Supply Chain Management: ...SAP SRM 7.0 is here to stay, available to Leverage your SRM footprint: Is your On-boarding business case ready for the Roadmap exercise?

SAP SRM 7.0 is here to stay. Shoulders high, collars up, head upright……. Here we go!!!!!!!!!! This 101 introduction blog is to set the context of SAP SRM road mapping exercise for an Organization that could be either stable / under crisis or even pushed with heavy cost reduction projects with IT landscape rationalization. In such bad weather it becomes very important for us to understand the emotions of a DECISION MAKING TEAM that could use an Application Framework to provide a 911 support to a falling business.

In the blog sequel 4 and above we will get into the Nerve of the Solution and evaluate the business benefit of every functionality, Scenario that’s delivered. Again re-instating, “Every Dollar Saved in Procurement -> Contributes to every dollar earned in Revenue”

In a downtime situation with recession flicks almost getting to all industry verticals, the challenge is to still come up with a strong business case that will cow-down the obstacles and uncomfortable questions from the CIO / CPO desk.

May 2009, was a month of events, and one such was SRM 7.0 becoming generally available for business predators, who until now were working on strengthening the business case for an SRM Upgrade or a Green field implementation. I was inspired by these sequel driven blog rolls from Jason on spendmatters.com on SRM 101 and beyond, traction was always there, and will grow further. http://www.spendmatters.com/index.cfm/2009/5/27/Its-Alive--SAP-SRM-70-Part-1

http://www.spendmatters.com/index.cfm/2009/5/28/Its-Alive--SAP-SRM-70-in-Depth-Part-2

The Mashed up IT and Business perception

…Lets drop 3 feet below to get into the shoes of the head of a Supply Chain IT / CIO supported by a strong SAP Center of Excellence (90% of whose application landscape is SAP, in other words a HEAVY SAP SHOP), whose been given this daunting task to work alongside Supply Chain / Supplier Relations Core Business folks to drive an enterprise wide transformational initiative to save that DOLLAR.

Emotions

- What are the top 10 Agenda items on his / her mind to achieve this?

- What emotions are he / she going through during this tough phase?

- Will he/she be able to show the underlying savings that are theoretical currently?

- With being a heavy SAP shop and commodity expert’s pressure pushing him heavily to evaluate non-SAP BEST OF BREED product lines in the SRM space, how will he/she sell SAP SRM?

- Will he / she be able to identify KPI’s to strengthen the business case and the corresponding ROI’s for an SRM 7.0 upgrade / Fresh Green field implementation?

- Will Rapid Prototyping help in getting a sneak preview of the final solution to support the transformation?

- Outsourcing or not?

- Is IT trying to get ahead of business in delivering something that will probably remain unpacked?

……I can probably identify 100 questions more; coz the mind doesn’t have an endpoint and doesn’t know where to stop.

However encroaching Web Real estate will only be 1-way traffic, I want this to be interactive, so let me wait to hear from you on at least 20 more questions before we could actually freeze the denominator to those 10 areas that go a long way in decision making and inputs to a strong business case with a promising ROI. We will analyze the excerpts of these emotions that lead us to our next blog on “Sign-off the SAP SRM 7.0 Road mapping exercise for an Enterprise” Regards Tridip Chakraborthy