adopting SAP’s industry offerings, including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank internationally. In Australia, SAP’s client list is a veritable who’s who: including Commonwealth >> www.insidesap.com.au

Bank, NAB, Westpac, ANZ, ING Direct, AMP and Superpartners.

According to figures by Forrester Research released in July last year, SAP sealed around 20 global banking platform deals with financial institutions in 2008. While the figure is significant, SAP trailed other key vendors more specialised in the market, such as Oracle and Infosys, who between them tallied 77 major deals.

But beyond their choice of vendor, banks face the same problems.

So have SAP’s predictions that maintenance costs, complexity and age would be the main drivers for upgrades proved correct? And five years on, was the timeframe on target?

According to Theo Albers, country manager for Australia at Izazi, an SAP core banking implementation partner, SAP’s 2005 predictions, while not “spot on”, were fairly accurate.

“If it wasn’t for the GFC and the market conditions, I think we would have come very close to saying onethird of banks needed to upgrade within five years. At the moment though, very few aren’t working on something. The ones that haven’t started yet are seriously considering it. The question we ask is: what is driving the change?” Albers says.

The GFC did not just exert an effect on the banking sector in terms of delaying investment in new systems.

It also focused the minds of those running banks on the thorny issue of managing risk.

Prior to 2006, US banks were selling subprime loans across America, giving lenders the opportunity to buy expensive property under the premise the housing boom would slow, and lenders would have the opportunity to refinance at more favourable rates. But once interest

rates began to rise and housing prices started to drop during in 2006-2007, refinancing became more difficult.

Defaults and foreclosure activity increased dramatically as easy initial terms expired. Home prices failed to go up as anticipated, and subprime interest rates reset higher.

The unprecedented debt load across the country ruined the US banking sector, and the ensuing crisis was felt across the planet. The disaster resulted in the collapse of large financial institutions, and multi-billion dollar banking ‘bailouts’ were offered by governments the world over to stabilise economies. In Australia, the effects were comparatively muted, but no business with exposure to capital markets was entirely immune.

Now, the financial industry cannot face another train wreck, and neither can governments or consumers.

Consumers want the assurance that their money is in safe hands, particularly as governments withdraw bank deposit guarantees, and banks need the assurance that they are making solid business decisions, and that consumer confidence is not misplaced.

While always part of the strategy, the priorities for the banks were reaffirmed: risk assessment, agility and customer service.

Stuart Pike, SAP ANZ director for financial services industry, says the GFC only made those requirements more urgent. He says customers are now dictating their terms and looking for financial institutions who have the agility to offer products appropriate to market changes.

“No matter what industry you’re in, if you can’t design, build and bring to market products that customers want…you’re not going to keep your doors open. Banking is the same, particularly now, where there’s a real push to acquire deposit money. The

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more deposit money the banks have, the less they have to borrow off the wholesale market, which has more risk. Being able to offer the right products in the right place at the right time is very, very important,” Pike says.

Albers agrees, adding the key driver necessitating change is being able to stay competitive in a changing marketplace.

“You need to have systems that are flexible enough to allow you to adapt and change your value propositions to clients, and be able to speak with the client on a personal level.”

SAP’s push in this field is SAP CRM, which provides a 360-degree view of a customer’s relationship, enabling banks to deliver consistent service.

This is particularly important for customers who have a variety of financial products, and reach the bank via several channels.

Advances in communication technology have opened an array of new channels. Internet, wireless applications for mobile devices and phone banking now join the traditional contact methods. These channels are nothing new, but the way banks are using them is.

Albers says previously service was never personalised, and customers didn’t feel as though they were being recognised as unique individuals, but things have changed.

“The banks have the mentality that ‘it doesn’t matter what channel the customers come from, as long as we understand them and we can service them better’,” he says.

This poses some problems though.

as possible.”

SAP implementations are not known for their high-speed turnaround, particularly not for enormous organisations like the Commonwealth Bank. Most projects of that size are scheduled over three- to five-year time periods, and while the bank might have to wait that long to see results, the customer does not.

Not only does the organisation have to consider the customers, it also has to keep an eye on its competitors, who in a small market like Australia are all working on core banking projects to improve their responsiveness.

“The message we are getting from industry is that although they know it’s a three to five- year journey, we need immediate value realisation,” Albers says. “A lot can happen in that time. Our approach is to implement smaller modules and components of high benefit as soon

“The smaller, more agile competitors are actually clawing their way into the traditional banking space because they are able to move quicker. Even the established banks are in a situation where they can’t sit and do nothing – they are forced by market trend,” Albers says.

Competitors and external market factors also pose significant risk. A bank’s ability to withstand market conditions is often simply about being able to make quick decisions in the face of adversity.

Pike recalls a presentation from a banking executive last year, who suggested that SAP software helped the planet out of the GFC.

You need to have systems that are flexible enough to allow you to adapt and change your value propositions to clients.

“It sounded like a long bow, but his argument was that because 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies run SAP, they had insight into their supply chain and their inventory from a systems and a process perspective. As the market changed, they were able to adapt and not replenish inventory, or stop manufacturing, or manage finance risk.”

Pike says a lot has changed from the days of heading down to meet the bank manager.

Five years on from its initial prediction, SAP’s influence over the banking sector is certainly being felt around the world. According to SAP, over 50 million bank accounts are now handled by SAP systems.

“Now, the consumer market is really driving change and the banks have to respond to it,” he said.

The question now is – what does the next five years hold for the banking industry? >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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case study ] Superpartners

A super solution

>

Industry super funds administrator Superpartners has implemented SAP BPC to better equip the business to meet regulatory and other financial reporting requirements.

Nathan Dukes reports.

Background Superpartners is the partner of industry super funds in Australia. The company has more than six million members with over $75 billion worth of super funds under management, making it the largest fund administrator in the country.

raised the regulatory bodies’ interest in superannuation funds.

Superpartners’ existing financial reporting systems struggled to support the basic risk needs. Pragmatically, staff filled the gaps with tactical solutions, typically Excel or manual workarounds.

The organisation has partnerships with Ausfund, AustralianSuper, Hesta, cbus, and Hostplus, amongst other superannuation funds. Superpartners provides industry super funds with cost-effective administration services to help them assist members through the milestones of their working life as they transition into retirement.

Business processes did not lend themselves to modelling and scenario analysis, lacked data integrity and protection and had a high risk of error. They fulfilled an immediate need for information but fell short of providing the enterprise-wide view required for good financial management.

Since the early 1990s, the organisation has grown in size and complexity.

“Superpartners had very good Excel tools for the budget, but they wanted to take the next step and become more agile in their planning processes,” Ferguson says.

At the same time, demand has increased from managers and regulators for regular financial reporting. In turn, regulatory requirements and strict guidelines for consolidating and reporting company information have become more demanding. Furthermore, the GFC

Malcolm Ferguson, BI lead for CSC Australia, explains.

“No matter how good the tool-set you deliver is in terms of templates, [Excel] tends to fall down when you’re working in distributed environments. Using email as a means of distributing planning templates and returning results for aggregation works inefficiently at the best of times,” he said.

In tandem with its SAP ERP project with implementation partner CSC, Superpartners moved forward with an implementation of SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC) for NetWeaver in October 2009.

Implementation Superpartners began the ERP implementation in November 2008. The process was smooth and implementation was completed in June 2009.

To handle Superpartners’ planning and forecasting needs, CSC then introduced SAP BPC for NetWeaver. Originally an Outlooksoft product, the tool was acquired when SAP bought Outlooksoft in 2007. It unifies planning, financial consolidation and management reporting for the enterprise – improving budget cycle times, driving compliance with regulatory and financial

>> www.insidesap.com.au

For Accounts Payable Automation, right inside SAP

standards, helping reduce external audit costs, instilling confidence, and reducing business risk.

SAP BPC also comes with an Excel-based front end, offering familiarity and ease of use for business users already accustomed to Excel.

