SAP is a product bought with the intention of success, by companies which, given the costs of SAP, have done well in their own market. In every market, quality control and market knowledge is a key factor to a secure future, so why are there so many SAP consultants and consultancies working in the market today who, to put it simply, suck at their jobs?
At this point, I should point out that most SAP consultants and consultancies offer fantastic knowledge and value when deploying SAP – these people work hard to get the most from the SAP solution for the customers – these consultants, consultancies and end-customers suffer at the hands of the terrible consultants, as they have to manage them and work with them on a day to day basis, but the ultimate losers are the customers themselves.
Why are these consultants hired?
Time and time again we find them on SAP projects and wasting precious time of consultants who are busy working to timelines and budgets?
Simple reason – Money.
Money is frequently a factor in hiring these people, as some of them price their rates well below market standards, but still considerably higher than they are worth – some price themselves as higher to produce the appearance of “experts”, while offering no more than smoke and mirrors.
Budget is of vital importance within an SAP project.
But surely economy can not be claimed as a justification for taking a perfectly viable SAP product and corrupting it so much that it will become unstable and finally unusable – that is not economy.
Every customisation of SAP creates a variation from the SAP standard solution.
Which will need to be documented with an audit trail for faults and/or upgrades of the system. Patching error codes, which are not understood, is frequently not the solution as the error codes can not always have a patch applied and often require intelligent attention.
Information sharing is another main cause for this problem to exist, many of these ‘bad’ consultants have the ability and the intention of keeping on the move – as there is no way of creating any accountability in the market at present.
Due to the supply/demand of SAP consultants it is possible for a consultant to take a short term contract, working on site within a team and go unnoticed for a few weeks or more or alternatively working on a longer term contract in a large team, where they can successfully hide for longer periods of time as the rest of the team carry their workload. Even when they are discovered it makes no difference, they may, in extreme cases be fired, but more often they are given their notice and told to leave quietly in return for their wages, as no project manager wants to openly admit their mistake in hiring them in the first place.
Even if an SAP consultant commits gross negligence they still walk into their next contract as soon as they want to because nobody will ever know.
Illustration:
Consider this – you, personally have bought a Maserati GranCabrio, in order to buy this new car you must have worked hard over an extended period and done well – the car is one month old and needs its first check – do you take it to a specialist Maserati dealer or save money and take it to a supermarket and ask someone there to give it the service?
Now, a company implementing SAP, in order to buy this solution the company has worked hard over an extended period and done well – the solution needs to be implemented – do you contact professional SAP consultants and SAP consultancies or take the cheapest option, turning a blind eye to all the reasons not to and pay them to install SAP?
Many will choose the cheaper option
Oddly enough, though most people will treat their car with the respect it deserves in order to get the most from it. Many will select the cheap option for the company they work for and accept that the system will work, however with many bugs and wont deliver what it was bought for and will need maximum support costs until finally having to be used as a legacy system when SAP finally stop supporting the version they are on.
The result, if you are a business owner, is that someone else just took your brand new Maserati to the supermarket and handed your keys to anyone who would perform the service cheap enough – “but hey it was in budget”
When hiring an SAP consultant try to avoid hiring these bad consultants.
The SAP solution was bought with the intention of success, but the solution will need careful and experienced guidance to produce the results it was bought for and to allow for upgrades and additions.
One of the best solutions that I have seen to this, is a company with a tight budget, who have tried “cheap consulting houses and consultants” and have now opted to hire professional consultants for shorter periods of time to perform specific tasks within budget – the results are a progressively improving SAP solution with a fully functioning support centre.
There has been plenty talk around certification for SAP Consultants, and various grades so the best can easily be identified.
I would say with experience, clients look at Consultancy companies, and the first thing they ask is for references - where have you done this before?
A consultancy could then provide a long list of references, but that actually means nothing. Sometime the consultants that have done the work previously have moved on and the consultants assigned to the new clients project may not have the experience.
The real question is - for this project can you provide the relevant experience of the consultants that you plan to use? Can you ensure they stay on the project from start to finish, it can be common practise for different consultants to deliver different phases of a project.
