Most of our consulting projects come from SAP HR clients who have already implemented the system. We help them fix configuration, customization, technical and business processes, and change management. Once we get into the work, four out of five times our clients will ask 'Where were you when we were implementing this system!?' Well, we were right here; we still are, right here.
There are serious problems in the SAP HR consulting profession. They have been there since the beginning: Many consultants and consulting firms focus almost exclusively on new implementations, never getting the feedback from how their work actually performed in a live, production environment. Running a close second place to that problem is another: Many consultants and consulting firms are dramatically out of touch with new technical and business processes in SAP HR. They continue to do, over and over again, what may have been state of the art 10 years ago. Reinforcing both of those problems is the fact that most consulting firms exercise complete control over resources and information during a project, so that clients only know what one firm tells them.
Once the SAP HR system is implemented, the implementation consulting firm moves on (because they don't do support work), and most clients eventually turn to other places for help. They discover other ways of doing things – often they are better ways. They discover functionality they had all along but were never told about. The find out that their system configuration and customization work for the test cases during the project but fail with real-world transactions. And change management efforts wear down and people return to the old way of doing things. As they discover this new world, they wonder (rightfully so): Why were we not told about this during the implementation? Why didn't we do it better during the implementation?
At Insight we relish the opportunities to provide objective, third-party consulting during implementation projects. Clients deserve to get the tremendous value and functionality that a properly implemented SAP HR system can deliver. Our objective consulting advice during the project helps them get that value. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen often enough due to the closed and restrictive relationships implementation firms enforce during a project. Too often, the priority for consulting firms is to maintain profit margins and control instead of maximizing client value.
If you are considering an implementation or in the middle of one, be sure to bring in an objective third-party consulting firm to get another perspective on your project. I'm sure you will find some value in that exercise. And then hopefully you won't be asking us 'Where were you when we were implementing this system!?'