We’re listening! Please give product feedback

In Enterprise Information Management, we take pride in being very close to our customers. We always want to hear what you think of the products you are using or evaluating. We roll this feedback into future product releases on a regular basis. We really do want to hear from you!

There are lots of ways to participate in these discussions.

• For bug fixes, log an incident with our STELLAR Customer Support group. See this discussion: http://scn.sap.com/thread/1804996
• For smaller features or feature tweaks, check out the EIM area on Idea Place (https://ideas.sap.com). Our Product Owners monitor these lists regularly and make sure the most voted-on requests get represented in the product backlog.
• For larger feature areas that have been approved, but need help in refining feature capabilities, check out the Customer Engagement Initiatives (CEIs) run by Marco Dorn (marco.dorn@sap.com). EIM always has a pretty good list of CEIs that we’re looking to get feedback on. Here is the link to the open CEIs: https://influence.sap.com
• For future-looking strategic discussions (ASUG members only), you could join the EIM Influence Council. This council is staffed by a very influential group of customers who evaluate the next big set of releases. The group provides priorities on all of the features being considered, vets early prototypes, and provides direction. Here’s an ASUG video on Influence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScfSESBwP5Y

We have two Influence Councils. These councils roughly run in yearly cycles. Make sure to pay attention when the call for participants goes out.

• Master Data Governance (chaired by the famous Scott Braker (scott.braker@sap.com)
• EIM (chaired by me).
• For those attending conferences like SAP TechEd http://www.sapteched.com/, SAP SAPPHIRE http://www.sapandasug.com/, and the SAP BusinessObjects Users Conference http://www.asugonline.com/asug-sap-businessobjects-user-conference/, please make sure to check the Influence track. We really want to hear your opinion on the next set of releases.
• We also visit customers throughout the year. On-site. At your company. (This is our favorite. Looooove talking to customers at their own company.) In these meetings, we talk about your strategic direction and the current state of your EIM program. Then we provide some advice on best practices from other customers, key areas to look for opportunities, and so on. To be clear, this is not a Services engagement. These day-long sessions help us align our strategy, and help you further develop yours. The culmination of these customer visits directly feeds into our long-term strategy.

Aside from these formal avenues, we are always happy to take your feedback via email, too. Do I have to say it? Please send bugs or Support questions through their proper procedures. But comments on future feature development, details on use cases you are trying to address…we love those conversations.

These are your key contacts for these email discussions:

• EIM as a whole, Information Governance, and EIM Cloud topics: Me
• Data Services and Data Migration: Paul Medaille (paul.medaille@sap.com)
• Data Services in support of Analytics: me
• Data Quality portion of Data Services: me
• Information Steward: me or Corrie Brague
• EIM for HANA: Ryan Champlin or me
• Sybase PowerDesigner: David Dichmann (david.dichmann@sap.com)
• Master Data Governance: Markus Ganser
• Information Lifecycle Management: Harold Campbell (goes by Ken…don’t call him Harold. 🙂
• Enterprise Content Management: Mike Keilen (mike.keilen@sap.com)
• Sybase Replication Server: Bill Zhang (bill.zhang01@sap.com)
• System Landscape Transformation: Oliver Vinzent
• Landscape Transformation Replication Server (SLT): Tobias Koebler
  

Finally, we always want to hear how your projects ended up. What went well? What was more difficult than you would expect? What surprised you the most about the project? What one piece of advice would you give to the next customer attempting a similar project? What kind of return on investment did you see from these initiatives? For these conversations, please email either Me or Kristin McMahon . Kristin’s role is marketing, but what she really does? She makes everything fabulous, and can turn you into an EIM Rockstar. Posse included. 🙂 For some details on this program, check out this ASUG webinar that Kristin did: http://www.asug.com/discussions/docs/DOC-37238

Now. Let’s hear what you have to say!