Ferguson, as project manager for the Superpartners implementation of SAP BPC, says the tool combines that Excel familiarity with an architected, integrated backend.

“It’s delivering the best of both worlds – the integrity and architecture of data being stored in a business warehouse, with the familiarity and ease of use of Excel,” Ferguson says.

“Once we kicked off the project it was a fairly rapid implementation, keeping in mind that it was a very early release of what was a re-architected software solution.”

Key challenges With every new technology or tool, early adopters have to be wary that experience with the tool is limited, and the implementer’s familiarity with the processes will be maturing. Ferguson says CSC has had extensive experience with SAP BI planning tools and similar applications in the past, and relied on that experience to prepare for this implementation. In addition, key planning analysts undertook extensive training in BPC in preparation.

“Because we have a lot of experience in delivering planning solutions to organisations, we understand the business drivers and the processes. This provided us with a lot of confidence going into this project,” he says.

Michelle O’Brien, Superpartners financial controller and national manager, shared services, says CSC developers engaged with Superpartners’ subject matter experts to review the solution regularly to validate and fine-tune the design as needed.

“We knew we were taking a huge step and didn’t know what we didn’t know. We just knew that we didn’t want to be where we were and we wanted to take full advantage of the product. CSC understood the product and where we wanted to go. We would discuss, weigh up the options and reach our desired outcome,” she says.

Moving on from the implementation at Superpartners, CSC has been able to take these learnings and incorporate them into new projects with new customers installing BPC. An additional challenge formed as the change process got underway, and Superpartners began to understand

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case study ] Superpartners

they were going to need to change certain processes to produce the best results. Both CSC and Superpartners recognised some give and take was required to come up with a workable solution which was both functional and effective, but not entirely foreign to the business.

Company: Superpartners Website: www.csc.com.au Key challenges: • •

Process design prior to release of final product.

Early (if not first) partner led implementation of SAP BPC for NetWeaver in Australia.

For example, the reports and templates Superpartners used originally in Microsoft Excel were not kept, despite the fact they were still working in the same front-end environment. These were replaced by new templates which were better suited to the architecture of BPC.

Project objectives:

The first step was for the project team to understand where Superpartners was situated, where the pain points were, and what they wanted to achieve coming out of the project. At the same time, CSC fed back to Superpartners their experiences and knowledge around best practices.

•

Superpartners began to question their existing budgeting processes, and considered the alternatives CSC was offering.

“Did we really need to analyse the data at such a low level? Did the new system offer a more efficient, streamlined way of working? Whilst initially a little nervous, we soon decided to avoid customisation and go in with an open mind, willing to change our ways for a better outcome,” O’Brien says.

Results and future work Before moving onto new projects and implementations, Superpartners has made it their goal to first become entirely familiar with the system they’ve put in place.

The company is now working on 12-month annual budgets and 24-month forecasts, so it always has a view into the following fiscal year. Ferguson says they will first bed down the processes they have before moving forward.

•

To provide a flexible modelling tool and planning methodology which will allow an integrated approach in producing the budgets and forecasts.

Why SAP solutions:

BPC for NetWeaver was implemented as part of a combined solution around SAP ERP and SAP BI.

Implementation highlights: • • •

Cooperative project team approach between CSC and Superpartners.

Secure, customised input schedules and calculations.

Implemented solutions which is managed and administered by the finance team.

Key benefits: • • • •

Improved flexibility through central modelling of new business scenarios.

Streamlined planning process for finance and line-of-business managers.

Increased user productivity through intuitive and familiar user interface.

Enterprise visibility through an integrated approach to budgets and forecasts.

Existing environment: •

Excel template-based solution using email to distribute/submit, with MS Access database for consolidated reporting.

Modules: •

SAP BPC 7.0 for Netweaver.

Entering the first budget cycle using the new system, Superpartners has been able to identify a number of key benefits from implementing the BPC solution, including:

Implementation timeframe:

• Improved agility, by centrally modelling new business scenarios and consolidating data;

SAP version:

• Reduced cycle time, because managers can collaborate in a streamlined landscape; • Minimised business and compliance risk, as a result of having a single version of the truth;

•

• • • •

SAP ERP ECC6 SAP BW 7.01 SAP BusinessObjects Xi 3.1.

BPC for NetWeaver Version 7.

Database:

• Increased user productivity, due to the intuitive interface and familiar office tools; and,

•

• Enterprise visibility, with two-year forecasting instead of a single annual budget.

•

>> www.insidesap.com.au

Commenced October 2009. Go-Live February 2010.

MS SQL Server 2005

Operating system:

Windows Server 2003

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For all your Automated Document Processing 29

case study ] International

Insurance giant consolidates Achmea, the largest insurance company in the Netherlands, had to tackle some of the challenges facing many other large financial services providers around the world – integration of legacy systems resulting from a series of acquisitions, complex organisational structures with autonomous business units, a huge customer base to service and new global regulatory requirements.

Background and challenges Dutch insurance giant Achmea was established through the merger between Interpolis and the previous Achmea, which in turn was formed through mergers of three insurers. The new entity had 22,000 employees serving 4.7 million customers, generating a turnover of c14 billion.

Organisationally, the company had six business divisions, with group-wide shared central services, such as IT, group finance and compliance, but through the series of mergers, had inherited a variety of specialist financial services and general business management systems.

According to implementation partner IBM Global Business Services, Achmea was finding it difficult to produce accurate accounting information, due to the complex and laborious process involved in extracting data from these multiple systems, hampering group-wide reporting on profitability and inefficiencies.

Achmea director of financial services, Rene Colle, describes the difficulties the business faced: “Insurance premium income was handled differently by each unit’s accounting systems, recognised at different points in the payment cycle, or held in a proprietary format. When we came to consolidate group-wide reports we found that in some cases financial calculations such as deduction of commission had already been completed, while in other cases we needed to extract that data too and run the calculation externally.

“Accurate month-end closing is essential, so that we can monitor financial performance, meet our regulatory obligations and provide the right figures to customers. It

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Contact us for a free consultation +61 2 9929 0676 info-au@readsoft.com www.readsoft.com.au >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 30

case study ] International was very important to eliminate our information difficulties and accelerate information flow throughout the business.”

Achmea group finance director Wieger Wagenaar says the business units were also operating independently, and General Ledgers and multiple collection and disbursement systems were kept separate. But with new group reporting and compliance requirements, that had to change.

When Interpolis and the ‘old’ Achmea merged, the former had been using a range of SAP ERP applications as a financial and business management platform, and much of the business’ success was attributed to the standardised processes and workflows embedded in the system.

While standardising the SAP way may be a sticking point in some enterprises, it was an attraction for Achmea as a means of bringing together multiple process and business cultures on a single platform across the whole company.

Colle says, “The experience at Interpolis demonstrated the quality of data and the performance improvements possible, and we therefore chose to implement SAP applications across all of Achmea.”

Implementation Achmea selected SAP ERP combined with the SAP for Insurance solution, with the original goal to have all finance and accounting departments across all business units sharing the same SAP General Ledger, including cost accounting, inter-company accounting, budgets and reporting.

SAP Business Consolidation was also implemented at this time to connect the organisational units. Using a staged process, other components could be added at a later date.

Because of the diversity of business >> www.insidesap.com.au

cultures, processes and methods, change management was a critical part of the implementation, and it was important to involve all stakeholders within both the central service organisation and the business units in creating a new, group-wide culture.

The business case for the implementation was approved by the Achmea senior management team on the basis of predicted savings, benchmarked against other SAP users in the insurance sector.

“With almost 1400 people working in financial processes across Achmea, of which some 750 were in group finance, we estimated savings equivalent to 250 full-time employee equivalents, as a result of the automation provided by SAP, eliminating many manual tasks, and related improvements in business processes and structure,” Colle says.

The elimination of manual data collection processes has reduced the fulltime equivalent staffing levels by 30 per cent within certain financial teams.

