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,

This is the fourth an final part in our series about the new SAP job roles outlined by SAP executive Shai Agassi in his TechEd 2006 keynote speech. What is a disruptive innovator? What are the job prospects? And how do you establish yourself as one? Get the scoop here!

Disruptive Innovators
As an SAP professional, the obvious first question is: how do you differentiate the disruptive innovators from the composers?

Most composers will own specific processes, like procurement, HR, manufacturing or other, clearly defined areas of responsibility. Their goal is to optimize their process to near-perfection, maintain it to meet changing needs and so on.

The disruptive innovator, on the other hand, needs a much more strategic mindset. This person is something of a maverick, looking across the entire company for areas with opportunities for disruptive innovation. It can be a new product, a new business process, or whatever it takes to move the company to the next level.

"The disruptive innovator has to be a hunter," Inbar said. "While consolidators have the luxury of tending to their niche of expertise, the disruptive innovator must be constantly on the move, looking for the next big thing."

This role is perhaps the hardest to define of the four; there's really no specific skillset to talk about beyond the fact that this person must have outstanding IT and business knowledge, and proven ability to think outside the box.

"Keep in mind that this is how SAP wants the world to be," Reed said. "In reality, some corporate cultures will embrace this kind of role more readily than others. Some cultures don't reward or even penalize people who step out of the box, so make sure you know your culture before you position yourself as a disruptive innovator."

Having said that, Reed thinks SAP is trying to convey the message that they're empowering users to do more with the SAP building blocks than ever before. It is an ongoing process and SAP isn't quite there to deliver everything they're talking about quite yet, but they're getting there, he said.

"The other roles seem to be more hands-on, but I see the disruptive innovator as a manager or Team Lead," Reed said. "You need a broader view as well as organizational leverage, ie. decent corporate status, in order to make things happen."

A Project Manager with good overall knowledge of how the technology supports the business side would make a good candidate. But all things considered, it doesn't really matter whether that person came from a technical or functional career path prior to shouldering this new role; all that really matters is the current understanding of both sides of the fence, Reed said.

This is the last part in our next-generation SAP jobs series. If you haven't done so already, make sure to check out the articles about composers, repository keepers and consolidators. 

Matt Danielsson
Editor

This is the third part in our series about the new SAP job roles outlined by SAP executive Shai Agassi in his TechEd 2006 keynote speech. What's the difference between a developer and a composer? How can a SAP developer position oneself to benefit from the new modeling movement? Find out here!

Composers
The confusion between "developer" and "composer" as a SAP role is understandable. The developer is your classic ABAP/Java programmer with varying business skills; the composer is a business process expert first and techie second. Their main function is to make business process innovation happen in real-time. 

In the past, you had business analysts, application consultants and others examining the processes and basically putting together specs and requests for the developers to fulfill. Today, the same business analysts can make the changes they need, or perhaps create new applications altogether, using quick and easy models without extensive technical expertise.

"This is one of the more revolutionary aspects of NetWeaver," Reed said. "Modeling may present interesting opportunities for functional folks in particular areas to get more involved in the application development process. Those with some understanding of ABAP and other programming languages will probably have an easy time picking up on the modeling tools."

Needless to say, this trend has caused some concern in developer circles. So what can today's ABAP developer do to avoid getting pinched between outsourcing on one hand and model-driven, do-it-yourself business people on the other?

"You can't do everything with models," Inbar said. "There's going to be plenty of room for skilled programmers for areas like Java and creation of new services."

Inbar suggests familiarizing oneself with the model-driven tools, tapping into the BPX-community and looking for ways to leverage superior technical skills to "move up the stack." For those who work closer to the User Interface, embrace the modeling tools and start building the next generation of UI building blocks — dedicated, highly interactive components that require advanced technical skills.

For those who are true programmers at heart, try to find the unfilled niches between SAP's productized enterprise services for specific industries, advises Inbar.

"Still, the key question for many is: will these tools decrease the opportunities for classic ABAPers? The honest answer is probably yes," Reed said. "Having said that, I think many developers can and should get on board with the modeling movement. SAP wants it to seem like a functional expert in a particular area can come in and just design all this stuff. It's not that easy; they can do a lot, but they'll still need considerable support from technical people."

Bottom line, don't be all doom-and-gloom. Instead, make it a point to be the first in the office to really master the new modeling tools and position yourself as the authority on next-generation development. There will always be room for a liaison between the functional teams and classic techies, and the more you actively seek out that role, the more relevant you will remain to the company.

Even if you don't have access to SAP's own tools, you can gain a lot of experience by using third-party modeling tools, Reed advises. Not everyone is on ECC 5.0 or 6.0, which is pretty much what you'd need to get into this on the SAP side, but you can still pick up a lot of useful knowledge by playing around with similar technology outside the SAP world.

Check back on Monday for our final part of this series to learn what disruptive innovators do and how you can become one!

Matt Danielsson
Editor

What is the next career step for classic Basis people? How can ABAPers avoid outsourcing? Part of the answer can be found in the four new SAP job roles Shai Agassi outlined in his TechEd keynote speech last month: consolidators, repository keepers, composers and disruptive innovators. How do these new roles tie into the current SAP ecosystem? How do you position yourself for the career sweet spot a year or two in the future? Here's the second part in a series of four where we discuss exactly what these roles mean and how to get your foot in the foor.

