What Do You Do?

[moshenaveh]

Hello Everyone,

In my opinion, Empathy is an essential foundation of any online community that wishes to thrive. Empathy is the glue that keeps us together and makes every community interaction a lot more considerate and user friendly to all members involved.

I believe that the best way to encourage and help empathy spread across our community is if we connect and familiarize with one and other.

Therefore, I would like to invite you to join the What Do You Do (#WDYD) community initiative. #WDYD is your opportunity to share with everyone your role in the SAP world/ecosystem while engaging a lively conversation with fellow community members who want to learn more about the most interesting projects you've worked on, best practices, creativity and innovation and whatever you feel like sharing about what you do.

Joining this initiative is very simple:

1. Submit an answer to the question "What Do You DO" in this thread. The answer should contain a short introduction of yourself and your professional background/experience.
2. Optional: End your introduction by @ mentioning fellow community members inviting them to join this initiative while asking them one of the following questions: /What was your first step in the SAP world?/What do you enjoy most about your job?/How do you keep your skills up to date (what training/courses/reading do you do)?/Where do you see your career future with SAP?/What do you think are the challenges in your area?/What advice would you give someone beginning their career?/What do you wish you had done differently?/What did you do in your first day at work/Who inspired you the most/Do you have any specific thought leaders in the community who you follow/What was the project you enjoyed the most and why?/Feel free to make-up your own questions/ (Thanks a lot to @Colleen Hebbertf or coming-up with some these questions)
3. After you've posted your answer paste the link that you will get under the "share" button. Then use the link and this #WDYDSC hashtag to invite your friends on social media to read your answer and interact with you

Once you join other community members will continue the conversation by asking you more questions. In order to be responsive please be sure to follow this thread and activate your Email notifications.

Some additional important guidelines:

* Please contact me if you wish to champion your own topic related What Do You DO question. This way we can make sure there are no duplications and I can support you by giving you visibility in this thread and other locations.

* All questions/threads participating in the #WDYD initiative most only be tagged with the "Careers" topic in order not to disrupt the content flow of other community Q&A activity.

* Please up-vote answers you like as it will make it easier for others to find high quality discussions.

* Everyone can join! Regardless if you are new to the SAP World or an expert

* Please use comments to ask for clarification on this post and post answers to join according to the intructions provided above.

I would like to kick this off by @ mentioning fellow community members:

julie.plummer

lars.breddemann

caetano.almeida

matt.fraser

petr.solberg

m.lee

michael.appleby

jrgen.lins

denis.konovalov

1005bf8318434f49964a5737c29bb265

felipe.fraga

jeremy.good

ivy.li

matthew.billingham

jelena.perfiljeva2

luisdarui

bernhard.luecke

nicole.geischnek

andreas.holzapfel

ajay.maheshwari

krishnaananth

Former Member

rindia

raz.korn

matthias.wild

[moshenaveh]

jameselvin_hizon Very inspiring! It's always good to step back and relax when feeling stressed when encountering a challenging task/problem.

How come you ended-up in the SAP world?

[former_member215439]

I guess it's pure luck? That time I'm applying for a different IT position and HR refer me to their SAP team ( which is my team now).

I'm extremely nervous, they explained the difficulties and responsibilities. At first I have doubt in myself if can do those things and think this kind of opportunity will only come to me once and I decided to step out of my comfort zone and grabbed it.

Now I'm glad that I did that.

Til now can't believe that I ended up in the SAP world.

[luisdarui]

I feel I'm very late to the game, but better late than never, right?

I work in SAP Product Support in the SAP HANA Platform team. Before this I worked with SQL Server at SAP, for SAP NetWeaver products, 3 years at SAP and 10 years of SQL Server experience.

I started working with HANA in June/2017 and I feel that HANA is very challenging and interesting in many perspectives. I feel excited as I was almost 10 years ago, when I started working the first time with a RDBMS.

When I learned the opening for the HANA team in Brazil I discussed with my manager the possibility of moving to HANA. I was in a very edge situation in my career as I was investing my time to keep up with SQL Server. Despite the importance of my work, I felt that in the future this could lead me to leave SAP at some point in the future, because my focus was a competitor/partner product, and I’m glad about this change.

