Paul Cooper
Maintaining and developing SAP end user knowledge and experience
25 Nov 2010
Software Support and Maintenance
Whilst attending the UK&I SAP User Group Conference earlier this week, I found myself having the type of reoccurring conversation about an issue those of you in SAP Support will have thought long and hard about many times… SAP End User Knowledge & Experience – how do you maintain and develop it?
After an implementation there is usually a wealth of working knowledge about the solution and the underlying processes. Typically there will be some Power/Super Users left behind to provide the first line of defence against the perennial question – ‘Could you just remind me how to…’ However the aspirations of this group of people will have changed, after all they have been given new skills and are unlikely to want to revert to the status quo of their previous role.
So over time the Support Organisation starts to find it is answering the simple straightforward transactional how to queries and they can become the guardians of the business process expertise as well.
After seeing over 40 sites go live with SAP and spoken to many other SAP Support Professionals I have a few thoughts on how you can address some of these concerns:
- Do not make the Power /Super User redundant straight after go live - yes I have known this happen more than once!
- Understand that in time your Power Users will disappear into new roles or leave the organisation - think about succession planning before it’s too late - how will this work, who will do the training of a new person, how do you stop knowledge dilution with each iteration.
- Create a sense of community for the Power Users – try and get them together to allow them to network with each other and build relationships around your organisation. Potentially investigate how they can share knowledge with each other using in house social media tools you may have or just good old SharePoint. (Remember to make sure they know how to use these tools).
- Power user groups - In one organisation I worked for we created Power User Groups (HR rebranded these – Power User Development Forums!) where we brought together a selection of Managers and Power Users, the SAP Team talked about frequent issues with tips and tricks but most importantly we got the Power/Super User to present and share knowledge with each other (coaching can be required here).
- Take a look at the tools out there – there are a number of vendors (including SAP) selling tools to assist with training (producing crib sheets, lessons etc), contextual help, testing and simulations. Everything you can do to improve and drive user self service speeds up incident resolution and reduces the business impact of issues or poor user knowledge. These tools have improved tremendously over the last 10 years and are well worth investigating.
If you listened to the keynote speech from SAP co-CEO Jim Hagermann Snabe at the conference this may all be unnecessary in the future if the ease of use improves to deliver...
“…visible joy from SAP software in 7 minutes…”
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