The latter would likely just provide consultants 'on the bench' so they become billable again.
The (experienced) freelance consultant, on the other hand, could just have the track record the client is asking for. The freelancer would also be more keen to keep his knowledge up to par.
There's a high chance the freelancer isn't available too, but he or she could recommend another top-notch consultant -- the freelancer generally has a tremendous network, and would only recommend the next-best consultant
Most projects where clients use consultancies involve more than one consultant.
The reason why clients pay consultancies to provide many consultants is around the vetting of the resource. It is very easy to say bring in a good freelancer - how will the client know if the freelancer is better or worse than a consultant?
The freelance contract market has a real quick turnaround, however the tendering process and approval process for Capex for IT spend is normally a long and drawn out process. Freelancers will not wait around a few weeks not getting paid, until a project is signed off?
Your point around recommendation is really valid, as that is normally the best way to judge a consultant. If someone you trust vouches for another consultant, a client will gain some confidence that the second consultant could do a good job.
All of these points add further support to using a consultancy to provide consultants, with each potential consultant being vetted for the project.
Googling a consultant is a common way of learning more about a consultant, potentially using a LinkedIn contact to vouch for them.
Thanks for your reply. Of course, a consultancy firm has quite some benefits for a client over a freelancer.
I have to disagree with the 'money' issue though. An experienced freelancer would not mind not getting paid for several weeks until a project is signed off, as he has already taken this ramp-up phase into account.
As a freelancer myself, I highly benefit from word-of-mouth recommendations by former clients, way more than by my LinkedIn profile or resume/CV
Besides, in my experience, the majority of the truly, excellent SAP consultants are freelancing themselves.
In my opinion, potential clients are more or less limiting themselves by not considering this option.
The ideal concept is to have a wider selection to choose from, so that the "best fit" consultant can be on site in a timely manner.
Only by having this choice available, is there a possibility to hire the best "person" for the role rather than the best "employee" or "freelancer", as the skills and experience of the consultant is an individualistic matter and not related to their employment history - especially as many freelancers have been employed and many employed staff have been freelancers in the past.
The concept of an "extended network" where each consultant proves their own reputation and skills, based on their individual profile and then directly 'competes' with each other based on their ability to "best fit" the role, is the only way a customer has the ability to hire the most appropriate consultant.
Bringing this concept into reality is a slow process, with certain large consulting houses willingly adding their "on the bench" staff while others are not so progressive.
I wish more people could see the big picture and use an Independent SAP dedicated reference source - it is out there and ready to be used - enabling the due diligence hiring which in turn creates successful projects!
Fully agree with your point - "can you provide consultants with the relevant experience to make this project successful from start to finish" is indeed the ultimate question.
But, as a sub note to that - "can you prove that?" should be tagged on.
Each consultancy is only as good as its teams - each team consists of individuals - if each individual were to have an openly checkable profile, knowing the answers to these two core questions would ensure the above project outcome.
Though it is impossible to ensure a team will stay in place - it is possible to prove that each member of the team in place are experienced and reputable through an independent checking solution.
Thanks for the comment - knowing a consultant is good and not just showing a good CV are two very different situations.
What I expected but didn´t get way a solution. We can talk about having the same problems for years, but in my opinion talking about (potential) solutions would be much better.
I can see two "solutions":
a) with companies the situation is much easier, when you "hire a company" then there is always a team behind the people from the company which can support the "experts" on the project. If there is no support and deliverables are not above certain level, then the company which often operates in a local market can´t get another job. At least this is how it works in my country.
b) the freelancers are much more difficult t deal with. The only option here is to keep your favorite freelancer, pay him to stay and work on a stable and reliable partnership with him/her. I am sure that such thing would never work in US or Germany or India or China (main SAP markets...), but this is how we do it in my country.