When I talked about this with some colleagues and longtime friends I found they were more scared than I was – changing 10 years of experience on a technology/product to learning something else seemed the right thing for me – I don’t really like to stay in the comfort zone.

One of the first things I have done when I got the confirmation I was going to work with HANA, first thing I did was buy the SAP HANA Administration book from SAP Press (which lars.breddemann co-authored with Richard Bremer). Since then I have been carrying it around in my backpack.

When I’m not working, I do like many things, but mostly I enjoy reading Manga/watching Anime, watching some TV Series and movies on Netflix (mostly), watch football on TV and stadium. In addition, I have two hobbies: playing guitar (I’ve an Epiphone SG Gothic which I bought 12 years ago, in 2005), and another one is of course working in my personal home lab.

I’m currently working on building my own 3d-printer to support my future personal projects like building my own quadcopter drone and other IoT projects like house automation and security - which I am a little concerned – or paranoid if you like 🙂

I would also like to bring here eduardo.rezende who was my mentor when I joined SAP!

[lbreddemann]

Hi Luis

happy New Year and thanks a lot for the shout-out!

Reading that you have been lugging the book around, I just hope for the health of your back that you went for the ebook version. The dead-tree brick really is a bit heavy to take on the road...

Either way, great to see that the book had been useful to you (at least I hope it was).

Cheers to Brazil,

Lars

[moshenaveh]

luisdarui Thanks a lot for joining!:) And happy new year. Changes are scary and sometimes hard to go through, especially with respect to significant elements in our life. I love your result and pragmatic way of coping with it.

What is the most interesting thing you learned regarding SAP Hana?

How would you define success?

lars.breddemann Love "dead-tree brick" At first I thought it's an HANA expression:)

[luisdarui]

Oh I took the Bundle. I mostly leave the printed edition at SAP, but I plan to have it at home when I finish organizing my office in home. I always liked printed editions but also like the convenience of the e-book. The printed editions from SAP Press are finest in terms of quality.

I use the e-book for the mobility and it is also easy for searching something.

And the the book was very useful during my ramp-up. I still often use it for some consulting when I'm stuck somewhere.

Cheers to Australia,

Luis

[fim]

Thanks moshe.naveh2 for initiating such an interesting intro discussion. It’s good to know more about others, we read and follow here at the community, and to introduce ourselves who want to know about us. The #WDYD initiative, I hope, will help in getting to know the fellow community members.

The start: I stepped in SAP world after my graduation back in 2001. I didn’t think of it, I just dropped my CV for an internship (to gain some experience of what I had learned during my MBA with majors in IT) for which I was selected. While I was still following the instructions of my seniors, without expecting the organization to be my first employer, I was offered a job which I happily accepted. The Project Manager was kind enough to explain the benefits of SAP career which attracted me to accept the not-so-good paying job (as a starter) over relatively good offers in the market at that time. My initial job was to support a team of Sr. SAP Consultants in carrying out some business analysis at the then-newly started SAP Implementation Project. The experience I gained at the project to support HR function of the organization with SAP Solutions helped me greatly in setting the foundation of my career later.

Next Experience: The 4 years I spent at the Template/Rollout project on different roles, from providing training before and support after solution rollout, gave me a good understanding the end-user needs. I started to think from system user perspective more than the Consultant’s. And it became a reason for me to consider the offer I received from a SAP Partner to work for one of their projects where they needed various SAP Trainers. On my new role, I developed presentations, user guides and some e-learning material for their client’s HR which was highly appreciated and during second phase of the project I was given a Consulting Role to Design, Implement and Support some HR Solutions. The training and consulting experience at a huge project were great addition to my profile.

Great Experience: In last quarter of 2008, I moved to another project where I delivered SAP based HR solutions as part of the project team. After implementation, I joined the customer’s SAP Support Team and helped organization to stabilize its production system by providing initial support, expand its solution landscape with additional functionalities, extend the solution portfolio to its growing business areas, and to align its processes with best-practices SAP Solutions. The experience of working at a SAP Customer CoE, from inception to its maturity, was something which I rate quite high in my overall SAP career. I joined the SCN team during that time and started contributing at the forum. I still remember how my first blog (on Organizational Management) was received so well by fellow community members.