Results The elimination of manual data collection processes has reduced the full-time equivalent staffing levels by 30 per cent within certain financial teams. Month-end group financial reporting is based on accurate and reliable data, and can be completed within 14 days, an eight-day improvement. Achmea expects to improve this further to just 10 days.

Having more timely and better quality data available to executives allows for more informed decision-making.

Importantly, Achmea is also able to meet regulatory obligations, with auditable statements of its group-wide financial position readily available. This is crucial in the light of Solvency II regulations governing EUwide capital requirements and risk management standards.

While the aim of the implementation was originally to solve issues with integrated reporting, it has also opened up strategic opportunities.

“With SAP, we now have common structures and processes across our General Ledgers, with a single definition of an insurance premium across all the businesses,” Wagenaar says. “We are able to take the accurate and timely information from the single general ledger and use SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse to analyse and understand our operations in new ways. For example, in the past it was possible for several divisions to claim the same revenue as ‘theirs’, or insist that particular costs should be allocated elsewhere.

With the shared General Ledger data, analysis in SAP NetWeaver BW reveals exactly where the revenue should be recognised and where the costs were generated. We can take the same data and analyse it by division, type of business or legal entity, which helps understand our profit and loss in greater detail.”

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31

Murray Goulburn Co-operative

[ case study

Lending made easy While not its core business, providing flexible finance to members is an important part of the role of the Murray Goulburn Co-operative. An SAP system has replaced ad hoc solutions to increase the capacity of the cooperative to support its members, Australian dairy farmers.

Background

Implementation

Murray Goulburn Co-operative Limited (MGC), Australia’s largest dairy company, wholly owned by dairy farmers, transformed its loan management systems with the implementation of an SAP financial industry solution.

MGC partnered with Izazi Solutions to implement the SAP Financials, Procurement, Sales Distribution, Production Planning, Plant Maintenance and HR/Payroll modules of SAP ERP 6.0. The implementation was completed in three months, going live in June 2009.

MGC provides around 35 per cent of the nation’s milk and is the largest expor ter of processed food in the country, employing around 2500 people. Annual revenue for the 2008 financial year was $2.63 billion, with more than half derived from expor t trade.

Rober t Poole, MGC manager, industry and government affairs, says the company enjoys the unique situation of being able to suppor t its members with shor t-term funding.

“MGC offers its members low interest and flexible loan options. Loans are re-paid by the proceeds from the member’s future milk production,” he says.

To manage these loans, MGC was using tools that had been developed in-house, databases and spreadsheets, resulting in complicated manual processes.

A more robust solution was required, and while the farming sector had been under pressure for some years for various reasons, the GFC created a more urgent motivator for action.

“International prices for dairy products such as milk powders, cheese and butters fell dramatically as a result of the GFC. Consequently, farmgate returns fell sharply. These factors combined with the recent dry seasons in some par ts of Australia resulted in increased demand from suppliers for shor t-term finance and it was impor tant that the software tools were in place to suppor t the increased demand,” Poole says.

“The implementation was very quick. Izazi had a good team and were very productive – they demonstrated to us that they were up to the task. This has been a wise investment for us, especially given the recent economic situation,” Poole says.

Results The implementation of SAP ERP Consumer and Mor tgage Loans software at MGC has increased data clarity, accuracy and transparency, enabling the business to increase the oppor tunities to offer finance to Australian dairy farmers.

As well as improving functionality and staff productivity, a more rigorous approval process for loans was enabled by the system – critical to ensure MGC meets current regulatory requirements. More detailed statements and repor ting can also be generated by the system.

Following the implementation, MGC also planned to roll out a web-based loan application form for Victorian farmers, to improve data capture accuracy, and will look to implement SAP Business Intelligence software in the near future. >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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case study ] DuluxGroup

Speeding up sales DuluxGroup (formerly Orica Consumer Products) sought a sales order processing solution to reduce the amount of manual processing undertaken by staff, and enable the business to meet customer expectations.

Background Located in Wellington, New Zealand, DuluxGroup Customer Service was processing around 20,000 orders a month manually for seven separate DuluxGroup businesses in Australia and New Zealand.

“The delivery of customer service was complicated by geographical differences, the diverse customer base, the different range of products, the timing of the receipt of the orders, and the differing distribution requirements,” says Louise St Clare, DuluxGroup customer service manager.

DuluxGroup was on the lookout for improvements that would result in better and faster service delivery to its customers, while improving the use of valuable resources.

“While a number of our larger customers are more sophisticated in their ability to place orders electronically, there is also a significant customer base who continue to fax their orders to us,” says St Clare.

“We were aware that a large portion of these customers fax orders that are computer generated, and therefore in a standardised format. Our challenge was to reduce the time spent on non-value added processes that comes with manual data entry and use some of this time to improve the quality of information received from customers without any adverse effect on the quality of customer service.”

Implementation To address these issues, DuluxGroup chose to implement Esker Sales Order Processing, because of the application’s usability, flexibility of options for processing and ability to train the software to perform relatively complex tasks.

DuluxGroup IT business analyst Peter Snare identified the optical reading software as a solution for business improvement, choosing test sites for Esker to visit and reviewing the software.

“The criteria for a business solution was a solution that would allow us to manage relatively complex business processes around workflow, dealing with up to seven different businesses, each with different business rules, >> www.insidesap.com.au

and with built-in controls to maintain quality,” says Snare.

From a business perspective, the business case was based on improved efficiency – therefore financial criteria around improved usage of resources was paramount.

“We needed a holistic solution that integrated well with our current processes. The process of integrating Esker into our day-to-day processes meant we needed to tailor both the sales order processing solution and our business processes,” St Clare says.

Challenges Some of the challenges in implementing the solution were that DuluxGroup has a complex system architecture, which made it difficult to identify where an issue had arisen.

Not all orders have been able to be processed by the system, due to the method of receipt of the order – for example, some are poorly handwritten or use an order pad.

The company also found that one of their biggest challenges was not the implementation of the technology, but the change management required.

“Many of our customer service representatives who had been employed to key data had to face the realisation that the skills now required had changed, and that the company needed people with an eye for detail to validate data,” says St Clare. “Our training and quality processes required revision to provide every opportunity for staff to meet our revised expectations.”

Results The Esker Sales Order Processing solution currently processes about 50 per cent of faxed orders. DuluxGroup has integrated Esker with other business systems to pass relevant information between several systems including SAP, for more complete order entry and to allow the company to continue managing workflow in an efficient manner.

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GRC [

column

33

Never mind the carbon footprint, consider the bottom line

By Stuart Dickinson

There are still those who laugh behind their hands at the whole greenie idea of sustainability. After all, in the real world when you’re focused on making budget for the next quarter, who has time to save the planet with a smaller carbon footprint?

But, ironically, that misapprehension illustrates the whole point of sustainability – most particularly as it applies to those who are immersed in the day-to-day business of implementing SAP software solutions.

Let me explain that.

Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences. The impact of the big idea of sustainability is to empower and enable practical and sensible measures.

Here’s an example: sustainability in architecture is giving rise to office environments which are simply a lot nicer to work in. Measures to lower the overall consumption footprint of buildings is making them warmer in winter and cooler in summer, with better use of natural light, better air quality, more pleasing aesthetics, and much higher durability. And, as it turns out, these green buildings are boosting productivity and staff retention for employers, delivering a higher return on investment for property developers – and of course, saving the planet with a smaller carbon footprint.

This paradigm is now having its effect on the world of SAP software implementation. I’m not talking here of software that enables a company

to measure and monitor its progress towards achieving sustainable business goals. Rather, the new stimulus and the new credibility that the wider argument of sustainability provides is enabling practical and sensible changes to how we approach the job of delivering better value in the implementation of business software.

Not so long ago a ‘Big Bang’ SAP implementation, involving busloads of consultants and truckloads of money was the next best thing.

