Sap And Enterprise Trends Podcasts From Jon Reed (@jonerp) Of Diginomica.com

Thomas Wailgum, Senior Editor of CIO.com and the man behind the "Enterprise Software Unplugged" blog, is a self-described "wiseass." Those who follow his blog know that he isn't afraid to mix it up a little bit and poke a little fun at ERP heavyeights. What you might not know is that Thomas has been at CIO.com for 13 years - an amazingly long time given the ups and downs of dotcoms and online media. I wanted to get Thomas on a podcast and ask him how the ERP market has changed over his years at CIO.com, what he has learned from his interviews with CIOs, and get his take on the pros and cons of SAP in today's market. Thomas is also a fun ERP presence on Twitter, so you may want to follow him there.

What's the best way to overcome inaccurate perceptions? By gathering comprehensive data. And what's the best way to put a vendor in context? Study the broader market. Eric Kimberling, President of Panorama Consulting, does both of these things in the ERP space. To get a better handle on keys to SAP project success (and how to avoid failure), as well as the impact of SaaS and the key skills ERP users should be cultivating, I invited Eric to join me and to share Panorama's findings with JonERP listeners. I also put him on the JonERP hot seat and asked him to make his own recommendations for SAP's future direction.

Welcome to the first edition of The ERP Lounge: Misadventures and Opportunities in SAP Consulting, the new podcast series from JonERP.com! The ERP Lounge is the new "long form" podcast series that features freewheeling, in-depth discussions on the hard truths and real opportunities in the SAP skills marketplace. Join Jon and Brian for this 55 minute inaugural edition as they take you inside their vision of The ERP Lounge. Learn why they decided to create this new podcast series, what the structure of the series will be, and listen in on the regular features like "SAP Skills that are Hot/and "Not." This first edition also includes a tribute to the SAP independent consultant, and a hashing out of the differences between a "do as you're told" SAP contractor and a "tell the truth" consultant. And yes, this special series gets its own rockin' musical intro!

Michael Doane, the subject of my first JonERP.com podcast, joins me again for number 50 (though it's the 49th loaded in the system). We celebrate with a new JonERP musical intro(!) as well as an in-depth conversation with the inimitable Michael Doane, author of the classic New SAP Blue Book and the upcoming SAP Green Book: Thrive After Go-Live.

Usually I am the one doing the podcast interviews. But this time around, Muhammad Shaamel, podcaster, blogger, and SAP ERP consultant, turned the tables on me. During this twenty-six minute interview, Muhammad asks me for my take on what's hot and what's not from an SAP skills perspective. He had some excellent questions for me, including the value of certification and whether or not BPM skills can help an SAP consultant.

In this impromptu podcast, inspired by a Twitter conversation thread, Jon Reed interviews Marco ten Vaanholt, VP of the SAP Community Network and the Global Head of the SAP BPX and Business Objects Communities, on how individuals (and project teams) can make a "BPX business case" for SAP TechEd. (Follow Marco on Twitter, and follow SAP TechEd on Twitter.

Sometimes in the glitz of Sapphire announcements, the ASUG part of ASUG/Sapphire gets less attention. To learn more about why the ASUG part of the conference matters - not only to SAP users, but to industry analysts - I invited Gretchen Lindquist, SAP Mentor and stalwart ASUG volunteer, to share her views on ASUG/Sapphire 2009 and the pros and cons of co-location. I also had the opportunity to ask Gretchen about trends in SAP Security from the vantage point of her work as chair of the SAP Security Interest Group (SIG) for ASUG.

In the first installment of his "Sapphire in Review" podcast series, Jon Reed of JonERP.com welcomes special guest Michael Krigsman, President of Asuret and popular ZDNet blogger and Tweeter. Michael's focus is evaluating the keys to IT project success and failure, so during this twenty-eight minute podcast, Jon gets Michael's take on how project failure applies to ERP vendors and SAP specifically. Jon also gets the skinny on Michael's investigations of Business ByDesign at Sapphire, and why he sees SAP's focus on UI improvements and BI enhancements as important to ERP project success. In closing, Michael shares an inside view on what it's like to be part of SAP's Blogger Relations Program, mixing it up with SAP executives.

In the second of two live Sapphire podcast recordings, Jon Reed of JonERP.com interviews fellow SAP Mentor Dick Hirsch to get his impressions of Sapphire 2009. Listen in as two self-described "BPX geeks" discuss the themes of Sapphire from a BPX perspective. Jon gets Dick's reactions to the Sapphire keynotes, and also gets his view on how Twitter is changing the experience of live events, both for virtual attendees and the actual participants. Dick also offers tips for how SAP professionals can move their skills into a BPX direction.

In the first of two live Sapphire podcast recordings Jon will issue this week, Jon Reed of JonERP.com sits down with Ajay Vonkarey of Alpha Sirius to discuss his views on Sapphire, his impressions of the SAP market, and in particular, his views on Solution Manager - a topic you could not get away from at Sapphire where Ajay has deep expertise. In this 24 minute podcast, taped in a classroom as Sapphire closes out, Jon asks Ajay for his views on the pros and cons of Solution Manager from a customer perspective, how Solution Manager fits into BPM, and how SAP skills needs are evolving in the era of BPM and "end to end process" management.

On March 20 of 2009, I spoke with Vijay Vijayasankar, Senior Managing Consultant at IBM and fellow SAP Mentor, and conducted one of the most important podcasts I have done since I started doing them almost two years ago. On my mind during the taping: my theory that SAP consulting is not just being impacted by the economy and will come roaring back later. I believe the changes in SAP consulting that are underway now are permanent in nature, and have implications for all SAP professionals. There was no one better to ask about these shifts than Vijay, who has broad market experience and has seen many of the changes I am talking about. Disclaimer: please keep in mind that the opinions Vijay expresses during this podcast are entirely his, and do not represent the view of his employer, IBM.