And there is one more thing... freelancers don´t get their job directly often in my country. They often work for companies, which brings us back to point a). SAP, IBM, local consulting firms should be able to "clean their environment"...
c) offshore, nearshore and this kind of "weird things" is not something I would ever try if I would be the manager responsible for the budget and success. I have heard stories about projects where guys from unnamed SAP-often-sourcing-country where changed like every week. I would never risk such thing on my project.
I hope to see some more feedback through the comments, because this topic is important and I don´t have an opportunity to talk about it with people from different background often.
Cheers Otto
Thanks for your thoughts, you are correct in your opinion that in the "main SAP markets" the model of retaining consultants for the duration of the project is not standard, this is something that is an excellent solution if the market forces allow.
As you said, the companies situation is easier - but only to a small degree, consulting houses with specialist staff working for them can only use these "quality" resources on one or two projects efficiently (sometimes more in an advisory capacity) so hiring a "company" that has delivered an effective SAP project does not guarantee that the same team will arrive at the next client site, often there are a mixture of in house and external consultants - clearly there are exceptions to this but that is one of the issues clouding the choice of delivery companies. The local market solution, sounds far more reliable with bad references being taken seriously when considering hiring. But a question on this point - the company that does not provide support and deliverables are reliant on the individual members of the team working on the project - if a consultant has worked on a failed project would that consultant be welcomed into another company without being affected by the general failure of the project they worked on, or would the failure be reflected onto them as individual consultants too?
The freelancers are indeed more difficult, keeping consultants for the duration is one option and key staff are often retained, but frequently that is not possible, and often freelance consultants are required to assist with specific tasks and also to increase numbers to speed production (freelancers are frequently exposed to multiple solutions, issues and are frequently "parachuted in" to resolve issues. Providing them a steep learning curve which creates a broad spectrum of knowledge - this can also be true with employed consultants, but the nature of contracting often leads freelancers to acquire a wider number/scope of projects. Each hire of a freelance consultant involves a lot of time and carries potential pitfalls. An SAP consultant who intends to work poorly and earn money has the ability to "project jump" improving their CV each time - a consultant with a good CV and either a friend willing to carry out an interview for them or the basic ability to speak about their subject, can often find a contract. Once they are working on site they are then able to add that customer to their CV - the fact that they do not provide anything of value to the customer, becomes almost irrelevant as they are then intending to move to other projects. This is one issue that happens, another is consultants who do have the skills required, but do not apply them to the project or use them for their own benefit. The one thing these have in common is anonymity, as there is currently no way to centrally verify how a consultant performed, so a consultant who has performed well on a project will have the same reference as one who produced nothing at all and they could actually be in direct competition for a new role (often the consultant who produces nothing will have a "better looking CV" as they have had more time to spend on it)
I hope this is interesting to you, would welcome your opinions on this subject further as it is also important to us, we have spent the past 4 years working with companies and consultants to identify the "differentiators" to prove a consultant provides quality consulting.
After all this time, we have come to the following solution, a professional consultant should be proud of their reputation and actively want to show it to endorse their own skills, by adding that to their CV's, the formula we are using to prove "Reputation" is
Ratings + References from the SAP community
+
SAP Certifications
+
Academic Education
+
SCN activity
+
External SAP education (MichaelManagement, PMI etc)
=
The consultants reputation - which should support their resume
So what do you think? Would really appreciate your input,
Cheers
Vips
It is a free market - and very capitalistic in nature. Nothing prevents a given person or company from making a case for themselves and winning the work from a customer.
@greg_not_so (no tweet)
Hi Scott,<br/> <br/>Your "electrician" comment is an excellent illustration of the issues that are faced every day in SAP. <br/>Taking your electrician comment to the next step, the same "ours is best" mentality is seen in many industries - take the holiday industry where every brochure, web site shows the very best aspect of a hotel - but visit www.tripadvisor.com <http://www.tripadvisor.com> and a totally new set of opinions open up.<br/>Electricians, plumbers, lawyers and holidays have comparator sites where customers "have their say" why is SAP different? <br/>Professional SAP consultants who have a good reputation can only benefit from proving it - differentiating yourself from the underperformers who drag the "market view" down, can only be good, as long as it is not time consuming.<br/>Alternatively the unprofessional consultants will not benefit from open dialogues.<br/>An electrician who is quick, clean, reasonably priced and professional, deserves to be differentiated from the "sparky" who nearly blows the dog up. At least I personally think so.....<br/><br/><br/>
Completely agree that SAP is capitalistic and a free market but then free market forces should apply across the board, nothing prevents a person or company from making a case for themselves, and neither should it.
