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​Speller has always been a great supporter of the hard work that Change Managers and Training Consultants do within the SAP Community. Hence, having a specialist SAP Change and Training division. But are we seeing the same love and appreciation across the rest of the market? Let’s take a look.

In short, the answer is not so simple. It really seems to be either an overwhelming ‘Yes,’ or a disappointing ‘No!’

Change and Training has been well and truly cemented into key roles for successful SAP transformations for many years now and it’s an extremely busy market with good Change, Training and EnableNow Consultants in high demand across Australia & NZ. However, we are still seeing some companies significantly underestimate what benefits can come from engaging Change and Training early on, or indeed at all!

For Change!
We are seeing that when it comes to the majority of complex transformations with large companies, Change and Training is taken seriously. With the Change Lead being engaged at the same time as the Project Director it allows time for a proper and efficient Change and Training structure to be put in place… and in budget.

It would not be unusual for Speller to supply the Change Lead and then multiple Change Managers and Change Analysts across the many different business units or process areas. And it is no coincidence that our customers who engage Change specialists at the start of the program have more success when it comes to go-live.

Not for Change!
Surprisingly, the projects that we see make the mistake of not engaging Change and Training early are the many SAP Cloud related projects (SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Hybris etc.)  Perhaps it’s because the business are over sold on the simplicity of these products or maybe it’s because the business themselves are engaging directly with the vendors and don’t always fully understand the impact of such implementations.

But the one thing that always comes through in the end is that no matter how “simple” the product may be, it’s still different to what the users are used too. We still get frantic calls from customers close to go-live requesting Change Managers, Trainers and UAT Leads.

In conclusion
Overall the market is buoyant for Change and Training. It’s also a great time to transition into the SAP Change and Training arena if you feel it’s something you would like to do. We have seen some SAP Functional Consultants transition to the EnableNow product and then across into Training.

If you’re a customer then please don’t underestimate the importance of a proper change and training strategy even for the “simply” Cloud projects. Cloud products by their nature are much more rigid when it comes to customisation thus regardless of how “intuitive” it may look, if you want people to adopt it then the change needs to be managed and the training completed.

Feel free to contact Speller Change and Training for more advice!