Repository Keepers
The core of a good SOA strategy is tight control of a central repository of Web services. Keeping vital metadata in the central repository is a prerequisite for the previously mentioned consolidators to do their jobs.

For example, take a CRM solution. The metadata must be stored in the repository in a way that makes sense in the long term. That means you can do a product and define a set of services that a company needs at a certain pint in time. But the next day, someone will say 'that's great, but I need some tweaks made to fit my job function better' and just like that, he or she creates a duplicate of that service. More will soon follow, and that's the point where you start backpedaling towards chaos.

To keep things running smoothly, the company needs people that can create and maintain the repository in a way that is consistent yet flexible enough to last for the long haul. That's a tricky balancing act, but those who can pull it off will be very valuable players on the IT team.

"The repository keepers are kind of like the keepers of the crown jewels," Inbar said.

A good repository keeper must have very deep understanding of the meta data and must also have a firm grip on exactly how the applications are being used across multiple departments throughout the company. Simply put, you need to be intimately familiar with both the business processes and the technology architecture to excel in this role.

"SAP is really emphasizing master data and metadata as a way to make sure data is structured consistently in the company," Reed said. "That idea is a core aspect of NetWeaver, but for the job itself it depends a lot on the size of the company and the number of Web services they're running."

As with consolidators, Reed doesn't expect to see "Repository Keeper" to show up as a de facto job title anytime soon, but he points out that this has good potential as an evolutionary skill to learn. As companies grow and expand their services, the need for a central control person grows accordingly.

As a rule, Reed feels that this kind of role favors those with technical rather than functional skills.

"As we move forward, you will see people already involved in the creation and management of Web services get pulled into repository keeping," he said. "MDM/BW workers and some developers are also well-positioned for jumping on this bandwagon."

Stay tuned for more information on composers tomorrow.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Those who attended TechEd in Las Vegas last month may recall that Shai Agassi mentioned four new SAP roles in his keynote speech: consolidators, repository keepers, composers and disruptive innovators. How do these new roles tie into the current SAP ecosystem? How do you position yourself for the career sweet spot a year or two in the future? Here's the first part in a series of four where we discuss exactly what these roles mean and how to get your foot in the door.

Consolidators
This is a new role that has already begun to show up, but it's not quite formalized; people do it, but there are no dedicated teams yet.

"What consolidators do is look at the entire landscape of all the applications and technologies a company has," said Ori Inbar, Sr. vice president, solution marketing, SAP NetWeaver. "Then they map it to core (what helps drive differentiation with the company) and context (what you do to support existing commitments,) and start looking for ways to consolidate things."

This cuts across all layers; hardware, databases, data level, user interface level… the works, Inbar said.

As the name implies, the gist of the job is to reduce the amount of systems in use. It may seem like something of a dead-end career choice where success is rewarded with a pink slip, but Inbar says that is not the case, especially for large corporations.

"It never ends; it's an ongoing project," he said. "Every time there's a new acquisition, there's a slew of new systems entering the ecosystem. Somebody has to be there to keep things streamlined."

It can still be something of a challenge though. Would you like to be the guy telling the colleagues that the system they've been building and nurturing for years is redundant and has to go?

Still, it seems those wishing to go down the consolidator route are set for a fairly secure career path. There is no scientific answer to what skills or certifications will serve a wannabe-consolidator best, but it seems clear those with an innate sense for efficiency will have a leg up on the competition. They may not need deep business process expertise, but they'll probably have considerable system expertise.

"Classic Basis system admin people are well-positioned to evolve into this field," said Jon Reed, veteran SearchSAP career guru and VP of SAPtips.com. "Basis folks are often used to straddling the fence with architecture elements, and you can't really identify redundancies without a good grasp of the current processes in use."

System architects are also well-positioned to move in this direction, just like those working with data management and business intelligence today. Anyone who's looking at how data is filtered through the enterprise can evolve into this type of a position, Reed said. The key word is "evolve" — don't expect "consolidator" to start appearing on business cards anytime soon.

"I believe SAP is accurate in their assessment of future needs," Reed said. "Companies will want a single infrastructure in which all data resides, not a mess of apps and redundancies. Having said that, I'm not sure it will become a specialized role anytime soon. Rather, I see it becoming a Basis/sys admin add-on skill, kind of like how a Basis person evolves into the go-to guy for security issues."

Just like having those security skills in the Sys admin toolkit boosts the value of that person, the consolidation skills may become a vital edge for SAP professionals looking to move up the ranks in coming years. But for now, expect a gradual evolution rather than a sudden revolution, Reed cautioned.

"The best way to position yourself for this type of role is to familiarize yourself with the NetWeaver architecture and use your hands-on tools to grow into it," Reed said. "Enterprise application integration is a good skill to learn."

Even if you're stuck with an older, non-NetWeaver system in your current job, you can still do the homework — read books, listen to webcasts, attend conferences — since it's only a matter of time before even the most stubborn company has to upgrade. Worst case, you may have to jump ship to another company.

Tune into our next post tomorrow for a closer look at the second of the new SAP roles, the Reposity Keeper! Then get the skinny on the new business expert/development hybrid: composers.

Matt Danielsson
Editor