However, in most industries today, there are independent ways of verifying claims of "superiority" - within SAP that "cross check" system has never been achieved. While the SAP certification is being sited as the way to validate a consultants knowledge and experience, it can not be the only factor that determines a consultants work ethic, business, SAP skills and general professionalism. This information can only be gauged by combining specific fragments of information to create an accurate overview, but to collate this information requires the SAP community recommending only those that have performed well, regardless of being freelancers or consulting company people. To provide the free market the information to enable balanced choices.
The specific fragments of information required are a separate topic, which we have discussed at great length with both individual consultants and customers over the past 4 years, the consensus has been that a balanced view of a consultants abilities include their references, SAP certification, SCN activity, academic education and SAP education (from external vendors) - and this should then be used to support their resume, this list is not exhaustive and any feedback would be appreciate.
I think it's wrong to choose sides (consulting, internal or freelance is better). In my opinion that is generalizing things. The best option differs.
There are several ways SAP consulting standards can be raised.
Companies can start requesting consultants who have other skills sets besides IT skills. Persons who have insight or persons who are active on SCN (sharing knowledge).
Companies can start hiring the right people.
Managers can start making the right decisions.
The consultants themselves can raise the bar of the standards by creating art (exceptional work).
I'm very much interested in what is alive on the market and where things are headed.
Because I find it important to share thoughts on the subject, I wrote a blog on the topic of IT staffing from my point of view (outsourcing consultant).
Kind regards
Tom
The generalization was specifically to encompass all parties, as the issues in the article apply equally to all consultants delivering on customer sites - the fact that a consultant is "internal" does not make them immune from offering poor standards, neither a freelancer always deliver exceptional knowledge and effort - the issue is "individual" and can not be labelled into a group of consultants.
I agree that any consultant who is an active member of SCN and is sharing knowledge is actually a very good indication of their ability and "spirit" - this is something we do agree upon but there needs to be considerably more information before a balanced understanding of a consultant can be made - especially given the variety of skills required to implement SAP successfully. I would be very interested in yours, and anyone else's view on what information would deliver the information required to do this.
In so far as the "companies can start hiring the right people and managers can start making the right decisions" The people who are making these choices are not always to blame for the issues that arise - the consultants that knowingly under perform are often the same individuals who spend more time making themselves "look good" than working hard and creating 'art' (exceptional work) - in fact, often the consultants who create 'art' are too busy doing exactly that, to spend much time on their own reputation.
Though there are many ways to "raise the bar" on consulting standards, without an 'industry standard' solution, there will always be consultants who can manipulate the system. Many consultants have been "raising the bar" for decades, but until there is both a general acceptance of the problem within the wider SAP community and a solution, the professional SAP consultants will see themselves working alongside the ever growing number of unprofessional consultants - regardless of how the consultant is delivered to the project.
I think we should have domain specific experts, skill level expert,module level expert,coding
area level expert etc.(as per the requirement)When putting freshers or people with not much experience,can then be contantly mentored and reviewed under these skill level experts. With this, the overall delivery is bound to be exceptionally good.
I also agree, that personality, eagerness and willingness to learn are all areas which an interviewer will naturally look - however they are important when it comes to junior consultants who will need all of these to prepare themselves to be successfully mentored.
The knowledge of SAP, or lack of it should not reflect in a consultants ability to work professionally regardless if they are being mentored through to carrying out the mentoring.