Latest experience: At my current role, I am supporting my employer with Organizational Change Management. I’ll be completing my 3 years at this SAP cross-functional role in March. The experience I’ve gained here is unique in a way that whatever I’ve learned at this role, I’ve shared it with SAP Community. As an example you could see Change Management Lessons Learned in a Year and on Different Projects.

Hope: The last thing, since I come from SAP HR background, I still have interest in the HR domain, even though now I’m supporting other functions as well. I hope I’ll get back to HR once again, some day : )

[moshenaveh]

Thanks a lot for joining and for your kind words faisal.iqbal !

Your career path sounds very interesting. It's fascinating how random decisions have such a great impact on your life.

Can you please elaborate on what does Organization Change Management mean? What are the steps you preformed in the project's life cycle and what lessons have you learned?

Why do you find the HR interesting?

Regards,

Moshe

[fim]

Organizational Change Management: At my current role (i.e. OCM) I assist the project teams in minimizing the impact of changes in processes, roles and solutions, basically to help end-users (and other stakeholders) in adopting the new situations; I work with fellow SAP Consultants and Process Owners to understand the changes in the system (implementation of additional functionalities, modifications in / enhancements of existing solutions) and to identify the impact each change brings to different groups of people. By knowing the range of impact, I then work with business & IT teams to plan how individual groups have to be facilitated in accepting the change.

Example: Currently I'm engaged at a project where the team is implementing LMS (learning management system) which is going to change the existing training process. The impact is on the employees (as trainees of various training programs), the managers (who have to set development plans for their teams), the administrators (to organize and manage trainings). All of these groups have to be 1) notified of the upcoming change, 2) informed of the new process, 3) supported on the new procedures. I, as a Change Manager, am assisting the said groups in getting to know and in accepting & adopting the new solution for their skill development needs. It's one project and there are few others ongoing which I'm supporting in capacity of SAP OCM Consultant.

Interest: Within HR, I see Talent Management more interesting than the typical HR Administration.

[moshenaveh]

Sounds very interesting! Do you have any recommended reading material about change management?

[fim]

Earlier SAP had a training available OCM100 for an Introduction on Organizational Change Management as part of C_PM_70 Associate Project Manager (ASAP and Solution Manager) course & certification. But now as the Activate has replaced ASAP, it's covered under Solution Adoption Workstream.

In addition to SAP provided resources, there are few other methodologies and approaches, such as ADKAR model by Prosci, used globally to manage changes of different types. I got chance to attend both the OCM100 and Prosci training which I explained at Prosci Change Management Certification.

[moshenaveh]

Thanks a lot. I will read through it. It would be very interesting to hear in March about your next adventure and new insights.

[fim]

Hi Moshe,

It's to let you know that I've published a new blog From Resistance to Acceptance and Adoption, understanding the journey, explaining the key learnings I had during Mar 2017 - Mar 2018.

Regards,

Faisal

[moshenaveh]

Thanks a lot for sharing!!!

[Former Member]

#WDYD

Hi friends,

This is shivakkumar from chennai- India. started my career as planning/procurement engineer in a automation company and then as control engineer in power plant and one find day in 2004...got a golden chance to work in SAP which lifts my career/economy/life..etc. 🙂 - worked in different IT companies/ Projects in the areas of SAP MM/WM/LE/EWM/ SRM/ CIN and integration with SD,PP,APO and other modules for the past 13 years and each project brings me challenges & helps me to shape me and refine me and got many good friends.i have joined SDN forum in 2007 and it is wonderful the SAP community helps me in solving many issues in WM/MM/EWM/SRM/CIN etc.. travelling for the past 11 years with this community and got many experts and Gurus. especially i need to mention Jurgen L, Michael, Jocelyn, Ozgur unal, Lakshmipati and many more gurus( many gurus)..really asking apologies if i might missed our gurus and my friends in the blogs..really i feel wonderful community. this community helps me to work in different kind of projects such implementation/Roll-out/Support/Enhancement/upgrades..etc and also helps me to learn new things in SAP- S/4HANA EM. I like to know Jurgen L,

sven.denecken

jocelyn.dart,

michael.appleby

nancy.guo

mehmet.unal,

lakshmipathi.ganesan

1005bf8318434f49964a5737c29bb265

oliver

jarret.pazahanick

tridip.chakraborthy

dahowlett

tammy.powlas3

93b1c542d4984f0e9a75a57ce6030ff3

ravisankar.venna

bert.schulze

suresh.ramanathan

mrinalkanti.roy

jbaltazar

mahesh.sardesai

lingaiahvanam

mike.conners

jan.musil

arminda.jack

carl.dubler

gregory.coja2

harish.marabathula

emma.zhou

owen.pettiford3

john.harrickey

davidhenry.herrema

and not only specific experts- many of our experts.. I hope it will help us to mold us and tune further..

