Gartner recently released a report on how they predict the SAP CRM situation will play out in the year ahead. From news editor Jon Franke's article:

"Through the end of 2008, 25% of CRM projects will be postponed or cancelled, according to Gartner. This rate of postponement and cancellation is largely a result of a CRM skill shortage — of consultants and systems integrators in particular — the Stamford, Conn.-based research firm says in a recent report."

Interesting stuff, especially in light of the lean times that seem to be more rule than exception in many areas of the SAP world today. There are plenty of ABAPers, Basis admins and consultants feeling the outsourcing pinch on one hand and the downward monetary pressure on the other. This probably won't change in the immediate future, so the question is should you consider a strategic move into the CRM space? And if so, what would that entail? 

Certification is not necessarily the only route to go, according to SAP career guru Jon Reed. It's more a matter of whether your current job can be mapped to the necessary CRM skills. For the Basis folks out there, you may be interested in this post about the options for a Basis guy looking to get into CRM. Do you need knowledge of the SD module to make it in CRM? Nope, says Reed; it helps, just like certification does, but the right background is infinitely more important. 

While the CRM route is by no means a universal path to SAP bliss, it may be worth a closer look. Check out Jon Reed's SAP career section to get a handle on how your current skillset may mesh with a CRM role, then visit the CRM topic section for the latest stories, tips and expert advice on SAP CRM.  

Matt Danielsson
Editor

As mentioned last week, it can be tough to cram as much information as we'd like to in a 15 minute podcast. So, we followed-up with author Scott Campbell recently and asked a couple questions that didn't quite make the cut in last week's interview:

SearchSAP.com: We talked about SAP jobs a bit in the podcast. If you were looking for an SAP job in this market, what is/are the most important things you would focus on?

Campbell: There are plenty areas outside of core NetWeaver which will be in high demand in the years to come. One place we are focusing our recruiting around is Architecture and BPM skills, especially knowledge around IDS Sheer's ARIS technology. Another place where skills will be needed is around xMII. As I mentioned on the podcast, ideally we look for people with good broad solutions experience as we can always provide additional training in any specific tool or technology. Another area emerging in 2007 is for people with the NetWeaver Composition Environment experience (next generation of WebDynpro and CAF, …etc.). And of course from the functional side, anyone who understands BPX concepts and can apply their business knowledge with the friendly modeling tools supplied by SAP. These people should be in high demand. I guarantee our recruiters are always interested in folks with any of these skills.

SearchSAP.com: You had a whole chapter in the book on the SAP ESA ecosystem. How is that playing out?

Campbell: The ecosystem has been very successful and is growing rapidly. From a standards perspective SAP is investing heavily on key SOA standards and implementing them into their products. A great example of this is their contributions and investments around SCA and SDO as well as Java EE 5 implementation. In addition, SAP is working with other platform vendors to define and deliver the broader standards needed to create next generation SOA Infrastructure and composite modeling environments. The number of ISV partners are exponentially increasing and moving beyond Powered By NetWeaver solutions to create more certified composite applications. Expect to see a lot more of the partners to move from engineering to real implementation and delivery of solutions in 2007. This is good for SAP, good for partners, and really good for their joint customers. Lastly, the results of the SAP Enterprise Services Community are yielding real fruit and this effort remains very important as a place where partners and customers can contribute to the future service enablement of SAP.

If readers find follow-up like this valuable, we could see it becoming a regular blog item. To let us know one way or the other, email me at jfranke@techtarget.com.

Last month was our big Master Data Management theme month. It was surprisingly popular, considering that it wasn't more than a year ago we tried another MDM push with little user interest and modest traffic. This time around, traffic spiked and items like the new SAP MDM 5.5 quickstart guide took off for the moon. Clearly, MDM is on the rise and you, the readers, want to hear more about it.

Indeed, as the big ERP players move towards SOA with open arms (or ESA in SAP's case) it seems that more and more turn to some type of Master Data solution to get the most out of the next generation of ERP technology. In the course of the theme month I heard users and industry experts talk about MDM and SAP's MDM 5.5 product, the most current release. Interestingly, it seems not everyone agrees SAP's own MDM product is the natural choice for SAP shops.

