I was speaking to a recruitment consultant recently about Nakisa expertise in the marketplace. He mentioned to me that he found many people who had integrated Nakisa with SAP. I told him “Sure you probably spoke to loads of consultants that have experience of integrating to SAP, or should I say put the SAP connection string in to the application AdminConsole. I could teach you that in 15 minutes (or you could read the Admin guide).”
My point is that connecting any Nakisa applications to SAP is pretty straightforward. The real skills for a value-adding Nakisa consultant are not just the usual process design skills, but the capability to do full customizations in the configuration files (XML and XSL). We’re not talking about adding 1 or 2 new fields to the details panel, but the ability to add new functionality, such as: new analytics, a link to launch a URL/Portal app, configuring security or configuring a new hierarchy from scratch. The ability to align the UI of new components with existing components is a big plus for a visualization tool.
If you are a client or recruiter then you really want someone that can tell you what all of the AppResources configuration sections do and how they link to each other. Without this knowledge it isn’t possible for a consultant to tell you what requirements can or can’t be met, or even how they can offer better value-adding functionality alternatives to the customer’s requirements.
You would also want someone with experience of customizing the live (and maybe staged) extractor configuration file. The staged is easy, but the live is not so straightforward and can be problematic even for experienced consultants. Nakisa are really pushing forward with using the live version of OrgChart instead of the staged version. ABAP skills would be a plus, although not entirely essential if you have ABAP resources in-house.
For SuccessionPlanning, CareerPlanning and TalentFramework implementations you really need a consultant that has experience of TREX and configuring Talent Management and Talent Development in the IMG. As SuccessionPlanning is primarily an interface, most of the values and supporting data come from processes configured in the backend and operated from the (Portal) frontend, including these applications.
TalentDashboard requires some basic knowledge of Business Warehouse/Business Intelligence, but not a huge amount. Knowledge of databases (SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 or MaxDB) is useful for OrgChart, OrgModeler and DataQualityConsole, but not highly important. Knowledge of NetWeaver CE is also beneficial but not important. Hardware/infrastructure knowledge is useful for deployment, particularly when relating to the Nakisa requirements and customer usage scenarios. Because of the nature of the applications and on-going development, I think it’s useful to have relationships with people at Nakisa. Nakisa have some great and very helpful people who are happy to help – and you never know when this could come in useful.
So, the bottom line is: make sure any consultants you hire have the in-depth application knowledge, SAP experience and, it goes without saying, project experience.