In this special SAP community podcast, Jon Reed of JonERP.com speaks with an expert team assembled by SAP's Ecosystem Workforce Group to assess the SAP skills trends that are relevant in today's economy. Joining Jon on the call are: Peter Russo, leader of PAC's SAP Services Research Practice, and Rob Fiddaman and Deepak Jaiswal of K2 Partnering Solutions. Rob is K2's North American Partner and Deepak, who called in from India to participate in our global call, is the CEO of K2.

In a sluggish economy, SAP professionals want to know where the action is. One area that looks promising in 2009: RunSAP and Solution Manager. But there's a problem: many SAP consultants (and project teams) are not yet clear on how the two products relate, nor are they clear on the skills needed to implement them. To shed light on this topic, Jon interviews Ajay Vonkarey, President of Alphasirius, a company with deep experience in both RunSAP and Solution Manager. Jon specifically invited Ajay to do this podcast because of Ajay's innovative thinking around RunSAP and Solution Manager skills trends.

What's the latest on the SAP Business Objects roadmap? How can BI have a positive impact for SAP customers in a difficult economy? And what are the skills needed to implement NetWeaver BI products? To get to the bottom of these questions, I had the opportunity to interview Franz Aman, VP of Intelligence Platform Product Marketing for SAP Business Objects. In this podcast, Franz speaks frankly about the challenges SAP customers are facing and how BO tools can help.

In Jon's first podcast ever on SAP MDM, Jon interviews Mike Kerrigan, Vice President of Business Technologies with Laurus Technologies, on SAP Master Data Management (MDM), SAP Analytics, and the skills (and management approach) needed for SAP project success in a down economy. In this twenty-five minute podcast, Jon and Mike touch on the following topics: - How today's SAP market compares with other down cycles Mike has seen during his fifteen years in the SAP field, including comparisons to the pre-Y2K and the post-9/11 markets. - The relevance of analytics to today's SAP implementations, and why ERP customers expect more from SAP now than transactional efficiency. The SAP Business Suite is full of systems (CRM, SRM) etc with data that must be cleaned and managed before it can be utilized. leveraged.

In the last installment in Jon's "Tech Ed in Review 2008" podcast series, he speaks with Dennis Howlett, SAP Mentor and "Enterprise Irregular" ZDNet blogger. During this trans-Atlantic podcast session, Dennis shares his experiences at TechEd, his views on SAP's co-innovation strategy, and how he balances participation in the SAP community with his role as an independent analyst. One highlight of the podcast? Dennis' take on an important TechEd Berlin meeting between the SAP Mentors and SAP executives regarding the future of SAP development.

Recent SAP TechEd Shows have emphasized NetWeaver BPM and the importance of the Business Process Expert. To get a sense of why SAP is so committed to building a true "Business Process Platform," and whether or not BPX skills are still relevant in this struggling economy, Jon Reed spoke with Puneet Suppal, the SAP SOA Solutions Leader for Capgemini North America. (Puneet also writes on SOA trends in his "Cafe Innovation" blog for SAP SDN/BPX.) At the time of the podcast taping, Puneet had just returned from giving a presentation entlitled "The Business Process Imperative" with Global BPX Head Marco ten Vaanholt at TechEd Berlin. He also shared plans to head out to TechEd Bangalore to deliver a similar talk. Having done this presentation at TechEd Las Vegas as well, Puneet's views on this podcast are informed by his recent SAP Community experiences. The result is a focused conversation on how project teams and individuals should approach "BPX skills innovation" during challenging economic times.

In the second podcast in the JonERP.com "All About SAP Training" series, Jon Reed asks Tom Michael of Michael Management  about the state of SAP training and the range of training and certification options available to SAP professionals. Picking up where the last podcast on SAP training left off, Jon and Tom jump right into the topic of SAP online training: - Tom goes back to the beginning: 2-3 years ago, Tom began to get more and more requests for online SAP training. In the past, there were very few options, and while sending folks to the SAP Academy can be very effective, it's not always an affordable option when you are continuously tweaking people's job roles. Meanwhile, the project documentation is useful to a degree but is not really the perfect training tool ("you can't learn SAP from a few screen prints and a PowerPoint presentation.")

In the first podcast in the JonERP.com "All About SAP Training" series, Jon Reed asks Tom Michael of Michael Management  about the state of SAP training and the range of training and certification options available to SAP professionals. The podcast begins with an overview of Tom Michael's background and his role with Michael Management's SAP training and consulting practice. In addition to Michael Management's consulting work in Asset Management, Project Systems, Investment Management, and related areas, Michael Management has become one of the largest online SAP training sites today. As Tom explains, this was an organic process where clients asked Michael Management about the training side of their implementations and Michael Management began rolling out more and more online SAP training courses. In this first podcast in their "All About SAP Training Series," Jon and Tom dive into the hot topic of breaking into SAP. Michael reviews some of the free options available online, such as SAP's own help documenta

In the second podcast in my TechEd in Review 2008 podcast series, I spoke with BPX Community Evangelist Marilyn Pratt and got her honest take on TechEd Las Vegas 2008. This podcast has an interesting interactive twist - at a few points in the podcast, Marilyn turns the tables on me and gets my own reactions to what we saw in Vegas. Themes of this podcast include: the increasing importance of BPX themes at TechEd, an assessment of BPX Community Day, and the "greening of SAP," one "bottom up" idea at a time. In the first section of this thirty five minute podcast, we get into what a "BPX Community Evangelist" is all about and why authentic conversations are so much more powerful than "marketing messages."