
Future of SAP and SuccessFactors Consulting 2016 – SuccessFactors Talent Management (Part 3)
It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2015. This year we split the report into a three-part series with the Future of SAP HCM On Premise Consulting – […]

Future of SAP and SuccessFactors Consulting 2016 – SuccessFactors Core HR, Payroll, Analytics, Platform, Concur (Part 2)
It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2015. This year we split the report into a three-part series with the recently released Future of SAP HCM On Premise […]

Future of SAP and SuccessFactors Consulting 2016 – SAP HCM (Part 1)
It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2015. This year we will be splitting the report into a three-part series with Future of SuccessFactors Consulting – Core HR, […]

Dirty Consulting Secrets and Tips to be a Smart Customer
This is a topic I have felt very passionate about over the years and was glad that Bill Kutik gave Luke Marson and I an opportunity to share our thoughts. Would love to hear your thoughts as a customer, vendor or consulting firm on your experiences. (Cross-posted @ SCN)

Excel-based reporting and ERP
Excel-based reporting solutions are becoming a bigger feature of the suite of Business Intelligence (BI) tools offered by midrange ERP vendors. It’s a trend that seems to make sense given the ubiquity of Excel, but could there be a downside? The rise of Excel-based reporting tools I’ve recently attended system demos for MS Dynamics NAV […]
Epicor reinvigorates its ERP offerings
Historically, ERP software has been uninteresting and stodgy, the playground of a few dominant on-premise players. Today, a variety of innovative vendors have taken hold in this market, pushing ERP into the cloud while attempting to pull business away from large companies like SAP and Oracle. Some examples among many: FinancialForce announced a $50 million investment […]
PR finger pointing: IBM and Bridgestone wrangle over failed ERP
A legal dispute between tire company, Bridgestone, and system integrator, IBM, over a failed ERP implementation has escalated into a war of words between the companies. Instead of keeping quiet about the details, in accord with usual practice, IBM has taken a strident public position against its customer Bridgestone. This approach represents a break from […]

The Rise of the Cloud Stack
Something changed this week in the enterprise software world. In an industry known for ruthless competition, a number of players – Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and NetSuite – introduced partnerships that portend a very different future. In very un-Larry Ellison-like fashion, something akin to harmony was proposed, “when customers choose cloud applications, they expect rapid low-cost […]

Truth about the SAP HCM Customer Connection Program
In February of 2012, SAP announced that it was replacing the defunct Development Request (DRQ) process, which had long been ineffective, with a new ASUG support Customer Connection Program. The programs goal was to allow customers to submit smaller improvements, and assuming they got the minimum support of five other customers, that SAP would review, […]
SAP and HANA: 5 Points of advice for CIOs
Following a significant announcement from SAP, here is advice for Chief Information Officers.

Why Workday Is Different by Design, and Why It Matters
We use the object model to define both the structure of our applications (classes, relationships, and attributes) as well as the logic of our applications (methods). All parts of the object model are defined as metadata. Instead of the thousands of relational tables and millions of lines of code used to define traditional enterprise software, Workday applications consist of millions of metadata definitions

SAP Assembles Cloud Powerhouse with Ariba, SuccesFactors Acquisitions
Emphasis on “assemble”, as opposed to develop. For years SAP and Oracle fought a religious war of acquire/assemble vs develop in-house. SAP’s view was (even under the current Co-CEOs) that you can only get to a coherent, seamlessly integrated suite by development. Apparently they have changed religion, borrowing a chapter or two from Larry Ellison’s […]

SuiteCommerce and the Value of End To End
At the NetSuite SuiteWorld event recently the company announced SuiteCommerce an end-to-end solution that ties back end ERP functionality with customer facing e-commerce solutions that are optimized across any endpoint – desktop, mobile, tablet etc. It’s a compelling proposition and one which continues the theme of tying together similar services to provide a complete solution for […]

SAP and SuccessFactors – Key topics I Want to Hear About at SAPPHIRE
Ever since SAP announced they were acquiring SuccessFactors there has been a lot of interest in the marketplace on the impacts to customers, partners and consultants. It appears that due to the timing of the merger SAP will use the upcoming SAPPHIRE/AS…

Will SaaS kill ERP? No, but it should
It’s been a busy few days. First a post on ZDNet by Eric Lai invented a few problems for Cloud, or rather SaaS, and especially multi-tenancy: inflexible, less secure, less powerfull and maybe more costly – is what Eric claims multi-tenancy SaaS to be. Thomas Wailgum neatly nailed that via a counterpost, as did Frank […]