HANA: How to Build a Business Case for SAP HANA – How Do I Get Started ? (Episode 2 of 3)
If you tuned in to session one of this mini-series, you heard about all of the goodness that makes up the SAP HANA system and how it can be used in new business processes to bring innovation to your organization. In this session, presented by Rukhshaan Omar (Ruks), Global Product Marketing SAP HANA, we learn different ways to approach management as you build your business case to acquire and implement SAP HANA. If you want to get funds, you need to press the right management buttons and talk the C-level language to get the job done. This webcast teaches you how.
Ruks did a quick overview of the SAP HANA platform value conversation before diving into what motivates management and how to have the right conversation with them. I really liked the pyramid that she used to illustrate the different levels of conversation that can happen, from the CIO all the way to the top with the CEO. If you hare speaking in terms of technology vs business process, you need to have the right message landing at the right level in the organization.
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Part of building a business case is showing the value that others have obtained from implementing technology and innovating in their business. The webcast had copious amounts of references and use cases to illustrate the different value drivers that have worked in the real world for adopters of SAP HANA. Many people still think of SAP HANA as just a fast in-memory database. Ruks showed in a great slide how that is the level one solution maturity that it brings to the business. There are many more levels of solution maturity to have greater impact:
Download the presentation, but also replay the webcast to hear the background on some of the use cases. There are some pretty lofty numbers thrown out there as benefits, like reducing a database size from 4.6 TB to 900 GB (Molson Coors) while decreasing reporting run times by 50%. Over and over again, the references achieved value for their investment. There were some common threads in all of the use cases where organizations experienced significant business gains:
- Customer Identifies a Real Business Need
- Customer Evaluates the Value of SAP HANA to solve the Problem (many times with SAP’s Help)
- Customer Works with SAP or SI to Apply SAP HANA to the Problem
- Customer Evaluates the Efficacy of SAP HANA to produce desired business outcome
- Customer Identifies a New Business Need Where HANA Can Help
Ruks also gave us some practical advice once you have your quick win project up and running: tell others in the organization, they may be experiencing the same issue that you just solved.
So in summary, what I learned from the webcast was:
- Be familiar with the technology and what it can do for your business
- Speak to your executives in terms they will understand and support,
- Show the return other experienced and follow that up with a quick win with your investment,
- Tell others about your success.
If you follow this recipe for success you are sure to land that SAP HANA project.
In our final webcast of this mini-series, we will talk about how to skill up your people so that they can run all of these projects you are going to land.
To support SCN and to extend out the SAP HANA community, ASUG is pleased to launch a new HANA Platform Program – Join today!
The ASUG HANA Platform Program will focus on providing SAP HANA platform education, customer experience and knowledge sharing both from a business and technical perspective. In addition to HANA customer experiences and implementation stories we will host and highlight technical education to meet the needs of a broad set of SAP HANA Platform user roles. In addition, this program will offer ASUG members an opportunity to engage and influence SAP HANA product teams.