SAP User Group to help drive SAP continuous improvement

The organisation has announced that it is now participating in SAP's Customer Connection programme for continuous improvement, aimed at giving SAP users more say. "Greater input into SAP's product development remains an ongoing request from users so being part of the continuous improvement initiative stands to be of great benefit to our members," comments Craig Dale, chief executive of the UK & Ireland SAP User Group. "User groups and SAP both recognised that the previous process wasn't effective and didn't meet either party's needs. For users, development requests could disappear down a 'black hole', while it is also fair to say that SAP needed a better way to prioritise development requests as it only has finite resources," he adds. Dale intimidates that, through greater collaboration between SAP and its customers, both will now agree focus topics – including CRM, SRM and healthcare – under which they will collect improvement requests. Through its SIGs, the UK and Ireland User Group will now be asking members to identify potential improvement requests and nominate 'subscribing customers' for execution and productive use. Dale explains that improvement requests will be managed through a central portal, providing a common private space for all participating user groups – and potentially accelerating deliverables to a nine month timeframe. "Through having more defined selection criteria, we hope to provide members with greater transparency of the process, provide them with more timely communication and add value," comments Dale. "For instance, even if a request doesn't meet the criteria, we may see that two or three companies have the same requirement. Therefore we could suggest they work with a partner and split the costs between them, providing them with a much more cost-effective solution than going solo," he concludes.