Now, I don't use MDM myself so I'm going to throw the question out there to you: what's your take on the issue of SAP MDM 5.5 vs. other MDM solutions for SAP shops? 

Please send your two cents on the matter to us for a chance to win a nice book bundle: 

• SAP BW Data Modeling
• Designing Composite applications
• Job Scheduling for SAP

Good luck!

Matt Danielsson
Editor

SearchSAP.com just posted an interview with Scott Campbell, the co-author of the new book 'Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver and MySAP ERP.' We discussed a lot of interesting topics with Scott around SOA, ESA roadmaps, getting business people involved with IT projects, and SAP jobs.

As is often the case with podcasts, due to time constraints there were a few things we weren't able to get to. So, we did some email Q&A after the fact where we asked more about SAP jobs among other things. We'll plan on posting the questions and Scott's answers tomorrow or Friday at the latest.

So check back in the next couple days to hear (read) more from Scott.

As promised, here's part 2 of "What SAP should improve." Feel free to shoot us an email or comment below with your own experiences. If we get enough good ones, maybe we'll run this feature again.

Jolene Jonas, SAP data architect, Intel (customer)

From a data architect's perspective (via email):

"One example: SAP R/3 has a Customer design and a Vendor design. They require the creation of a new Customer or Vendor for each different address. This results in many Customer and Vendor records for essentially the same company simply because they have different addresses for different purposes (ship to, sold to, pay to, order from….).

In CRM and SRM, they have introduced a design called ‘Business Partner.' In it you create the Customer (in CRM) and the Vendor (in SRM) once and attach many addresses for many purposes. In this way you can manage the Company just once. The new Business Partner design is more flexible, it would be great if SAP redesigned R/3 to use this new design.

One more example:

Customer and Vendor name fields in R/3 are 35 characters long. Business Partner expanded to 40. Reality is business and individual names can extend beyond 100 characters. R/3 and the new Business Suites need longer name fields."

Have a great weekend,

Vendor events like SAP's analyst Summit often have the feel of an extended, PowerPoint-filled commercial for the host company. This is not a negative reflection on anyone — who can blame a vendor for putting its best face forward when given a captive audience for a couple days?

The keynotes, sessions and customer testimonials at SAP's event definitely accentuated all things positive. And there is no arguing that SAP is doing some interesting things with SOA, and potentially with SaaS. To get a little bit of the other side of the coin, we asked a variety of SAP execs, customers and analysts the purposely open-ended question, "what is one thing you think SAP could improve?"

We'll post a few responses today and a few more tomorrow.

David Bradshaw, CRM practice leader, Ovum (analyst)

On the event itself:

"[SAP could offer] a little reality; show some downside of products and implementations. You can only hear 'this is the greatest thing ever' so many times. I know it's not great marketing, but it would add reality."

Peter Graf, executive vice president, product and technology group, SAP

Totally joking:

"And you seriously expect me to answer that?"

Jim Hagemann Snabe, general manager, industry solutions, SAP

On the user interface:

"I have an idea of an area that has become more important and we are getting our act together — usability simplification. Shai [Agassi] talked about it and we've come a long way in the last few years compared to where we were. We were really good at building software for processes, but we never went the extra mile for end users. With this new abstraction where you actually have the process pieces in the platform, you can abstract the UI and go create new UIs based on the same functionality and that tremendously increases our opportunity.

"It's an area which excites a lot of people, so it's not a difficult area to get excited about as a development organization… But it's certainly an area where still have lots to learn."

Check back tomorrow for a couple more …

We have a new addition to our panel of site experts. Independent consultant Andre Truong is an SAP veteran with experience from complex implementations across Europe, United States and Asia. He has been working with SAP since 1995 and is currently supporting early adopters within SAP's ecosystem in taking advantage of the Enterprise SOA and SAP's Business Process Platform.

Andre has many valuable skills in his SAP toolkit, but one area stands out: his formidable expertise in SAP composite applications (xApps) and its many uses in the NetWeaver era. Always looking for a good challenge, Andre invites you to send your toughest xApp questions his way today. Also make sure to browse his first batch of answers to user questions.

Matt Danielsson
Editor