APO, BI, and other tools must be driven by business needs and to provide key information relevant to business decisions and processes. For example, no amount of technology is going to make the sales people sell more if they are paid on salary, without commissions, and do not have objective sales targets and other performance measures. This comes back to the old saying of “what gets measured gets done” and it is no different with the sales force. However, depending on how you structure your sales and marketing programs, SAP contains a number of tools, reports, resources, and other data analysis methods as well as fit-ins like CRM to facilitate changes in sales and marketing programs and strategies. SAP by its nature is part of the execution processing and post-execution analysis process. This is where the expectation of driving revenue and profitability with SAP has to be decoupled from corporate planning and execution.

The business side of the equation must be defined first. This in turn drives the technology in the direction of enabling necessary change. Below is a six step strategy for a SAP-centric approach to increase revenue growth, profitability, and competitive advantage:

1. Build a long term business plan; define business, marketing and competitive strategies keeping in mind the current and future value proposition.
2. Draw out goals and KPI’s to support those strategies.
3. Determine which business processes and groups will be affected by these process  changes: sales, customer service, shipping, marketing, etc.
4. Define the necessary reports that will be needed with both leading and lagging indicators.
5. Operationalize strategy by assigning responsibility and defining the supporting processes
6. Implement the necessary technology solutions like SAP BI, SAP CRM, SAP ERP functionality, etc.

CIOs who follow six step approach, soon realize that solution/technology is the last step in the process. Implementing SAP technology solution acts as a catalyst to enhance and improve existing processes and programs and to increase revenues, profitability, and competitive advantage for most corporations. Also to mention, below are the success factors which plan an important role of in any SAP implementation:

1. Effective Communication Both Internally and with the clients
2. Strong Corporate Management Support
3. Clearly defined scope and Project Plan
4. Proper Methodology as Guidelines and helping Tools
5. Effective Team Dynamics & Management
6. Motivate, Appreciate, Reward of resources
7. Change Management

Key idea for using technology as a catalyst lies in the question which you need to ask yourself as the CIO is: Does the technological team in charge of implementation/upgrade/ enhancement know the reasons for the investment? How will they map those business expectations into the technology? Answers to these questions are required to be clearly defined, communicated and reinforce with the project team.

To summarize and mention the takeaways SAP supports critical business processes. To implement SAP successfully, you have to know what you want SAP to deliver. And to understand what SAP should deliver, you need to clearly define business operations and strategies that are will be converted into processes with clear performance metrics and KPIs. To ensure business impact, SAP must be based on clear business goals and the right resources. One needs to translate their business goals into specific project deliverables. Without clear deliverables, one cannot scope their projects correctly. Also, one needs to align their resources employee skills, methods and technologies to make sure that the project can deliver the results planned and create the expected impact.