Today, the way forward is not a Big Bang, but rather small but constant combustion. We don’t want to design and build a new wheel, but rather embed the painfully learned lessons of the past into preconfigured software and get steady forward momentum through multiple small, manageable and nondisruptive projects, with low risk, lower cost and better value.

By following a program approach that delivers business benefits in an iterative process, the chance of success is improved and the potential for a program that goes forever and delivers little is reduced.

That may not sound very exciting, until you call it what it is: sustainable software implementation. It’s the business software equivalent of a

green building: people are more productive and staff retention is improved, IT budgets go further and deliver better business value. Of course, quarterly results improve.

And by the way, there’s a smaller carbon footprint.

The UN World Commission on Environment and Development, set up in 1983, first introduced the idea of sustainable development, which it famously defined as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

In keeping with the spirit of this definition, the SAP consulting and implementation community needs to give up Big Bang thinking, which is not meeting the present needs of customers. We need to adopt a more sustainable approach that delivers better value and which doesn’t compromise the credibility and viability of our business in the future.

Stuart Dickinson is general manager for consulting for Oxygen Business Solutions.

What’s your view? Should the SAP consulting community change its approach to implementation? Send your views to freya.purnell@ insidesap. com.au.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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34

column ] HR/Payroll

Labour costing

By Phillip Barwell

The cost of labour is significant for many organisations. The planning, management and accounting of labour costs must be accurate, timely and often detailed for businesses to run effectively.

The electronic systems employed by organisations to record and manage labour costs must meet a variety of demanding requirements – particularly from the perspective of payroll, costing and billing.

The management team – particularly the business unit and cost managers are most interested in labour costing.

They are focused on monitoring the allocation and recovery of these costs.

Costing will be impacting service contracts and the ability to invoice customers based upon costs.

In simple terms it is the allocation of labour costs to receiver cost objects.

While the concept of labour costing appears simple, there can be a multitude of challenges in achieving the levels of accuracy, timeliness and detail demanded by most organisations.

While the list of specific challenges can be many and organisation-specific, the main challenges may be grouped into time recording, cost valuation and reporting.

There are many options and many solutions however, there is no single perfect solution to meet the requirements of all organisations.

Fortunately SAP provides a range of options which can help meet the most demanding labour costing requirements. Let’s look at how SAP >> www.insidesap.com.au

could be used to tackle some of the main challenges.

Time recording

The recording of time is essential for labour costing because it is a person’s time which incurs cost. The timesheet record must include all of the working time attributes to ensure that time is allocated to the correct cost objects and the employee can be paid correctly.

SAP provides the Cross Application Time Sheet (CATS) for efficient time recording. The CATS data entry profiles are highly customisable enabling required fields to be ‘switched on’ and other fields to be ‘switched off’. Importantly for labour costing, each data entry profile may be configured with a different costing variant.

The costing variants in CATS control how time records are assigned for costing purposes.

There are six cost variants: 1. Assignment of personnel costs to the master cost centre This is the default cost variant which is used in most situations – including where planned activity price allocation occurs. This variant is also used where the SAP HCM system is decoupled from the SAP Finance and Logistic systems.

2. Assignment of personnel costs to the receiver cost object This cost variant is quite unique from the others in that actual payroll costs are posted directly to the receiver cost objects.

For organisations able to wait until the completion of the payroll cycle, this cost variant is a great option for ensuring actual labour costing!

Note that confirmations of time units can still be made daily – however actual costs are only assigned when the payroll costs are posted.

3. Assignment of personnel costs to sender cost centre Payroll labour costs will be assigned to the sender cost centre as opposed to the employee home cost centre.

This option may be used to prevent the potentially undesirable situation where payroll costs are debited to an employee home cost centre while activity allocations credit a different sender cost centre.

4. Assignment of personnel costs to sender cost centre; assignment to activity type This cost variant is similar to number 3, however an activity allocation also occurs.

5. Activity allocation between master and sender cost centre This cost variant is designed to prevent undesirable inconsistencies which may occur if the employee home cost centre is different to the sender cost centre.

6. Activity allocation between master and sender cost centre, assignment to activity type This cost variant is similar to number 5, however an activity allocation also occurs.

Cost valuation

Maintaining accurate cost rates is a critical business function which can be a real challenge.

<<[ ] 35

Activity allocations within SAP rely upon appropriate planned activity rates being maintained using the transaction KP26. Rates need to be maintained for each sender cost centre and activity type combination.

There are competing forces at play. In one direction is the pull of simplicity and low maintenance where fewer combinations of activity type and sender cost centre are used. In the opposite direction is the drive for greater accuracy and in the extreme, actual cost for individual employees where many combinations are required.

Within CATS, there is the ability to override the planned price set within KP26. The CATS Price field can be enabled in the data entry profile and if a value is recorded in the Price field, it will override the planned rate.

The CATS user exit CATS0002 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Supplement Recorded data may also be used to calculate and record a value in the Price field. The cost price may be based upon the employeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s historical pay results or basic pay details, for example. This option enables accurate costing while keeping cost centre and activity type maintenance to a minimum.

Reporting

There is a range of SAP reports which provide visibility for labour costing.

These include the CATS-specific reports of CADO and CATS_DA which provide low-level details recorded on the timesheet. There are also Controlling and Payroll reports that provide costing information from those respective modules.

The module-specific reports provide plenty of detail but it can be difficult to

compare payroll overhead costs with the costs recovered based on activity rates. Fortunately SAP provides the ability for its customers to develop new reports and fill any reporting gaps.

Consider the Cost Centre Line Item Report KSB1, which displays payroll costs but only at a summarised level. A custom report can be developed that combines the line item details with the relevant personnel details to provide this comparison.

Phillip Barwell is a senior HCM consultant with Extend Technologies specialising in time management, CATS, payroll and labour costing. For more information on labour costing, please contact phillip_barwell@ extendtec.com.au.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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column ] CRM

Interaction Records in SAP CRM 7.0

>

By Jens Tonn

While there has always a gap in that CRM could not create Interaction Records automatically through standard, SAP has now swung to the other extreme by having the system create Interaction Records automatically all the time. While this can be de-activated, it needs to be handled with care. Let’s hope that with the next version of CRM, SAP gets the balance right.

What is an Interaction Record?

The transaction type Interaction Record is central to the CRM solution. It is used to capture and categorise all inbound and outbound interactions with external parties. Especially in the scenario of the Interaction Centre, SAP has extended the use of the Interaction Record with version 7.0. Once a customer record has been confirmed in the Interaction Centre, an Interaction Record is automatically created in the background once the user clicks the ‘End’ button in the Webclient. The confirmed account, contact person and registered product, all business transactions created and accessed (in edit mode), selected solutions from the knowledge search, and all processed inbound and outbound emails are linked to the Interaction Record via the activity clipboard.

From a technical perspective, the Interaction Record basically functions as an anchor object.

During the creation of an Interaction Record, a document flow link of relationship type ‘INTO’ with object type ‘CRMCICANCH’ is created which is heavily used during navigation. Every time the >> www.insidesap.com.au

user navigates from the interaction history or inbox to an Interaction Record, the system will use this anchor to determine whether an activity is of type Interaction Record or not. The BW extractor also makes use of this anchor object to differentiate Interaction Recordrelated statistics from regular business activities.

Basically SAP assumes that every time you confirm a customer record in the Interaction Centre, you must be interacting with a customer. Unfortunately this is not applicable in all project scenarios, so at times some of the events that automatically create Interaction Records need to be de-activated.

When and how is an Interaction Record automatically created?

The system will automatically create an Interaction Record, if the user: •

Confirms a business partner in the Webclient;

•

Presses the ‘interact’ button;

•

Sends an email, fax or letter;

•

Accepts a new inbound communication;

•

Creates a dependent business transaction;

•

Executes a call from a call list; and,

•

Creates an Interaction Record directly within the Webclient.

