A view from a new guy…

In the grand scheme of things I am relatively new on the scene within SAP. My background is data, analysis and management of applications and information… You still awake?

So back in January 2010, working within a business struggling to ascertain 42,000 employees working patterns, 3 months before Go Live, I stepped up and made a few suggestions as to how to go about it. The business thought it plausible so they went with my suggestion. It turned out that I had the right idea and that’s how I fell into the world of SAP… although ‘tumbled’ might have been a better description. I’ve been a HR Consultant now for 2 years.

The thing that attracts me about SAP is that there is so much to learn, so much to know and there are so many angles to tackle an issue or a development; so many options! There are of course good consultants and bad consultants, thankfully, I have met more of the former than the latter and that may be down to my brief journey into the world of implementers and consultants but I remain optimistic.

In my professional opinion, you are only as good as what you know. I believe that the more you know, the more you can offer and the more you can offer, the more you can develop and help others develop themselves. I have yet to meet any SAP professional who knows everything, although as I have explained, I am still ‘new to SAP’ and I have no doubt that there are many out there how know it all… I have however, met and spoken to numerous SAP professionals who I believe ‘know their stuff’, alarmingly so in fact! Those people have been responsible for my knowledge transfers, training at SAP Clockhouse, support, career advice and friendship; Richard Morris (of SAPtrix), Jarret Pazahanick (of EIC Experts), Nikhil Kelkhar, Mandar Muley and Srikanth Chirumamilla (of CapGemini) and Matt Atkinson (of SAP training). I learned an important lesson from them all; a good consultant never stops learning, never stops having the will to learn and more importantly, never stops sharing what they have learnt.

It is a misconception that that the business of which you are based has the best (and most efficient) implementation of SAP within it. It is easy to lean on those safe little walls and not look over the top of them to see how SAP works for other businesses. I am the kind of guy who needs to know what is over the wall (which is convenient as I stand at 6’4”) and I always try and understand what other organisations do with SAP. Twitter provided me with such a platform, a springboard to learn what SAP does and can do for thousands of other organisations, both large and small, throughout the world. I have connected with so many people on twitter who have inspired, helped and supported me along my relatively short journey, this includes (but not limited to) Jarret Pazahanick, Luke Marson, Martin Gillet, John Appleby, DJ Adams, Timo Elliott and Steve Bognor… and I could reel out a lot more, trust me!

It was inevitable that I would stumble upon SCN, the SAP Community Network and I did this at the start of 2012. SCN really is the place of wonder for an eager and learning consultant! Having this playground of knowledge has helped me to network, learn and help others taking a walk in the SAP Park. If I had ever been tempted to gauge my SAP knowledge level before I entered the world of SCN, I definitely wouldn’t dare do it now. I never envisaged the level of knowledge that some of these guys have, Jarret Pazahanick (again!), Harish T K, Srikanth Naidu, Shan Dinesh, Rémi Corriveau, Sikindar A, Yellow.com and Siva Prasad to name but only a few!

So, that’s me really, ‘the view from a new guy’ and I intend to stick around in SAP too, if only to bug the hell out of those experts who one day stood where I do now.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Will Jackson.

@SAP_Jackson

“The aim to achieve success must always be to guide your own destiny by making things happen rather than sitting on your backside expecting that they will, which in my experience very rarely happens”