SAP Southern Africa has been appointed by mother company SAP AG, as official SAP curriculum development factory for the software company`s new role-based education. SAP AG`s global core education is now being developed by SAP AG, SAP Americas and SAP Southern Africa.
The role-based curriculum is a new part of SAP`s AcceleratedSAP (ASAP) fast track implementation methodology in user education and extends to cover the installed customer base.
Dave Simonds, general manager - education and training at SAP Southern Africa, explains: "When we started on this work, we analysed what the SAP solution was capable of delivering to the installed base of local customers, and how they could leverage their return on investment (ROI) on an ongoing basis.
"As the business dynamics change, so users need to know how to drive the changes required to the initial SAP configuration. We needed to find how to enable operational customers to focus on, for example, core issues of continuous improvement, and leverage best business practice.
"Although current users often have an excellent understanding of the solution in terms of their customer-specifically configured system, they are not aware of additional functionalities offered by SAP, which over time, are required to meet business changes. Role-based education enables the `gaps` to be understood and business-driven action taken."
A key phase of the education project focuses on the `information user`, or users whose primary function is to use and apply information residing within SAP. "Often these users, including middle management and operational level employees, were not involved in the initial implementation, but are principally driving the system," says Simonds.
Research by SAP Southern Africa also uncovered an issue impacting a wide range of users - difficulties in grasping best business practices and linking to SAP functionalities.
Initial work with South African SAP customers concluded that SAP`s education offering needed to be extended so current users could develop meaningful `real world` skills. Scoping role-based education for the installed base by SAP Southern Africa extended to include SAP America`s and Northern American customers.
The project quickly grew to include the ASAP development teams and has now been fully incorporated into ASAP as customisable user education content, a key implementation accelerator.
Simonds adds: "Key outcomes include ownership of the system at all operational levels, reduced support requirements and cost, and customers owning continuous change management. The curriculum also benefits employees with better understanding of SAP and their role in the company, SAP processes, refreshers in best business practice, and fully supports career development.
"By providing customers with easily modifiable courses targeted at generic roles in the business processes, we really believe we can now also substantially reduce customers` development effort and maintenance costs in end user education."
The resultant role-based education curriculum is currently being launched in SAP`s major markets of UK, Germany and the US, and will be offered by all SAP education centres next year.
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