Free How-to guides for implementing SAP HCM
Nov 2010 update: If you a consultant or consulting manager then check out my iPhone app to calculate consulting rates.Today I stumbled upon Sylvia Chaudoir‘s SAP HCM Expertise website. Sylvia is an ex-SAP HCM Consulting manager and she’s always been very willing to assist others. She’s presenting at the HR2008 conference in Orlando and you can meet her at “Meet the experts”. You can click on the Publications link to get a number of very useful guides to implement and maintain the SAP HCM system.Here are some other resources that you may find useful. Most of these resources are free:
- SearchSAP.com (free): This site has a wealth of information including many articles on the SAP HR/HCM module.
- SAP’s SDN portal (free): Loads of useful implementation information and forums.
- SAP Help Portal (free): This is SAP’s official help documentation portal. Here is the link to the SAP Best Practices for HCM (US version).
- SAP Business Maps (free): SAP Business process/solution maps are very useful as high-level overviews of the SAP solution. You will find the SAP ERP map here and a 2004 HCM map here.
- AdManus (free): AdManus is a group of german SAP HCM consulting companies. The site contains a lot of tips and tricks especially their newsletters archive.
- SAP HR/HCM – one stop resource (free): This blog is not well maintained and contains numerous ads and bad CSS formating. Not too sure if I should list this one…you decide. [Aug 28, ’08 update: Lost of good changes. Clean CSS and less intrusive ads.]
- MIT SAP HR-Payroll project notes (free): These notes are from 2000, however some of it may still be relevant.
- SAPDrill ($$): Self-study materials for SAP in general and SAP HCM.
- HR Expert ($$): Excellent HCM reviewed content. It is pricey, between $895 and $1,295 for an annual subscription. You can download a free sample here.
- SAP HR2008 ($$): This is an excellent conference to network and gain practical knowledge of the SAP HCM system.
- SAP PRESS books ($$): SAP PRESS publishes many books on SAP HCM. They are typically around $7+shipping.
- Blogs (free): I listed a few in a 2007 post.
- HCM Consulting companies (free :-): Some SAP HCM Consulting companies provide free information on their websites, however you’ll usually have to pay steep hourly rates for the good stuff.
- SAP Solution browser tool (free): Browse all the latest and greatest from SAP.
If you know of a good resource that I missed please post a comment.
Read MoreHasso Plattner (ex-SAP CEO) Ventures launches $45mm VC fund in South Africa
I’ve mentioned Hasso Plattner a number of times in my blog. He is the colorful co-founder and former CEO of SAP AG. He is also the father of SAP’s client-server 3-tiered product called R/3.This week Hasso Plattner launch HP Ventures Africa (Hasso Plattner — not to be confused with Hewlett Packard) in Cape Town, South Africa. Vendorprisey mentioned it in his blog. HPV is also active in Europe. Jeff Nolan used to work for SAP Ventures and he had blogged about his first meeting with Hasso Plattner.I quote from this week’s BusinessWeek article:
Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa will be targeted mainly at companies in telecom, mobile applications, media, software, renewable energy, and energy-saving technologies.
and from the SAgoodnews.co.za website:
A new R350 million venture capital fund has been launched to give innovators in South Africa a leg up into the global technology arena.The Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa, named after the co-founder of software giant SAP, aims to invest in and manage a portfolio of investments that have a unique innovative offering either based on the business model, product offering or underlying technology.Focusing predominantly on activities in South Africa and later in other emerging African markets, the technology investments will concentrate on telecommunications, mobile applications, media and software as well as clean technology investments such as renewable energy, energy-saving concepts and similar business segments in early stages of their development.Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa aims to identify companies that have the potential to succeed on an international level and will provide access to an international network of leading companies, venture capital firms and institutions in the technology arena, according to Andrea Böhmert, who is going to head the fund.”In the past SA technology companies have found it almost impossible to get funding from international groups outside of South Africa,” said Böhmert.“All start up businesses know, that it is extremely important not only to get investment funding but also assistance in accessing global markets. This is where our fund can score. Prof. Plattner and co-funders MAN Ferrostaal will be able to `open doors´ for start ups that would never be accessible otherwise across the IT industry as well as in the industrial solutions sector.”
C|Net talks about the fund’s Green focus.And finally you can click here, to submit a proposal to the Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa Fund. Good luck!
Read MoreYoutube for documents
OM Malik’s post on Scribd’s iPaper prompted me to try this service and so far I am very intrigued by the possibilities. It’s easy to sign up and the viewer works great. Here is NOT an example of an embedded document. I couldn’t get it to work on my blog (It may be an issue with my template…any suggestions why it’s not working?).It works great on my website, Beyond438.com.While doing research for this post I found that Techcrunch has a lot to say about Scribd and similar technologies including: Docstoc, and edocr.Issuu is a Danish company with a VERY cool pdf viewer. This one also messes with my blog layout (I think I have a problem with my blog template). See an example here on my website, Beyond438.com (scroll to the bottom of the page). Seems like Scoble and Webware both got this story before Techcrunch. Funny!Scribd and Issuu are two tools and sources that I’m adding to my Entrepreneurs JIT toolkit.
Read MoreThe 2007 A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index
In my previous post I documented South Africa’s Ease of doing business rating. The A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index (GSLI) compares 50 global offshore locations and it contains very interesting information about different offshore and nearshore locations. You can download the pdf here. Quoted from the A.T.Kearney website:
Findings in the 2007 A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index reveal that the relative cost advantage of the leading offshore destinations has declined almost universally. Nearly every country in the Index, even those that fell in the rankings, improved their absolute scores, thus confirming that competition among low-cost countries is intensifying. Increasingly, simply maintaining current performance levels is no longer sufficient for countries that want to attract (and retain) the fast-growing remote services business. In addition, this year’s findings suggest that while the wage advantage of offshore locations will continue for 20 or more years, this advantage will diminish as demand for skilled workers increases in offshore locations around the globe.
In 2007 South Africa is ranked # 31 (moving up a few places since 2005), behind Ghana, Lithuania and Pakistan. Here is the top ten:
- India
- China
- Malaysia
- Thailand
- Brazil
- Indonesia
- Chile
- Phillipines
- Bulgaria
- Mexico.
Interesting reading. I don’t think anyone uses this for real decision making.
Read MoreIt’s easier to do business in Saudi Arabia than in South Africa
The World Bank has very interesting indicators regarding doing business in different countries. Use this interactive Google Map to slice and dice indicators like Starting a Business, Taxes, Dealing with licenses and much more.The top ten countries according to the World Bank regarding “Ease of Doing Business Rank” are:
- Singapore
- New Zealand
- US
- Hong Kong
- Denmark
- UK
- Canada
- Ireland
- Australia
- Iceland
…and South Africa is ranked 35 behind Saudi Arabia at number 23.Update 2/20/2008: I also found the World Economic Forum‘s Global Competiveness Report for 2007-2008. On this list South Africa is #44 and Saudi Arabia is number 35.What’s your view on this?
Read More
Recent Comments