This article is featured in the InsideSAP Autumn 2013 edition (p. 43) – Click to view

The Death of Email.

That’s the provocative title of a recent article which caught my attention, the main premise of which was, of course, that the continued uptake of social communication tools in our personal lives is seeing a fairly rapid end to email, and this will be mirrored in corporations.  Now, before getting too excited about the demise of this ubiquitous but much maligned tool, remember that we have been here before.  Remember Google Wave, which promised to reinvent electronic communication, yet was quietly euthanised by Google by early 2012?  Remember the French CEO who issued a ban on email in 2011?

This time it’s different – there is something to actually take its place. Enterprise Social Networking, or ESN, is here, now, and over the course of the next five years, it’s going to revolutionise the way we work.

The Social Boom

Enterprise Social Networking is going to be huge.  According to Deloitte analysis[i], more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies will partially or fully implement an enterprise social network by the end of 2013, a 70% increase on 2011.    Gartner predicts that by 2016, 50% of large organizations will have internal social networks[ii].  Little wonder then, that SAP, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make sure that they get a decent slice of what is going to be a very large pie.

How can we make workers as communicative, engaged and connected as they are in their personal lives?

So, is it just Facebook for business?  For some of the software available, you could say Yes, and all of them have a lot in common with the social behemoth.  They are almost universally designed to be highly intuitive, encourage networking, and have feeds and groups, messaging and notifications.  However, the more mature Enterprise Social products have a focus on file sharing and collaboration rather than games and photo tagging.  Getting stuff done, rather than just updating people.  We are now seeing streamlined integration with other software, such as learning management systems and Sharepoint, and feeds from the organisation’s ERP or CRM system, meaning that you can not only follow people, you can also follow analytics and sales opportunities, for example.

All for as little as $3 per user per month[iii].

And it means that email, which has essentially remained unchanged since the first networked message was sent in 1971, can finally be ditched. Sure, email is great for one-on-one, formal correspondence.  For collaboration, though, instant messaging and wikis, which allow for real-time communication and centralized information sharing, are far superior.  Furthermore, one of the benefits of ESN is their ability to unlock the rich veins of information normally locked in email inboxes, making relevant content accessible and searchable for the entire company.

Knowledge sharing at the next level

A lot has happened in six years

The global ESN market was led by IBM’s Connections for the three years to 2011, though the situation has been changing rapidly, as a raft of mergers and acquisitions have taken place and other large vendors have made significant releases.

Yammer, a fast-growing networking and micro-blogging platform launched in late 2008, has claimed that 85% of Fortune 500 companies use the product; local customers include Deloitte Australia, NAB, VicRoads and Westfield.  The developers made use of the application programming interfaces (or API) from SAP to offer their customers a direct feed from SAP ERP and CRM, without asking (or requiring) permission[iv].  An Open Graph link (Yes, the Facebook API protocol!) allows the user to click on the update notification in Yammer, which will then display the relevant SAP screen in a separate tab.  Yammer was bought by Microsoft in June 2012 and it should be integrated with Sharepoint 2013 and Office 365, with single sign-on, by mid-2013.

Jive has been a serious player for a number of years (and even powers the online SAP Community Network), Salesforce’s Chatter was launched to the public in mid-2010, Oracle launched its own Social Network in late 2011, and LinkedIn has announced[v] that they are working on their own version of ESN.  It’s fast becoming a crowded space.

Enter SAP’s Jam.  Launched in October 2012, it’s a new product yet comes with the pedigree of Success Factors Jam and SAP’s previous ESN software, Streamwork, heralding a serious move by SAP into the enterprise social space.  SAP started with the principle that Social should be “something that shows up when you need it, enabling and enhancing something you are already doing.”  What SAP did was form a co-innovation council of 20 customers from different industries and worked through “day in the life of” scenarios for many different roles.  This feedback was used to embed Social into business applications where it delivers results, such as CRM, finance applications, learning and talent management.

SAP claims that their approach will solve the two key problems currently facing ESN, namely:

1. Vague return on investment figures, inhibiting sponsorship at the executive level, and generating skepticism; and
2. Lack of business context, leading to low adoption.  The majority of organisations are finding that only 10-20% of their eligible workforce are actively using the networks[vi].

In addition, SAP has added a series of more structured collaborative tools, such as dynamic meeting agendas, pro/con tables (to rate feedback from others) and a decision sign-off tool.  And the video capture tool means that anyone can capture and share video from a smartphone, webcam or screen recording and share it in seconds – perfect for informal learning.

