I had a chance to do a deep-dive with SAP lastweek in two areas, SAP IT Service Management (ITSM) and SAP Business Communications Management (BCM), and there were some very good surprises along the way. My overall finding is that SAP has made HUGE progress in leveraging strong elements from CRM and other applications across their portfolio, so not only do you now have a more consistent look and feel across the various applications, but they surprised me with some sophisticated features in unexpected places giving them a ‘best of breed’ distinction when ‘good enough’ would have probably been acceptable (and let’s face it, that’s the strategy many suite players use).
ITSM, or tools for IT support, may not seem like an obvious interest area for me, since the SSPA is external-customer facing. But with services revenues growing, SSPA and TPSA members are now finding themselves offering all sorts of advanced service options, sometimes acting as the IT outsourcer for implementations of their technology at customer sites. As a result, member companies are facing more requirements for ITIL compliance, service catalogs, CMDB-like asset tools, and they need to be able to speak with IT customers using the ITIL terminology of ‘incident/change/problem’ management. In other words, the line between internal and external support has thinned, and ITSM tools and philosophies are becoming more common in tech support.
A few exciting things for me in SAP ITSM are:
Ragsdale’s Eye on Service 