Cheers
Vips
Please do not generalize the concept that SAP consulants from SAP are better and others from consultancies/freelancers. If that is the case, why on earth did SAP in the first place market its product to other peer consulting companies like IBM, Accenture, Capgemini, etc etc and partner with them. They would have kept the product with themselves and provided service to their Maserati by their own so called The Great Consultants of SAP. No body would have been interested to learn the language of what SAP speaks. Having a diverse mix of people in the project does help provided they are well scrutinised during the hiring process. Consultants have their choice, and in this free market, you do not need to be a certified SAP consultant to prove that you are the best. A person who knows the business knowledge better is more useful than a guy who would have read 200 pages and cleared SAP certification without knowing any business knowledge. What does a certification prove by the way, that you are the best in the class. Why does one needs to be certified, its again a choice. Does it prove anything really to anyone. It's just a piece of paper saying that you are certified. But does it say anything on the business knowledge, or your expertise on a product. In the middle of the desert, with no connectivity to a phone network, nothing nearby for 200km radius, and only a mechanic shop of a car 500meter from your position, and if your Maserati broke down, would you stay there and get cooked with you Maserati or ask the freelancer(car mechanic) to have a try to get the Maserati fixed. No job is small and you can't complain about others when you need to self realize what are you contributing. A little is more for sure. An effort is an effort be it small or big.
Ok - I have no idea why you believe I am calling freelance consultants "machine shop mechanics"... I clearly referred to the unprofessional SAP consultants (who are lazy or lying on their CV) as supermarket assistants, also the example was not set in the middle of a desert with a broken down Maserati, so getting cooked would not be a relevant choice, it was a service!
We are in a world of communication where information is freely available to all.
I strongly believe that there are freelance consultants who are as good or better than their SAP, Cap Gemini, IBM etc employed counterparts - the entire theme of this thread, was based on individuals being exactly that - individual - where some are good and some not good, regardless of their employment status.The unprofessional consultants should not benefit from the lack of information sharing that plagues the SAP community at present.
A consultant can add projects to their CV and claim to have worked there - however they actually should have worked there, references from non-SAP friends and family are no reference at all.
Regarding SAP Certification - the reason it is important is that SAP (the founder of everyone's feast) have set out to dramatically improve the importance of this, and have engaged with SAP mentors to improve the relevance in the market - with SAP actively working to improve the situation it shows a recognition of a problem long realised and an intention to redress the issues.
Apart from that, it also shows the individuals own time investment (and money) in themselves. Which is rather important on its own.
We do not believe that SAP certification alone is proof of a consultants professionalism, but we do know that the SAP community accepts that it has the potential to become part of that proof, along with work ethics, SAP skills and experience, references, ratings, academic education, external training courses such as TOGAF, PMI etc. This information combined, does prove a consultants abilities according to consultants and customers.
If you believe there are other factors that should be taken into account, please list them here so that others can comment on them, as the concept is to produce a solution that offers the best overview of an SAP consultants skills and abilities to deliver when they sit at their desk in a team.
Cheers
Vips
A project team will normally consist of a number of consultants, some who will be senior and COST more and some more junior who will COST less. You could have an on-shore off-shore model. The team could consist of different consultancies, and consultancies use their own consultants and free-lancers as well.
The client could be including some of its own internal consultants into the project team.
So the role of the PM is really important to ensure the correct level of resource is in place, and assign tasks to the consultants. It could be the simple tasks are performed offshore, or by junior consultants.
Could not agree more with that, each consultant - regardless of their seniority working towards one goal, if all the parts of the project are working professionally, the project will become successful, however one or two not working or under producing can create chaos for the entire team.
The PM does have a critical role in ensuring the correct team are in place regardless of offshore, near shore or onshore, and the more accurate the information the PM receives, the more chance there is of a successful project.
Cheers
Vips
I can understand the urge of some to bundle and hype such a 'credential rating' given the potential of revenue and early market positioning; however it is an idea doomed to fail - for customers at least.
Same with SAP certification - customers and consultants are ambivalent towards it - not because it doesn't work but because it is in the end a much poorer indicator of a consultant's skills than many other factors. No amount of repositioning and re-branding is going to help it (certifications).
All the proposed components of such a evaluation are rehashed - certification, references, SDN ratings (please!) and so on. And we expect the sum of these would somehow be exponentially different than the parts?