Benefits for SAP Projects

At Adapt2 Consulting, we see tremendous potential to take communication and engagement to the next level for SAP projects using ESN software; in particular:

Boost collaboration on SAP projects

1. Knowledge sharing.  Imagine being able to cultivate effective Super User Groups from project inception through to the BAU environment, to create solutions, share best practices and embed process changes through continuing group sharing.  And project updates without Yet Another Email; the information you need when you need it.
2. Engagement.  Deloitte reports a turnover rate for active ESN users one tenth of those who don’t use it, which they attribute to employees feeling more engaged and recognized for their work.  Apply that to involving your project team or business users in the process change and solution design throughout the project and you have a winning formula.
3. Onboarding.  SAP project environments are pressure-cookers at the best of times, meaning the onboarding process is often suboptimal.  ESN turbo-charges onboarding – new team members can be provisioned with the groups, connections, conversations and files they need to get cracking on day one.
4. Learning.  Materials can be easily reviewed, kept up to date, and shared.  Trainees can be connected with key course information and the instructor before, during and after face-to-face sessions, from any device.  Groups are perfect for asking questions or sharing expertise with others.

Challenges of Social

ESN comes with challenges, and of course, the software must be viewed as a tool rather than a panacea.  In particular, employees cannot be made to use Social; they must opt-in, and the benefits will only be achieved if uptake is high enough.  Traditionally, tech rollouts, such as SAP, followed a “push” approach – workers were trained on the product and then simply expected to use it. Social requires a “pull” approach, which is best supplemented by an effective change management program, characterised by visible sponsor-level support, explaining the Why? and articulating the “What’s In it For Me?”.

Security and control is a standard concern as soon as the term Social is used, however these tools are internally-controlled, and compliance and governance features typically come standard.  In reality, the risks are similar to that of email usage, which are mitigated with policies and common sense.

More threatening for some organisations is the flattening of the organisational hierarchy that results when shop-floor staff can view and participate in a discussion initiated by the CEO.

Social is Now

Enterprise Social Networking software truly heralds the next phase of the knowledge evolution for the workplace.  The early versions mimicked Facebook and permitted networking, micro blogging and not much else; now they are integrated with SAP, Sharepoint and can largely replace email.  What’s the next phase going to bring?  One thing is certain – it’s going to seriously shake up the way we work, and has enormous potential to help our workplaces to become more collaborative, engaging, creative and productive.

What’s not to Like about that?  

The post The Enterprise Social Networking Boom appeared first on Adapt2 Consulting.

With WPB you can push help content to the user, directly in SAP

What is it?

Formerly datango Performance Suite, the leading product in the workforce enablement space, SAP acquired the software (and staff) in February 2012 and had it re-branded for sale as SAP Workforce Performance Builder by March 2012.  Enhancements were swift, with 17 languages and other functionality added to customise it for optimal SAP integration.

It consists of 4 components:

• Instant Producer – simple, intuitive recording by any key user or SME
• Producer – enhanced content development
• Manager – content revision, versioning, and reporting
• Navigator – content-sensitive help pushed to the user directly in SAP

This video overview explains the product in more detail.

Why is it so promising?

• It’s customised for SAP, therefore has higher content accuracy and quality than other tools, which means less editing and lower development costs;
• It offers rapid content creation with more formats from a single recording than other tools;
• It has been built with mobile learning in mind – single source content can be used for both desktop and mobile playback without the need for a separate recording;
• It’s integrated within SAP, allowing field-level help to be pushed to the user, rather than the user having to open another application (which aligns with the way learning is headed, as outlined in this Inside SAP article on learning trends); and
• It’s excellent at creating content for other software applications as well, giving added value and facilitating consistent content across your suite of learning materials.

More importantly though, SAP has a brilliant roadmap for the product, so the functionality is going to get better rapidly. Major releases will occur every year, and support packs will be released quarterly.

The 9.2 release, due in March 2013, will integrate with Solution Manager, so that process changes recorded in SolMan can be directly exported to the Manager component in Workforce Performance Builder. Quicker updates and neat integration – nice.

Like to know more?

Adapt2 Consulting staff are certified to train SAP Workforce Performance Builder and we are very passionate about its potential.  If you are interested in learning more about Workforce Performance Builder, seeing a demonstration, or receiving training, contact us.

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The post SAP Workforce Performance Builder software is gaining momentum appeared first on Adapt2 Consulting.

Thanks to modern neuroscience, we now know that the human brain is naturally wired to receive and remember experiences within the structure of a story. And nowadays, we keep hearing again and again that effective learning materials must include stories, but how often does it? Think of training materials you are familiar with and ask yourself – are they evocative, visual, detailed enough to draw you in, and contain an introduction, body and conclusion? If so, good for you – your instructional designer has done (at least part of) a great job. Most times though, from my experience, the concept is known but under-employed.

