Think Global, Hire Local: SAP Consulting

“Think Global, Hire Local” is an essence of successful SAP Implementations. SAP is the most popular and chosen ERP among the large enterprises who are focused on expanding internationally to ensure that their brand remains globally consistent. For these large enterprises, SAP is a tool which enables them to streamline and automate their business processes and leverage a suite of integrated applications. Since IT or SAP are not the part of their product or service lines that contribute directly towards their profitability, these companies limit or cautiously budget their SAP or IT implementations.

So, this limited budget persuades these end customers to turn towards offshore consulting companies who entice them with their cost saving options and faster results. Most of the decision makers for SAP Implementations in the large enterprises don’t possess in-depth technical knowledge about IT or SAP implementations. ?Mutual Trust is the paramount factor in working with SAP Consulting Companies. However, with growing IT competition in countries like India, offshore consulting companies are more focused on selling their services and meeting their targets rather than adding value to end client’s SAP investment.

The classic arguments with general IT Offshore Companies are poor communication, cultural differences, lack of sufficient knowledge and resources and different time zones. However, when it comes to SAP, these challenges with Offshore Consulting Companies increases tenfold.

Firstly, SAP is a product which needs to be implemented onsite at the customer side after detailed strategic analysis and requirement gathering of their business processes. SAP Consultants in India have limited experience on this because there are hardly any clients in India who have implemented SAP R/3. So, the only way SAP Consultants are gaining experience is through Support work. SAP is heavily built around business processes, local legislations and compliances which is difficult for Indian Offshore companies to gain knowledge on.

Some large Offshore Consulting Companies have expanded their operations in Europe and UK by acquiring or merging with local SAP companies to overcome language and culture barriers, but they fail to retain the local team after their mergers. The focus of these offshore companies is always on delegating the project to offshore teams. ?To impress the end clients and to keep up the trust, they do hire local consultants on contractual agreement, but those contracts are terminated before the agreed timeframe. Surprisingly, they are successful in convincing clients for going offshore but they fail to execute the quality and SAP Project excellence. This puts the entire SAP Project at risk and once again the local team is called upon to fix the problems which adds to the cost and timeframe of SAP Implementation. At times, due to poor analysis and initial design of SAP Architecture, implementation fails and there are huge losses faced by the customers which in turn leaves bitter taste for SAP.

Sometimes these people do hire consultants locally on permanent roles, but these are again immigrants or non-locals who lack experience and knowledge. Offshore companies have to hunt much harder for its lasting advantages based on geography and talent rather than low wages and plentiful labour.

Another challenge with Offshore Consulting companies is their SAP Competencies or IT Portfolio, which state that they are capable of doing everything along with their attitude of knowing everything about everything. It’s a high time they need to learn to accept their limitations and focus on relationship building over meeting revenue targets. Sometimes, these end customers don’t need any new SAP products. They can do simple enhancements or define better solutions but in greed of achieving revenue targets they end up selling unnecessary SAP Licenses which again is upsetting for the decision makers.

In a nutshell, lack of knowledge on local compliances, legislation and business processes, language barriers, cultural differences, weak IT infrastructure, lack of sufficient SAP knowledge, experience, resources, large physical distance and time zone differences, trust, honesty, integrity and very high TCO (total cost of ownership) in the long run and high risk of implementation failure are majors concerns with SAP Offshore Consulting companies. There is a severe need to hire local SAP Consultants not just on SLAs (Service Level Agreements) or SoWs (Statement of Work) or RFPs but also in reality.

Offshore consulting companies might be good in other IT Technologies, but they have certainly failed to demonstrate their SAP expertise on several occasions. These companies can deploy someone from offshore from countries like LATAM or Africa in addition to India, China and Philippines on super customised SAP Implementations which includes niche modules like Hydrocarbon Management etc.

Its fathomable that now we have all cloud solutions which can be deployed from anywhere but still the requirements of local domain expertise can’t be ignored or neglected.

The major benefit of hiring locally is guaranteed higher success rate with quality delivery which is within targeted timeframe, legally compliant on customer data and other local regulations. Hiring locally will also boost economy and encourage SAP Education. Since most of the SAP Projects are outsourced, there is less interest for SAP or IT among local University Students. Implementing SAP Projects with local teams will also address the data security and privacy concerns and zero down the chances of miscommunication and misunderstanding between business and technical teams. It will also reduce the paperwork.

Moving SAP Projects completely onshore is not going to solve all the problems but if the right balance is achieved between onsite and offshore, clients can certainly increase their ROI on SAP and free up their resources to focus on their core business goals.

Hiring and acting locally will aid SAP Consulting Companies to share and increase their network. Thus, local hiring strategy is secure way of throwing SAP Projects over the fence and fully entrusting delivery to the local SAP Consulting partners to organically extend the in-house team to nearby locals offering high quality yet lower cost IT talent for improving and optimising own IT processes while focusing on long-term benefits.

?Please note the views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, employee, employer, or company.

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