1. how do you feel once you get into SAP ?

2. how do you feel the first time you have completed SAP implementation ?

3.what customer/client/end users reaction during each project phase ?

4.what are all the impact or benefits you feel before and after your SAP career ?

5.i hope many people worked in other ERP s/w.please share your thoughts on the experience and inferences after coming to SAP.. i mean the sophistication in SAP compared to other s/w which makes SAP no-1 in ERP/SCM Field.

6.what are all new features SAP will bring or need to bring to their clients to make the clients feel happy in using SAP ?

7. techniques you feel better in making the client happy to accept SAP..we know many stories but i am asking your personal views..

8.During implementation which one is more weird situation and you felt better we can do better if have time and good wrap with the client?

9.comments that you face from clients while we do upgrade the versions and during migration ?

Really i feel more happy in discussing here...Thanks for the giving the opportunity..

btw the profile picture i have taken before 12 years and this is not my recent pic. many people asking me- you are looking too young for your age.. 🙂 🙂 🙂

very important things- if we have whatsapp channel for SAP WM/EWM/MM/SD/PP/Logistics / SAP S/4HANA EM - it would be great to all the logistics/SCM consultants.. we have whatsapp channel for SAP PLM, SAP Innovations, SAP HANA like that we need whatsapp channel group for logistics. I hope SAP will consider my request. Thanking you,

Regards,

G.V.Shivakkumar

[mynynachau]

Hi Shivakkumar! It's great to see you made it here and it's really nice to get to know more about you. It seems like you have found the right path for yourself in the last years where the community was and is always by your side. 🙂
Since you opened the conversation with your gurus, I want to help you and start with pulling in jrgen.lins but you can use @mention (@+name) to notify anyone else yourself.

[JL23]

Each of this questions could deserve an individual discussion or blog. I'll pick a few, other gurus shall step in and answer on your other questions

1. how do you feel once you get into SAP ?

It is already 21 years ago, but I am sure that I did not feel privileged or gentled. It was just another special order. And bluntly said, it was supposed to kill my babies (the software that I implemented in various locations in the 10 years before and maintained and enhanced over the years) The excitement came when I heard that the project work is in New York.

2. how do you feel the first time you have completed SAP implementation ?

Depressed, because meeting the Go-Live date was finally political and the system not really in a good shape for the people who had to work with it.

3.what customer/client/end users reaction during each project phase ?

I even had a project among the many where the people were happy to get SAP and were still happy after Go-Live

6.what are all new features SAP will bring or need to bring to their clients to make the clients feel happy in using SAP ?

People are after reduction of complexity, and screens that are self explaining, where the most used action is not hidden somewhere in a context menu . But many feel already happy once they know how to change the color in the GUI

[Former Member]

Thanks Jurgen Sir. the answers are very straight forward. Great.

Regards,

G.V.Shivakkumar

[Former Member]

Thanks Mynyna.

Regards,

G.V.Shivakkumar

[moshenaveh]

shivakkumar.geethavenkatesan79 Thanks a lot for joining #WDYDSC

You wrote that each project teaches new lessons and insights. What are your top 10 golden rules that you've learned over the years?

[Former Member]

Dear Moshe,

I think i am done with my golden rules..some times it looks funny but sure. it helps a person to keep a good wrap with the clients.even it helps to maintain a good relationship with my clients users even till now after project closure..

Regards,

G.V.Shivakkumar

[Former Member]

Dear Moshe,

Please find my thoughts on golden rules i have learned.. but if you go through the Freud explanation on handling a person which is more good than what i mentioned here..i am a great fan of legend Freud..i am not telling any new thing...i hope everybody knowing it and following it already..