Now, you can’t expect to enchant your adult learner the way Pop did to me… in fact, it’s more than likely that the adult learner has more life experience than the trainer, and if it’s system training, may even know parts of the system better than the trainer. Nonetheless, the principal still applies – let me give you an example of how I went about it on one occasion.

I was given training materials for system training (SAP) which consisted of an activity guide, data set and a long slideshow. Do this transaction, do that transaction, click here, save there. If we were teaching robots it would probably be fine, however it wasn’t really flowing sequentially and more importantly, it didn’t tell the story through a scenario. I set myself to restructuring it to add a story and make it more compelling.

Firstly, I scrapped most of the slides. Pop never needed Powerpoint to show me how to bait a hook or get on a horse, and I can still remember how to do those vividly. Sure, slides have a place and are great as bookends and support material for classroom training, but not as training itself. “Learn by doing” beats “death by slideshow” for any content, any learner.

Next, I put the thinking cap on – I have to think like this end user to come up with the right story. Pop used to say that to understand someone you should put their shoes on and walk a hundred miles. Well I didn’t have that much time, and thankfully, I have the benefit of having been an SAP end user, so the job was half done – but if you haven’t, you could obtain the information you need by coming up with some typical scenarios which might fit with the learning objectives, and then running these past the trainees in advance, or their leader. They will surely appreciate the time taken to compose a realistic scenario for them.

Scenario chosen, it’s then a fairly simple matter of weaving the activities around this, ideally forming an end-to-end replication of the entire scenario (intermittently relating it back to the process flows, if you have them) complete with introduction (problem or trigger), body (the core processing steps) and conclusion (problem solved or process ended).

My trainees loved the training, because it was realistic, compelling and memorable, and left them with the skills to tackle similar situations on their own. Stories help learning stick.

Sounds simple? It is, especially if you think about telling the story at the outset of your content creation. Good luck, and I’d love to hear your opinions or experiences – go on, tell a story!

The post Effective adult learning – How to embed stories appeared first on Adapt2 Consulting.

1. Advanced SAP object recognition capacity optimised for SAP will result in more accurate recording requiring less editing and reformatting.
2. Have you ever felt or heard that it’s almost better to start from scratch, rather than editing an existing simulation or support document? Builder offers automatic rerecording, saving time when dealing with minor screen changes.
3. Subject-Matter experts are often stretched for time with little time to spare and dedicate to the development of end user content. WPB includes an intuitive instant producer allowing SMEs to create highly accurate documentation without learning how to use the full version Producer. Notes can be added and passed to the professional content development team for further editing or used immediately.

Refer to SAP® Workforce Performance Builder: Building the Skills That Build Value for more information.

Postscript (added 3rd February 2013): read more about Workforce Performance Builder in this more recent blog post.

The post The one to watch – SAP Workforce Performance Builder appeared first on Adapt2 Consulting.

Let me share with you a story about the first time I taught a room of budding SAP users who were aged almost exclusively under 25. I had a great set of training materials – brief but engaging slides, and realistic but not overly-complicated hands-on activities. Shortly after I walked into that room full of excited, boisterous, generation-Y trainees and commenced the learning, I sensed that I had to immediately adapt my delivery style if I was to survive the day. Almost instantly I noticed that they could not leave their smartphones alone, nor could they resist surfing the internet whenever there was a spare moment, yet somehow when I questioned them it didn’t seem to affect their learning or recall. They were lightning quick with the system, collectively chatty and relentlessly questioning me on topics other groups would typically just accept.

Let me also share with you some trends. Infographics are in; lengthy descriptions are boring. LMS2.0 is in; the old LMS format is dated. HTML5 is in; Flash is soon to be a relic. Hybrid learning is in; blended learning is old-school. And mLearning and social media-enabled learning platforms…well they’re just plain new!

This article is featured in the InsideSAP 2013 Yearbook (p. 42) – Click to view

The Digital Age is whistling us along at a phenomenal pace, making it hard to believe that most of the technology we take for granted today was absent 20 years ago. And it’s offering up new tools to dramatically increase the effectiveness of SAP learning programs, just as quickly. This article will explore how these advances translate into the latest developments in systems learning, and how these can be applied to SAP learning programs to yield optimal learning outcomes, and hence maximum success and cost-effectiveness for the project.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

A teaching revolution is happening in our schools and universities, as the recognition that Digital Natives – those who have spent their entire lives surrounded by all the toys and tools of the digital age – actually think, process information, and learn differently (Prensky, 2001). They like their information fast and furious, are prodigious parallel-processors, prefer to scan than focus, and prefer graphics over text (think Instagram, Pinterest and infographics). This generation is now entering the workforce in droves, triggering a corporate learning revolution, as I experienced first-hand. If you’re a Digital Immigrant (someone who has adapted to the digital environment) and have a stake in delivering training programs, it’s critical to be aware of the requirements of this group and provide suitable learning offerings, in the same way that you must if you are catering to a group of more mature users. The key is choice – providing learning options so that users can gravitate towards those which they find most enjoyable and effective.

