Value engineering was once our proprietary approach to identify, quantify, and realize business value from our customers' SAP technology investments. It has become much more.
What do top corporate performers have in common? They use their data most effectively. The watchword for today's c-suite is "Value Management" - finding and creating internal efficiencies within your value chain. One tremendous hurdle can be where to start. At SAP, we are proud that our value engineering program helps companies get closer to their potential, without any commitment to buy our software.
Successful companies invest heavily in information technology. However, a recent Gartner survey tells us that only 37 percent of companies ever go back and measure their value after their purchase. SAP tries to make it standard practice whether you are an SAP customer or not.
Value engineering was once our proprietary approach to identify, quantify and realize business value from our customers' SAP technology investments. It has become much more. We learned lessons that convinced us to expand access to both prospective customers and other interested parties, for free.
SAP now has 20 benchmarking surveys, using more than 700 key performance indicators (KPIs) and over 1,000 best practices. Our collaborative, online, on-demand value lifecycle manager can chart over one million data points, covering 45 industries. As of July 2010, 14,000 users had access to this online tool, with approximately 200 added each month. Value engineering has three key elements: benchmarking, business transformation studies, and the SAP Value Academy program - two-day, hands-on seminars introducing representatives of leading companies to benchmarking services and tools by SAP.
Benchmarking should be self-explanatory, as those KPIs used to monitor your success and determine where problems or efficiencies are. Our business transformation studies provide further context, with case study examples of how many key clients achieved or surpassed desired benchmarks.
The SAP Value Academy program began as our internal training program for SAP value experts to support existing SAP customers. We realized that the lessons and best practices we had provided insights helpful both to our client base and beyond.
With no commitment to purchase SAP software, our experienced business consultants walk a small group of participants through our benchmarking process at SAP Value Academy, and demonstrate how those tools can achieve efficiencies.
Value management services from SAP are a proactive effort by SAP to help realize improved value, regardless of the systems you already own or use. Your data is never shared with your competitors, and your company's data anonymity is guaranteed.
The cost is merely an executive commitment to excellence, plus a moderate amount of time to collect KPIs for the value lifecycle manager survey. In return, you receive no-cost services from value management experts at SAP, benchmarking your company's business processes within your industry. We identify five or six possible process changes specific to your company and customized to your business and strategic values.
The number of value engineering participants without SAP products installed has steadily increased to 15percent of participants. In comparison, we expect that by 2013, more than 30 percent of customers of SAP Business Suite software will have used value engineering
services and tools.
When Gartner studied the value engineering program by SAP, they stated that it was "generally business-process-focused, not technology-focused, and they cover the subject area in sufficient depth to identify opportunities for improvement." Does this sound useful to you?
The SAP cycle of success has three tenets: discovery, realization, and optimization. Each affects the others, and the cycle repeats continuously itself throughout a company's existence.
Once you know what you need, you know what to look for. We treasure our "value partnerships," where SAP advisors and IT and business customers monitor their cycle of success and identify opportunities for creating value on a continual basis.
SAP infrastructure can help you develop your own executive dashboards, monitor your progress in real time, linking strategic objectives to operational performance. Whether a client or not, your company can discover, realize, and optimize -- at no cost.
The point of IT investments should be increased internal awareness of and better responsiveness to conditions affecting your company. Like a monitoring pressure valve, it is better to know as soon as possible when metrics are heading in the wrong direction than to react when previously unseen problems boil over.
Value engineering service from SAP provides the most robust benchmarking comparison of any company, and you don't have to be a client to use it. If you had the opportunity to compare your performance to leading companies and your industry peers, why would you not do it?
Riaz Raihan is the National Vice President of Value Engineering for SAP Canada. For more information, visit www.sap.com/canada.