An interesting observation - just a note, that there are no fees involved to either build your SAP reputation or check someone's reputation, so your concept of "make good bucks" is rather flat - the service is free, but having a reputation to be proud of, requires much effort as I am sure you are well aware?
Cheers
Vips
When you say no fees involved in checking someone's reputation - are you talking of your own organization?
Assuming it is indeed free (and will remain free even after there is a critical mass of users/customers - a highly questionable assumption) the underlying problem remains - what makes this evaluation work for customers? What special tools such a rating agency may have that current HR practitioners don't?
I see a rehash of old ideas and somehow it is magically mixed by someone to come up with a customer-ready evaluation.
I would have been less skeptical if there was one novel thing mentioned that would likely work when others don't (as is the presumption here).
The solution being discussed is a solution of consultants building their professional reputation to ensure customers have a clear understanding of the background of a consultant prior to hiring.
Underperforming consultants will not be able to prove a professional reputation and will, therefore not be interested or may become aggressive towards the concept.
The collaboration of the SAP community is not a rehash but a step towards ridding the SAP market of consultants who are taking the jobs of the professional consultants by "making a buck" here and there and we and the SAP community do not intend to support them any longer.
- customers should ask for fix price solutions (I am a consultant and I hate this model because it is so much more in favor of the client)
- good contract should define strict set of criteria how one can recognize if the job is well done and so if one deserves to get paid (another thing that I don´t like - detailed contract where things are clarified in detail)
Evaluating such a project should be a piece of cake. Job well done/ not done = paid/ not paid.
cheers Otto
That would actually be the best way to do business (in any industry) - if a job is done well, then payment is made. Perfect! I would love it 🙂
Sadly, at least in this industry, things are rarely that simple - defining "working properly" or "satisfied" is almost impossible, added to the fact the contracts are so detailed and yet with so many variants available, leaving even less room for "satisfaction"....
Cheers
Vips
There are pros and cons to this situation. Customers generally feel there is safety when signing up with a single firm to provide the resources for an entire implementation. But it's also these firms that can't hang on to the very best consultants in the market so you're never getting the absolute best resources. The contradiction here is that the customer ends up being more at risk by engaging a single entity, in part, because it provdes less risk.
At the end of the day, the SAP professional, regardless of their employment status or on what side of the customer/consulting fence they work on, is either good or not good. They can either get the job done or they can't. It's up to the customer to engage those resources that can get the job done if they really want a low risk and successful implementation. Without it, the solutions end up being very expensive in terms of delays, loss of accuracy, and manual work arounds.
Thank you Nathan - a beautiful summarisation 🙂
Good night from Gothenburg,
Vips
1. Consultant ability to be an efficient and effective employer. What makes anyone a good consultant. Certainly the zeal for work and skillset are mandatory. If this is not the case, the question arises : Why is he not a good consultant? Is he bored of same kind of work, is he not given proper information,guidance, Is he lazy and not enthusiastic about his work, does he want a switch from his current role, type of work, salary issue, no recognition for the work done, so on and so forth.
These issues should be periodically noticed and solved. Counselling is one factor which should be
provided to all the employees open heartedly without any kind of fear. Such employees should be clearly guided whether their aspirations and attitude can be entertained by the organisation or they need to look out.
2. Hence comes the need for a career-counselling section in each and every organisation.Every individual should have a clear career path for a particular time of period.
3. Open question remains as what is the best way
to test the capability factor of a consultant on a regular basis.?
4. HR department of any org. has a much bigger role in many wider aspects for a successful org.
5. People at higher positions and roles should be regularly evaluated if fit for that position and for higher promotions.One should not be said manager, expert etc. without much backing information.This is one place where I think many go unnoticed.
6. I can many more points like this but I think with the above points the message should be clear.
Everyone who calls themselves that has had some training in SAP. This does not necessarily make them good at it. But when you advice staying away from the 'bad' consultants and hiring 'professional SAP' consultants, what exactly do you mean??
More guidance here would be very helpful.
Thanks