The eLearning Evolution – good and becoming excellent

eLearning materials – developed for the large screen (desktop or laptop) – are becoming more powerful and widespread learning aids, as software providers compete to make the development of rich, interactive materials easier (and cheaper) to develop. Realistic, natural-sounding avatars walk the learner through engaging content which emulates a personal training experience, and can include content branching based on the (real time) assessed level of the participant, customised feedback, and game-like quizzes for effective assessment (which feeds directly through to a Learning Management System). For SAP end-user training, the future is very bright for eLearning, as most organisations won’t be doing away with desktop computers any time soon.

The mLearning Revolution – a rising star, despite the challenges

Mobile Learning is where the real action is at, in terms of the latest developments and the potential for widespread adoption. The extraordinary advances in mobile devices in the last ten years have cemented their place in our digital future. We are at the very cusp of an mLearning revolution, due to the ubiquity of mobile devices (that is, tablets and smartphones), the fact that nearly everyone is “wearing” one at all times, and the huge potential they bring in terms of functionality. Think of apps for these devices, which make use of accelerometers, cameras, eye-tracking, geolocation, etc. and how the features of today’s mobile devices can be imaginatively applied to learning. They are allowing us to create entirely new ways of learning. This huge growth potential is the reason why software such as Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline is being rushed to market with new versions which can publish directly to HTLM5 (the latest version of HTML, which permits greater interactivity).

There are challenges, though – not all features of HTLM5 are supported by even the most modern browsers. Apple devices, which represent 35% of the smartphone market (Sadauskas, 2012) and 75% of the tablet market (Griffith, 2012), do not support Flash, meaning that shockwave (.swf) files, a common publish format from screen capture software, will not work – hence the rush towards HTML5.

Critically, mobile learning content must be created for mobile devices – it cannot be simply converted from eLearning content. From a technical perspective, this is due to screen resolution variance, the different interaction methods between mouse clicking and finger-tapping, and the size of finger tap areas. More importantly, mobile learning is a different learning experience, suited for shorter sessions which yield small chunks of information, accessed at the moment when it is required. It permits untethered, anywhere, anytime learning – perfect for recapping concepts while waiting for the bus or just-in-time quick reference on the job.

Social Learning – more pull, less push

While eLearning and mLearning are opening up new possibilities for training effectiveness, there is one key ingredient missing – other people. Informal learning, or social learning, is about the learning that goes on outside of formal learning, and involves reading, listening, watching, or talking to others. A good example of this is when you receive an error message when using SAP, and ask a colleague for help, to try to quickly resolve it. If a colleague is not available, you might Google the error message. The logical extension of this is to use the new tools available, such as wikis (for knowledge bases), Twitter or discussion forums (for information sharing and problem solving), or a dedicated social media platform, such as Elgg, to enable a more participative, social and collaborative learning ecosystem. New generation Learning Management Systems, dubbed LMS2.0, which are learner-centric, rather than provider-centric, integrate well with the tools mentioned above.

It’s about moving away from the classical “push” approach towards more effective “pull” learning styles, and empowering users to create support content and organise learning groups themselves. When this occurs, user engagement and adoption follow.

Bringing it all together for maximum benefit

Yet, nothing can enable and empower the learning experience like a great trainer. The technical tools and devices deepen the learning experience during delivery, and cultivate the learning once the classroom training is complete, but a great SAP trainer bridges the gap between people and systems, interprets all the information that’s ‘out there’ and contextualises it clearly.

At Adapt2 Consulting, we believe that there will always be a place for human interaction in training, especially SAP training, where the learning of particular transactional tasks is typically integrated with complicated processes.

Using great trainers AND the latest educational tools delivers more rewarding, engaging, efficient and truly hybrid learning experiences, as well as catering for a range of learning styles. This ensures engagement and adoption of the system by users, so that the capital investment delivers a prompt return on investment. If you are investing in the latest SAP features, such as HANA, portal-based ECC access, mobility solutions, and Business Objects, shouldn’t you be looking to complement that technology with the very latest in learning methods? Alternatively, you may be looking to run your Business As Usual training more efficiently. In either case, maximum benefit will be realised by those who can adapt to these new tools quickly and effectively. Adapt to the digital evolution.

1. Griffith, C. (2012, March 20). The Australian/AustralianIT. Retrieved from The Australian
2. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon.
3. Sadauskas, A. (2012, May 17). smartcompany/industry. Retrieved from smartcompany
    

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