SAP

Gartner Symposium 2010

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 26, 2010 ⋅ 3 comments

Last week, I was able to attend this annual Gartner event – something akin to SAPPHIRE, the SAP uber-users group meeting, without the vendor specific rah-rah. An interesting event – 7400 attendees, over four days. A typical conference – multiple sessions along major tracks, and I bounced between sessions dealing with these issues: Master Data [...]

Designing for Devices

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 10, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

My last entry on design for a bit – just some thoughts on the added complexity when designing applications for multiple client devices. Fast Changing Device Landscape The “last mile” of user/computer interaction has seen a number of exciting innovations over the past year or so. Phones are getting physically smaller, yet have bulked up [...]

Bootstrap Market Research: Master Data Management (Results)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ December 17, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

As previously noted, I’ve been doing a lot of discussion and data crunching around “Master Data Management” lately – so I’ve “bootstrapped” a little market research project. It’s still a work in process – responses are trickling in – but I thought I might take some time to summarize what I am hearing to date. [...]

Bootstrap Market Research: Master Data Management (What, Who, How)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 30, 2009 ⋅ One comment

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about “Master Data Management” over the past few weeks – what does it mean, who does it, and what are some tools and metrics that organizations are using to reign in this important aspect of ERP and analytics systems. I started reaching out to the folks in my [...]

Collaboration “in the Wild”: Some Observations

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 15, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

An Enterprise 2.0 dream scenario: implementing a complex project across multiple sites, in two different time zones, with a large team (well over 100). The team was reasonably savvy with collaboration tools; core team members were quite comfortable with Instant Messaging, and we have been relying on SharePoint for many months. A centralized, coordinated document [...]

A Company is like a Sphere

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 15, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Where do these great analogy ideas come from? Full credit – I got this one from a speaker at the SAP Research Center in Palo Alto, last spring. A company is like a sphere. As it grows, volume increases much faster than surface area, and the larger a company gets, more people get embedded and [...]

Real Business Users and SharePoint

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 14, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Introducing buzzword-compliant technology like a wiki, or integrated collaboration spaces like SharePoint, will typically go well with a motivated audience like your internal IT department. But if you really want to understand how this stuff works, try it with “real people” – line employees in sales and marketing, operations, and finance. Sure, you’ve heard complaints [...]

Over / Under Communication for Project Managers

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 29, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

It is often said that you can’t over-communicate, but I’m willing to bet most folks – and especially your project sponsors – underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning – and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management. Media [...]

Who owns Master Data in your company?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 30, 2009 ⋅ One comment

I’ve had to respond to this question, inside and outside of the company, in a number of different conversations over the past few days. It’s interesting, because this is one of those conversations where semantics mean a lot – what people say is just as important as what people don’t say. I only mean that [...]

Notes from SAPPHIRE 09

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 16, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Yesterday at work was “catch-up day” from a week at SAPPHIRE 2009, the annual user conference for SAP. As with the JDA/Manugistics conference earlier this year, there were concerns that attendance was going to be low, because so many companies are limiting travel expense. At the conference, I did hear that attendance was only was [...]

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