Technically, the key object is hereby the class ‘Interaction Manager’.

The mentioned user behaviour will trigger a number of events in the system which call the ‘interaction manager’ class. The class then triggers the event INTERACTION_ STARTED and will create the Interaction Record.

The table below lists the events which trigger the creation of an Interaction Record.

What role do dependent business transactions play?

Dependent business transactions are CRM business transactions for which there are Interaction Centrespecific UI components. They are configured via the Business

System Step

Event

Source

Account confirmation

BPConfirmed

Business Partner

Interact from Inbox for business transaction BPConfirmed

Business Partner

Interact from Inbox for email, fax, letter

AUI_Interact

Inbox

Accept inbound communication

ContactAccepted

Contact

New or reply email (fax, letter)

MailCreated

Outbound email of fax

Manual Interaction Record

InteractionRequested

Interaction Record

Dependent Business Transaction

InteractionRequested

Business Transaction

Call from a call list (*)

CallListCallSelected

Call List

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Transaction Profile.

A dependent business transaction can only be created when an Interaction Record exists. If no Interaction Record exists when the agent tries to create a dependent business transaction, the system will create the Interaction Record in the background.

An Interaction Record is needed before creating a dependent business transaction because the confirmed account and contact person data is transferred from the Interaction Record into the dependent business transaction.

Additionally there is a document flow link (type INTA) between the Interaction Record and the dependent business transaction created.

The following dependent business transactions exist: • • • • • •

Sales Order (UI Component: ICCMP_BT_SLO) Sales Ticket (ICCMP_BT_SLT) Service Order (ICCMP_BT_ SVO) Service Ticket (ICCMP_BT_ SVT) Complaint (ICCMP_BT_COM) Lead (ICCMP_BT_LEAD)

How do you suppress the creation of the Interaction Record?

The creation of the Interaction Record can be supressed via the BADI ‘CRM_IC_IARECORD’. This BADI allows you to suppress the creation of the Interaction Record

based on a number of conditons or parameters, like the interaction source. SAP provides an example that suppresses the creation of the Interaction Record for email interactions started from the inbox.

Considerations Be aware that without an Interaction Record the content of the activity clipboard cannot be linked when the interaction is ended.

Specific attention must be paid to the dependent businesss transactions.

If the Interaction Record creation related to a dependent businesss transaction is suppressed, the creation of the dependent businesss transaction itself will fail.

Jens Tonn is CRM service line lead for Oxygen Business Solutions.

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>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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>

column ] SCM

Increase supply chain visibility with SAP Event Management

By Sandeep Pradhan

Visibility allows companies to track their products and business processes in a supply chain, building operational excellence. The goal of supply chain visibility is to improve and strengthen the supply chain by providing critical information in the form of business events readily available to all internal and external business partners. Lately, the concept of supply chain event management is proving to be vital in a collaborative business environment, where it goes beyond status visibility to actually providing the ability to respond to critical events with proactive business action.

Supply chain event management Supply chain events carry with them documentation (increasingly electronic) that enable systems to be developed to capture and respond to their occurrence in the supply chain. It is the establishment and documentation of these recordable supply chain events, and deployment of technology tools to monitor and report on these events, that constitute and create a supply chain event management system. The goal of supply chain event management is to improve supply chain effectiveness and reduce supply chain costs by managing events. This goal is achieved by reducing the variations in the supply chain and the number of surprises by changing unplanned events into planned events. This is accomplished by proactive notifications to supply chain managers when specific events occur (for example, inventories are depleted, shipments delayed), allowing managers to respond in a way that ensures >> www.insidesap.com.au

customer satisfaction by putting in place corrective action plans for remedy.

Companies that have deployed supply chain event management systems can expect to achieve operational and economic benefits by delivering high customer satisfaction and reducing internal supply chain management costs. These cost reductions can be achieved through lower inventory levels, lower manufacturing costs, economical transportation costs and reduced labor costs. The areas where the concept has yielded high benefits are balancing of supply and demand, supporting product launches, monitoring large number of products or markets and tracking of key supply chain performance indicators.

supply chain visibility can be broken into three core areas of visibility: process, product and performance.

•

Process visibility monitors the lifecycle status of business process from an end-to-end perspective.

Examples would be monitoring the purchasing process, order fulfillment or transportation processes.

•

Product visibility revolves around output of product (that is, stock items, physical assets, and inventory). This visibility is not only at the aggregated global level but also at the granular level (for example, individual equipment levels).

•

Performance visibility empowers business users to know more about their business process performance by highlighting the critical path and also gives them the ability to track the physical assets movement in supply chain.

SAP Event Management With SAP Event Management, an application within the SAP SCM Business Suite, SAP not only supports the supply chain event management concept but also provides preconfigured visibility scenarios that customers can leverage for their own implementations. SAP Event Management provides near real-time visibility into the supply chain at a granular level, based on expected events and/or exceptions via web status portal, overdue lists, alert framework, workflows and analytics to identify business priorities, escalation paths and guidance in resolving variations. This functionality ensures that the right information is available for the right product at the right time and place to the right person, allowing effective decision-making and efficient running of business processes.

With SAP Event Management, the

SAP Event Management components SAP Event Management has four main components which serve as an engine for management and monitoring of business events: •

Event Processor: Receives incoming messages with one or several supply chain events, logs and validates events, decodes data using mapping definitions and correlates the message with active event handlers (lists all expected and unexpected events).

•

Event Controller: Creates changes, activates and deactivates event

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handlers, processes events and forwards events to rule processor and expected event processor.

•

•

Expected Events Processor: Monitors expected events and unexpected events to ensure they match the original planned dates and rules, recognises delays in events and provides a list of overdue events.

Rule Processor: Applies a set of rules to an event, coordinates the reaction to the event, transfers alerts and responses to users via alert management framework.

Also helps to initiate workflow for follow-up activities to reported events.

SAP Event Management visibility scenarios SAP delivers pre-configured visibility scenarios correlating to common supply chain event management processes. The components of these visibility scenarios include functional and technical documentation, scenario specific customisation set-up in SAP Application system and Event Management, and NetWeaver BW contents for key performance metrics reporting. The visibility scenarios delivered are: •

•

Procurement: This scenario tracks the purchase order acknowledgement of delivery date and quantity, delivery of goods, invoicing and payment process.

The communication is primarily between supplier and buyers.

Production Malfunction: This scenario integrates the production scheduling, production execution and plant maintenance in a manufacturing environment. Beside management of production orders, the scenario manages the process when machines breakdown on the shop floor.

•

Order Fulfillment: This scenario covers the tracking of the customer delivery process, from creation of sales orders to warehouse outbound deliveries, shipments and proof of deliveries from customers.

•

Transportation: This scenario covers the transportation and custom issues for inbound and outbound processes in an international shipment scenario.

The scenario covers transportation chain process on both sea and road.

•

Outbound and Inbound Delivery: This scenario monitors the warehousing activities for inbound and outbound deliveries with granularity of handling units.

•

•

•

Returnable Transport Items: This scenario tracks the physical assets of a company in the form of returnable transports items (for example, crates, pallets, containers) which are circulated across business partners locations.

Seasonal Procurement: This scenario covers procurement from creation of purchase order for seasonal items to the availability of articles in the distribution centers.

Seasonal articles are planned and ordered in advance to meet the latest order date and reduce storage costs. The scenario tracks the merchandise timeline along the supply chain with long lead-times.

Railcar Management: This custom development scenario offering from SAP helps in tracking and onsite yard management functionality for railcars. It allows customers to view the location and status if railcars at a plant, warehouse, rail yard or any other facility. The scenario monitors crucial events of outbound and return trips such as switching, loading, unloading, cleaning, weighing inspecting and sealing.