Ensure to build a self confident and confident to client on your work, thinking, recommendations and suggestions. express it boldly. most of the client will get attracted with it. its normal human tendency.

Ensure not to give false hope to clients. express it openly- this we can do and this we cannot do...this is age of more preciseness and if you try to act more to convince them -they feel bad and your words will not have a worth.many people will tell if you are more straight forward then we will loose the project. so we need to take more care on it. it is a tactics or an art to convince them

Ensure the job to be done and the client’s expectations are fully described, and that your team’s expertise matches these.

Ensure that you are properly briefed – with all pertinent facts. Provide comprehensive written proposals which address the brief.

Make sure the ‘chemistry’ between the consultant who will carry out the work and the client is right.

Provide references of relevant capability and notify the referees that you have used them.

Keep the client informed on the progress of the assignment. Consult widely within the client organisation.

Ensure that client staff ‘buy into’ or ‘own’ the recommendations by involving them as early as possible.

Ensure that the final report contains no surprises/confusion. (Avoid confusing them more)- i can even i am confident on the topic or idea -when expressing in a meeting we will face some hurdles and some times we missed to project the effective suggestions or views.

Ensure the client is well prepared to implement the recommendations.

Ensure patience towards client handling issues and listen to client even though they are giving wrong information or trying to deviate from the topic.your action will impress them more and one fine day they became fan of you and listen to you. this is more important and it is an art.

I hope i have given the information whatever i know. I think many consultants will suggest more that it. Thanking you.

Regards,

G.V.Shivakkumar

[colby_hemond]

Hello all,

I'm Colby Hemond, my first exposure to SAP was in college at Central Michigan University(CMU) back in 2012 where we learned business processes and basic configuration. After graduating I accepted an ABAP Developer position at an insurance company here in Michigan. I am still currently with the same company working with the Financial Services - Collections/Disbursements (FS-CD) system.

I recently passed the ABAP 7.4 Certification Exam and am continuing to perfect my ABAP development skills while also learning some UI5 on my free time. Additionally, I plan to become much more active in the SAP Community by answering any questions I can, commenting on blogs, and hopefully posting a few of my own!

I look forward to speaking with everyone!

[moshenaveh]

Hi 304a787d239f43159c4b48974bf75576 !

Thanks a lot for joining.

It's great to hear that you are planning to become more active in the community!

What do you find most fascinating about what you do? Why did you choose ABAP over other development languages?

Regards,

Moshe

[colby_hemond]

moshe.naveh2,

What I find most fascinating about what I do is probably the variety tasks I do from day to day. I've found myself in many different roles other than ABAP Developer, and it's that kind of variety that I love and keeps things interesting to me!

As for why I chose ABAP over other development languages...It really just happened, I originally thought I was going to go into a functional role, and then got offered the ABAP development role that I'm in and fell in love with it. It was an opportunity to stay in the SAP ecosystem and it was outside of my comfort zone, so I figured it was the perfect chance to grow and learn a lot!

[mynynachau]

Hi 304a787d239f43159c4b48974bf75576 , nice to meet you. How lucky you are that "it just happened" and on top of that your are learning UI5 on your free time! I'd be interested in what sources do you use to learn it - books, webinars, tutorials, courses?

Welcome to the SAP Community 🙂

[colby_hemond]

mynyna.chau, indeed, I am very fortunate!

So far, for learning UI5, I learned some fundamentals of web development through Codecademy and Free Code Camp. After that I did the walkthrough on SAP UI5 website.

My next steps are to get a couple JavaScript books and some UI5 books to reinforce what I have learned so far and to use as a reference. I will probably create a simple application to have a "real world" project to complete, which I'll most likely create a repository for on GitHub.

Thank you for the warm welcome!

[raghav246]

Hey Folks,

Glad to be a part of the SAP Community!

I am SAP S/4 HANA Financial Accounting Associates Certified Consultant. I am in the SAP industry for almost three years now.

Would love to interact with other FI or HANA certified consultants so I can learn from you and enrich my knowledge. I also will try to help by answering and chipping in with answers to questions on topics I am strong in.

Looking forward to this journey and once again thanks for having me as a Contributor!!