Do you have an SAP wishlist – of suggestions for new products or functionality, or changes to interfaces? Then you need to join one of SAP’s Influencing programs to turn your requests into reality.
It’s easy, being on the underside of the world, to feel like very small fish in a large pond… But that doesn’t mean Australian and New Zealand customers should miss out on having their say on SAP solutions.
The SAP Influencing programs offer customers of all sizes the opportunity to interact with, and influence, SAP development throughout the lifecycle of its products.
The programs include:
- Customer Engagement Initiative: at the earliest stage of the product lifecycle, customers can participate in SAP development projects around designing, prototyping and refining new product ideas.
- Early Adopter Programs (Ramp-Up and General Availability Care): perhaps the best known, these programs connect first customers of new products with the development teams in charge.
- Customer Connection Program for products in maintenance.
“The objective behind all of these programs is for us to incorporate our customers’ feedback and experience into our products. By doing this, we want to make sure that our products fit our customers’ needs in the best possible way. We believe we can do that only if we listen to our customers and learn what ideas and feedback they have,” says Katrin Pietsch from the SAP Customer Connection Program.
Addressing products in maintenance, the Customer Connection Program offers customers the chance to request changes to solutions, through specific projects with a limited timeline and narrow scope. An example might be a change to an existing table or business process that is problematic for a group of customers.
During the project, customers and partners are advised to submit development requests related to the product. Once the project is completed, the improvements are incorporated into the standard product and delivered to existing users via SAP notes and support packages, so that they can be implemented by customers during their regular maintenance processes.
The benefit of being able to make even small changes to a solution is that it could yield huge benefits in improving productivity for customers.
“A good example is mass update functionality where there was none before. Things like that can cause a lot of pain for our end users in their day-to-day work, and very often, they are actually very easy to fix,” says Pietsch.
Collaborating for greater success
SAP has been working closely with its user groups around the world to identify Customer Connection projects which will be of most value to users.
The SAP Influence portal (http://influence.sap.com) provides a central portal for customers to register requests, and also to register their support for requests submitted by other customers.
Because SAP will only take into development requests that have clear benefits for as many customers as possible, gaining the backing of others is critical – and that’s where the user groups can come in, to rally support amongst members and use networks to lobby for the change.
The SAP Australian User Group (SAUG) has been working closely with the Australian arm of the SAP Customer Connection Program over the last year, with customers becoming more actively involved in the program.
In 2014, Australian customers participated in eight out of 21 Customer Connection projects, and the number of downloads of SAP Notes containing Customer Connections improvements increase by 50 per cent. This year, the SAUG has submitted its first ever Customer Connection project request, which is currently in evaluation by the product management team.
There have been 76 improvement requests submitted by Australian SAP customers and partners to date, and 37 of these qualified for consideration by SAP (which requires a minimum of five customers supporting the request). Of these qualified requests, SAP accepted 14, with nine requests already delivered – involving changes to CRM, HCM OM/PA and TM, NetWeaver Business Client, and NetWeaver Workflow.
Michael Kovacevic, communities and content manager, SAUG, says the user group supports member requests by promoting it through the appropriate Special Interest Groups (SIGs) as well as their global networks, giving the request a better chance of being accepted by SAP for development. Collaborating on requests also provides customers with important networking and information exchange opportunities.
“We work quite closely with Katrin and some of the SAP subject matter experts. They will proactively talk to Special Interest Groups and try to work out pain points, and what are some of the issues people are having with the existing solutions, what they would like to see improve,” says Kovacevic. “From that, they can actually get an idea either whether those pain points fit in under existing projects or focus topics, or whether there is scope to actually request a new focus topic.”
The bottom line is that SAP needs to hear customer requests in order to deliver what they need, according to Pietsch.
“SAP cares very much about our end users, and we do want their experience to be a positive one. It might not always mean we can satisfy every request, but it’s definitely very important for our developers and our product management teams to get a very deep understanding of what our end users need.”
How to get involved
Customers who are interested in the Customer Influence programs should register at http://sap.influence.com, identifying their areas of interest, whether that is an industry or line of business. Customers will then receive alerts by email about new Influencing projects in those areas. The Improvement Finder tool at www.sapimprovementfinder.com is a searchable repository of information on all improvements resulting from previous Customer Connection projects.
Joining the SAUG and particularly its SIGs is also a great way to keep connected with the programs, as well as other customers and SAP experts. The SAUG website (www.saug.com.au) has an Influence section which provides details on programs including Customer Connection, and the Communities page gives further information on SIGs.
Get all the news from Inside SAP direct to your inbox – subscribe to our free weekly newsletter with a General Admission membership here.