Implementing SAP Event Management The success of SAP Event Management implementation is high when you take a process-based approach instead of technology-focused approach. The recent evolution of service-oriented architecture enables end-to-end business process visibility opportunities for companies to expand their solutions without huge investment in infrastructures. The implementation activities can be broken down into three phases: •

Supply chain event assessment: List all the critical supply chain event that would cause ripple effects up and down the supply chain when the schedule does not run as planned. Identify the severity of events in term of costs, quality, and service.

•

Supply chain event transition: Identify the source of event data and define action plans for reacting to unplanned events.

Define tolerance and threshold on business process monitoring and notifications. Implement the solution with phased approach.

•

Supply chain event measurement: Extract the event data for performance analytics to identify the business critical paths and root cause analysis. Perform trend analysis to drive continuous improvement toward corporate objectives.

Sandeep Pradhan is an SAP solution architect and helps clients to understand, architect, select and implement right SAP SCM solutions required to run their business. He is SAP PRESS author of a book titled Implementing and Configuring SAP Event Management.

Sandeep can be reached at spradhan13@gmail.com.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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careers ]

Federal Government releases ICT workforce strategy

>

In response to the 2008 review of the Australian Government’s use of ICT, conducted

by Sir Peter Gershon, the Australian Public Service Commission and the Department of Finance and Deregulation released the Whole-of-government ICT strategic workforce plan 20102013 in April. Freya Purnell looks at the detail of the plan.

With the Gershon Review providing a comprehensive analysis of the issues affecting the Federal Government’s use of ICT, one of the key concerns identified was a general lack of strategic planning for ICT workforce capability at both the agency and whole-of-government level.

With employment in ICT occupations forecast to grow strongly at about 3 per cent per year compared with less than 1 per cent per year for other occupations, there will be increasing pressure to find suitably qualified ICT staff to meet the Government’s needs.

To address these concerns, the Whole-of-government ICT strategic workforce plan 2010-2013 provides strategies to improve the recruitment, retention and engagement of ICT staff across the Australian Public Service (APS).

Senator Joe Ludwig, Special Minister of State, said the wholeof-government strategic ICT workforce plan and career structure will provide APS leaders with the ability to better manage and develop their ICT workforce, including providing clearer career paths within the APS for ICT professionals.

“This better positions the ICT workforce within the public service to progress the Government’s priorities, and improve the delivery of services to all Australians,” Ludwig says.

The plan is underpinned by an ICT Capability Framework, which is built upon the internationally recognized Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).

While individual agencies will be able to opt out of the workforce plan, those who follow its recommendations will be required to review their plans annually.

are working as contractors providing services to the APS or as non-ongoing APS employees. For all APS agencies, the role with the highest proportion of contractors is in the development and programming occupations.

While an ICT employee survey found in the three years to 2012, 55 per cent of those employees intended to continue working in an ICT role within their current agency, only 6 per cent intended to leave their agency to work for a private sector organisation. For those considering this move, the key reasons cited were the lack of future career opportunities in their agency (34 per cent) and better remuneration (32 per cent).

The report acknowledges the difficulty in forecasting supply and demand for specialist ICT labour, due to fluctuating demand for ICT workers after the dotcom crash, the increase in offshoring of ICT services to developing countries, and the increase in migration to address demand shortfalls.

However, research suggests that major ICT projects such as the proposed National Broadband Network, the increasing use of Web 2.0, continuing implementation of Gershon recommendations and other budget measures “are likely to generate significant future demand and competition for ICT staff”, according to the report.

Projections are for an additional 53,000 people to be employed in ICT occupations overall in 2014 than in 2009, with growth hotspots in the procurement/management, client support, education, security and software engineering ICT occupations.

Key workforce statistics

For their part, APS agencies will need to recruit a total of 936 new and replacement ICT employees during 2009/10 and 2344 by the end of 2011/12.

The plan outlines a range of key statistics on the Australian ICT workforce, both as a whole and within the APS.

There are a number of challenges in meeting the projected growth in ICT-qualified staff, including:

At 30 June 2009, the APS ICT workforce comprised 11,895 employees or 7.2 per cent of the total APS workforce.

•

The reduction in course enrolments (51 per cent decline in ICT between 2001 and 2007);

The agency survey identified that one in five ICT employees

•

The decline in course completions (at the diploma/

>> www.insidesap.com.au

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careers ]

certificate level, 18 per cent); and, •

Not all ICT graduates are employed in an ICT role (only half of the 60 per cent of graduates employed four months after graduation were in an ICT occupation).

mapping the existing ICT workforce to the whole-ofgovernment ICT Capability Framework.

Right skills

Details of the plan

Last but by no means least is a set of strategies designed to build capacity and capability.

The workforce plan seeks to address the challenges associated with an ICT labour market that will be characterised by long-term skill shortages. The plan presents strategies under three themes – right time, right place and right skills.

“This commitment includes the identification of critical ICT job roles and capabilities, and implementation of succession management strategies to ensure the APS has the required ICT workforce to deliver future government priorities,” the report says.

Right time The strategies under this theme aim to balance supply and demand to ensure a dynamic, flexible and effective ICT workforce can be maintained while providing capacity for major projects and in the face of a reduction in contractor numbers, competition for employees and rapid technological change.

This will be achieved through: •

Developing links between the APS and tertiary and vocational training sectors to ensure a supply of entrylevel staff with the right skills, including exploring graduate and cadetship programs, as well as links with the Australian Computer Society professional year program.

•

Facilitating whole-of-government ICT workforce planning. The feasibility of a whole of government ICT classification model and associated remuneration options will also be investigated.

Right place These strategies aim to create an agile and mobile workforce, including positioning the APS as a desirable career choice for ICT professionals, offering a flexible career trajectory, and enhancing diversity.

The proposed strategies in this area include: •

•

Improving approaches to the recruitment, retention and engagement of ICT employees, by developing wholeof-government campaigns, establishing intake targets for entry-level programs, expanding mentoring programs to incorporate ICT leadership and management development components, and establishing professional skills development programs.

Improving the mobility of the APS ICT workforce, including developing an ICT tele-working policy, and

>> www.insidesap.com.au

This includes: •

Building on current workforce data to identify and address potential organisational capability gaps and priorities, including the development of recruitment or retraining strategies and learning and development strategies to address gaps, and investigating the need for further leadership and management development programs.

•

Prioritising learning and development of ICT employees, and identifying or developing appropriate programs which could mapped to the ICT Capability Framework.

Developing a whole-of-government ICT induction training program is also proposed.

The response Gartner Australian government sector IT analyst Steve Bittinger commented that this type of comprehensive wholeof-government to workforce management is relatively rare, and indicates a significant change in policy in this area.

“These are important first steps, but the government must also execute on its plan and deliver anticipated benefits. It must find funding for some planned activities and resolve thorny issues such as varying pay scales in different agencies.

The Federal Government is also undertaking a broader public service reform initiative, which may have implications for the ICT workforce when reform details and funding are finalised later in 2010,” Bittinger says.

IT recruiter Peoplebank has also warned that while the aim of the plan is to get more ICT professionals, including SAP specialists, into permanent government positions, these professionals are already in short supply, and this situation will only increase with more major projects coming onstream.

This shortage could then see further upward pressure on salaries as competition in the market intensifies again.

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43

On the Move Keep track of colleagues moving to new roles in the industry with our regular round-up of who’s going where. By Nathan Dukes.

Grant Clinch, SAP Australia

knowledge and expertise.”

SAP Australia has appointed Grant Clinch as director, resources for ANZ to assist in expanding the company’s market presence in the mining and resources sector.

Under the leadership of SAP ANZ general manager for North Central West, Tim Moylan, Clinch will focus on key growth sectors of coal seam gas, liquid natural gas, and emerging miners across the country.

Clinch is one of several additional hires into what SAP says is a “world-class team to grow with this important sector of the Australian economy”.

Prior to joining SAP as director of strategic engagements in 2008, Clinch spent four years as global IT commercial manager at BHP Billiton.

Phillippa Tait, Michael Wray and John Skelton, SAP NZ SAP New Zealand has made three new appointments to its operations based in Auckland and Wellington.

Joining the Auckland team are Phillippa Tait as account executive focused on local government, telecommunications and manufacturing, and John Skelton as field operations manager. Michael Wray joins the Wellington team as solutions advisor focusing on the public sector.

Gavin Larkings and Brad Freeman, CSC CSC recently appointed Brad Freeman as vice president of global business solutions for CSC in Australia and Asia Pacific.

Freeman has been charged with growing CSC’s consulting and system integrations business, which helps enterprises realise new business opportunities and optimise their business performance.

He joins CSC from Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he led the consulting and systems integration business across Asia Pacific and Japan. In addition, he led the integration of EDS into HP across the region following the 2008 acquisition.

Freeman replaces Nick Wilkinson, whose assignment ended in Australia on 6 April 2010.

Gavin Larkings also re-joins CSC as president of Australian operations.

Previously Tait held roles as a principal at IT Outsource Recruit, and account director at consulting and implementation company Mi Services Limited.

Having previously held the position of vice president of service delivery in the Australian region, Larkings is familiar with the Australian arm of CSC.

Wray is no stranger to the industry, having spent 12 years in managerial positions for management and technology consulting firm Tenzing Ltd, formerly under Bearing Point New Zealand and KPMG Consulting.

He joins CSC Australia after completing the Harvard Advanced Management Program. Prior to that, he undertook a successful assignment as vice president of service delivery with CSC’s managed services sector (MSS) for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Before joining SAP in March, Skelton spent six years as financial controller for the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand, a not-for-profit organisation, and three years as a general manager for Geac, now part of Infor.

SAP New Zealand managing director, Graeme Reilly, says local channel partners will benefit from the new appointments.

“I’m extremely pleased to have been able to attract people of the calibre of Phillippa, John and Michael to SAP,” Reilly says. “They all have impressive track records and strong relationships in the industry. I’m confident that our customers and partners will benefit from their

“Gavin’s background will play an important role in helping clients focus on restructuring operations and business transformation initiatives as they capitalise on the recovery of the economy,” says CSC chairman, president and chief executive officer, Michael W. Laphen.

Larkings looks forward to working alongside Freeman in his new role.

“Brad’s impressive track record will be an asset to CSC’s consulting business as he begins working with our clients on business transformation initiatives, whether that may involve identifying an effective governance structure, >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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On the Move defining the optimum operating model for business needs, getting more value from offshoring or facilitating organisational change,” he says.

Andrew Stuart from Acclimation says the company was looking to add greater focus to the Solution Manager side of their business, which Bedford has been brought on board to help ramp up.

“As an SDN top contributor, David will be a valuable addition to Acclimation’s SAP Solution Manager consulting practice and further expand our highly skilled basis capability,” Bedford says.

Nigel Silver, CN Group CN Group has appointed Nigel Silver to its program management team for the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (DET) HR/Payroll implementation project.

Engaged by Consulting Networks for the project, Silver has been brought on board in a leadership capacity, to assist CN in managing the project as prime partner in a consortium of three consultancies.

Silver says the catalyst for leaving IBM and taking on the new role was the chance to get back on a customer site, but also looks forward to working alongside some familiar faces – CN Group CEO Brian Pereira and managing director Richard Gibbs.

Bedford has spent the last three years at Australia Post, where he was responsible for the technical installation of some of SAP’s latest technology offerings including Solution Manager and its extended functionality, Identity Management, Governance, Risk and Compliance, and Environmental Compliance.

Prior to this, Bedford worked for eight years as a NetWeaver technician for consultancy company Realtech NZ. Bedford spent nearly four years at New Zealand’s leading multinational dairy company Fonterra, where he was part of the initial three rollouts of SAP, including the OMR3 global rollout.

Bedford undertook his NetWeaver training at SAP in Waldorf, Germany.

“I’ve worked with both Brian and Richard in previous roles. The culture they’ve developed is compatible with the way I work,” Silver says.

Pereira says he is confident in Silver’s abilities.

“It’s a big complex project, but Nigel is a steady hand.

He’s very mature and he understands what is needed to drive a successful outcome for the DET and SAP,” Pereira says.

Rajeev Mitroo, Blue Coat ANZ

Silver joins Consulting Networks (part of the CN Group) from IBM, where he was key to IBM’s improved presence in the local SAP market in his role as SAP practice lead.

The IT industry veteran spent two years with SAP, joining following SAP’s acquisition of BusinessObjects in 2008.

Prior to SAP, Mitroo spent three years as the local sales director for BusinessObjects.

Rajeev Mitroo has moved on from his role as SAP ANZ BusinessObjects general manager, having been appointed ANZ managing director of IT security firm Blue Coat.

Previously he has also held senior local and Asia Pacific sales management roles with Vignette, Borland, Novell and Intel.

David Bedford, Acclimation David Bedford has moved to the role of solution manager practice lead at Acclimation.

Bedford will be helping clients gain greater value from their Solution Manager installation. >> www.insidesap.com.au

Mitroo told NZ-based IT website resellernews.co.nz he aims to extend Blue Coat’s reach by leveraging its reseller resources.

“We’ve started talking about a ‘go to market’ model that will be a lot more collaborative and allow us to leverage each other’s economies of scale. We also want to work more closely with key reseller organisations in New Zealand,” he told the website.

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45

[ tech toys

Gadgets and gizmos Seems like every time you turn around there is a new device you just have to have.

Elizabeth Kelleher finds this monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best picks.

HTC Desire The HTC Desire smartphone offers an unmatched personalisation experience as it allows users to customise information, entertainment and multimedia content. Powered by an Android 2.1 operating system and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the HTC Desire also delivers faster web-browsing than other devices on the market, in addition to seamless navigation from app to app. Weighing just 135 grams, the device features a best-in-class 3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen, built-in GPS and a 5.0 megapixel camera with both auto-focus and flash. While it boasts sharp image contrast for superior multimedia viewing, the device also caters to business users, with support for multiple Exchange and POP email accounts and an Office document viewer.

RRP $779. The HTC Desire is available exclusively through Telstra. For more information, visit www.telstra.com.au/ HTC_Desire.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Bang & Olufsen EarSet 1 Mobile

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 brings all your social networking together in one place with a stand alone app that aggregates your calls, SMS messages, emails, and photos with your Facebook and Twitter feeds. The device is powered by an Android 1.6 operating system and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and comes with built-in GPS, an MP3 media player and access to an Android Market where you can download free and paid apps. Featuring a four-inch high definition touch display, the device also boasts an 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus and 16x digital zoom. Another excellent feature is the built-in Mediascape app, which lets users organise music, videos and photos and connect to the web to find related content at the touch of a button.

Bang & Olufsenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stylish EarSet 1 Mobile headset brings a new elegance to talking hands-free.

Available in left and right ear models, this ergonomically designed headset is constructed from anodised aluminium and hard rubber and is at once durable, flexible and visually striking.

Optimised for use on the go, the EarSet 1 Mobile headset boasts an acoustic construction that represses surrounding noise while preventing sound leakage. This sophisticated headset features a short 75mm microphone arm so it can be easily storage when not in use and can be adjusted for maximum comfort.

RRP $1099. For more information about the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 visit www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/ mobilephones/overview/xperiax10.

For more information on the EarSet 1 Mobile and Bang & Olufsen stockists, visit www.bang-olufsen. com. >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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tech toys ]

Apple iPad With its 25cm high-resolution LED-backlit IPS display, responsive multitouch screen and powerful built-in speakers, the highly anticipated iPad promises to revolutionise the way people experience entertainment media. Weighing just 730 grams, the iPad has up to 10 hours battery life on a single charge and is perfect for surfing the internet, listening to music or watching movies when you’re on the go. Available with a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB storage, the device has plenty of room to store photos, movies, music, apps and more. Business users are catered for as well, with a series of iWork productivity applications that allow you to create presentations, produce documents and turn spreadsheets into eye-catching charts.

Prices start at $629. To find out more about the iPad, visit www.apple.com/au/ipad/.

Moshi IVR Alarm Clock If you’ve dreamed of turning off your alarm without moving from the comfort of your bed, the Moshi IVR Alarm Clock is the gadget for you. The Moshi IVR Alarm Clock is the first fully functional voice responsive alarm clock to allow users to set both time and alarm by voice. Using voice control technology, the Moshi IVR Alarm Clock is programmed to answer a number of commands such as “time”, “today’s date” and “temperature” by politely telling you the time, date and the current temperature. You can also instruct the Moshi IVR Alarm Clock to tell you what time an alarm will sound, to turn off alarms and to turn on the built-in night light.

RRP $44.99. For more information about the Moshi IVR Alarm Clock, visit www.moshilifestyle.com/Product/VoiceControlVCAlarmClock.

New Flip MinoHD The second generation Flip MinoHD is the world’s sleekest high definition camcorder and makes it easier than ever to shoot videos on the go. With an easy-to-use interface that requires users to simply power on and press record, the new Flip MinoHD boasts 8GB of built-in memory and the ability to capture 120 minutes of quality video at a moment’s notice. The camcorder also features a unique brushed-metal casing, a two-inch touch display to playback or delete videos and a convenient flip-out USB arm that plugs directly into your computer.

The built-in USB comes pre-loaded with FlipShare software, which allows users to organise, edit and share videos through YouTube, Facebook and other mediums.

RRP $299.95. For more information, visit www.theflip.com.

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Click on the partner logo to visit their website [

partner directory

ReadSoft ReadSoft is a world leading supplier of Document Process Automation solutions, specializing in Accounts Payable Automation for SAP. Their AP automation solution seamlessly integrates with SAP and has been selected by an impressive range of multi-nationals seeking to improve control, efficiency and overall performance, along with an attractive ROI. We invite you to contact us for a free consultative workshop and to “squeeze more from SAP”.

Esker Australia Esker is a recognised leader in document process automation solutions for SAP. On premise software solutions and SaaS solutions include: sales orders processing; accounts payable; e-Invoicing; e-Procurement; and enterprise faxing and mail services. Customers achieve significant operational efficiencies, cost savings and measurable ROI in less than three months.

Since 1997, over 1,700 companies in ANZ have trusted solutions from Esker Australia.

IQX Business Solutions IQX provides SAP customers with packaged solutions delivering enhanced Business Insight, Collaboration and Productivity benefits by leveraging Microsoft Tools and Technologies including Office and SharePoint. Our range of packaged ‘Business-Ready’ solutions are differentiated by their low-cost, end-user appeal, flexibility, speed of deployment and high return on investment.

Built with the business user in mind, IQX Business Solutions can revolutionise the way in which you use SAP. Enquire today about a demonstration or a free trial.

Kaba Kaba is a leading global manufacturer of subsystems for Time and Attendance, Access Control and Shop Floor Data Collection into SAP. We have a comprehensive and flexible range of data collection terminals, as well as access control solutions. With more than 1,200 international SAP customers using our KABA solution, Kaba provides both local and global support through one or more of its 60 offices worldwide – providing a truly global solution.

Articulate Articulate is an Australian business transformation consultancy founded in 2003. Our focus is on end user adoption and performance for SAP, as well as other ERP and CRM applications.

We recognise that our clients have unique change management and training requirements and provide three service lines to meet their needs: consulting, sourcing and outsourcing. Articulate: when failure is not an option.

Oxygen Business Solutions Oxygen Business Solutions is an Australian-owned, leading specialist SAP consulting and services company. Oxygen delivers a complete lifecycle of SAP capabilities, including SAP business strategy consulting and solution design, SAP implementation, upgrade and enhancement consulting and SAP application support services. Our passion is delivering great SAP solutions to enable our customers to do great things. It’s that simple.

Azenkai Make your upgrade or implementation dollar bring business improvements and not just provide a technical installation. This is your opportunity to make SAP easy to use, and at the same time provide the tools to drive the business side of HCM. The end result will be a more flexible and reactive solution designed and delivered with the Azenkai tools.

Lodestone Lodestone is a global management consultancy, committed to designing and delivering solutions that enable international companies to thrive in today’s complex business environment. We help our clients to define the measurable business benefits that we will achieve together, using our teams of client-focused consultants, who combine a passion for excellence with strong process and SAP skills and deep experience of transformational change in their industry.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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>

What’s On

Each edition of InsideSAP includes a diary of upcoming events for the SAP community around Australia and internationally. To have your event listed, email us here

SAP World Tour 2010 20 July 2010, Sydney 22 July 2010, Melbourne SAP World Tour 2010 enables SAP to get closer to customers where they are and help them reach their full market potential. SAP experts of the highest quality are available at SAP World Tour events. SAP World Tour 2010 takes place in over 50 countries around the world. w: www.sap.com/about/events/worldandtechtour/ worldtour/locations.epx

SAUG Summit 2010 3-5 August 2010 Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre The SAUG Summit is the largest SAP event in the Asia Pacific region and will this year include a full day CIO Forum, the SAP Partner/Customer Awards of Excellence and a BusinessObjects specific stream. The Summit will also showcase 26 exhibitors and new SAP products and cover topics such as Business Intelligence, cloud computing, Business Process Consolidation, virtualisation, SaaS and SAP and workforce automisation. Keynote speakers include Ray Wang, enterprise strategist and disruptive technologies expert, altimeter group and Martin Riedel, head of global upgrade office and global head of maintenance portfolio solution management, SAP AG. w: www.saug.com.au/Events_Calendar. aspx?mode=overview&id=205

Mastering SAP Project and Portfolio Management 30 August-1 September 2010-05-10 Sydney, Australia Mastering Project and Portfolio Management with SAP is the only event of its kind in the region and will feature four tracks of presentations over two days covering forecasting costs and resources for projects and portfolios, utilising contract management, planning and scheduling in SAP PS, identifying the roadmap for upgrades and enhancements, project governance in your organisation and estimating and cost planning to ensure accurate budgeting. Other topics for discussion include collaboration with external parties using SAP, successful change management, customisation, cross application time sheets and integrating third party tools to SAP. w: www.masteringsap.com/ps/

>> www.insidesap.com.au

Mastering SAP Supply Chain Management 13-15 September 2010 Melbourne, Australia This year’s Mastering SAP Supply Chain Management conference incorporates a number of high-level innovation presentations designed to delve further into medium and long-term strategies for supply chain and its systems. Topics for discussion include business education and alignment, selling supply chain, sustainability and corporate social responsibility and building open and strategic vendor relationships. Focusing on ways to ensure users can adapt to current and future market conditions, the conference will also address issues such as planning and forecasting, reporting, inventory management, contract management, e-business, system optimisation and integration and sourcing solutions. w: www.masteringsap.com/scm/

Mastering SAP Business Intelligence 18-20 October 2010 Sydney, Australia The Mastering SAP Business Intelligence conference program has been designed by reporting and analytics professionals from more than 120 organisations and features six tracks of presentations, workshops and educational sessions over two days. In addition to unrivalled networking activities, attendees will be treated to a mix of local and international presentations covering BI strategy, user adoption and organisational change management, BI competency centres, team structure, attracting and retaining BI staff, delivery and deployment, enterprise information management and new BI implementations. w: www.masteringsap.com/bi/

SAUG 36th Plenary 19-20 October 2010 Park Hyatt, Melbourne The SAUG 36th Plenary is Melbourne’s premier SAP event, last year drawing over 220 attendees over a two day program which included 23 speakers in 20 sessions.

The 2010 event will appeal to IT team managers, SAP project leaders, IT teams and individuals who are working to improve their SAP general knowledge. w: www.saug.com.au/Events_Calendar. aspx?mode=overview&id=240