January 20th 2009 marks a day in today's history that makes me proud to be an American, but more importantly, to be a human.  Regardless of political viewpoints which may affect the true perspective that we should feel on this day, you have to feel proud of the abilities of us as Americans and where we have come in our short history.

It was just a year ago that I spoke with the father of an African American friend, who spoke of the hardships and racism that he experienced growing up in the 40s and 50s.  How he fought in WWII ...<< MORE >>

This past week I attended the ASTD annual conference at the San Diego Convention Center.  I found the conference a very useful place to attend sessions on the latest thinking in the training and performance industry.  The most interesting topcis that I could not pull myself away from were:

Learning 2.0
Web 2.0
HPI (Human Performance Improvement)

The links above are to the Wiki pages for each of the topics I listed.  Wiki pages were brought to light for me in a session by Tony Karrer.  His blog is very interesting, fun, and informative.  I suggest you check it out at http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/.

Although ASTD has never been a society that has focused a lot of attention on ERP training, it does bring a lot of us old time training professionals back to our roots, as well as keep us forward thinking.  I remember how frustrated I was after attending the ASUG/Sapphire annual conference back in early May with the subjects and educational sessions that were presented.  How stale can the state of the SAP Training Industry get??????

I am not one to endorse change for change sake, but innovation is something that we cannot do without.

This conference got me thinking about the topic of my last blog regarding Training vs. Performance.  I started doing some front end research on the differences between Human Performance Consulting, and training.  In the sessions that I attended this week, the people that I talked with, and the books that I read (I was energized to read HPI Basics on my flight home), I could not find any information on how the HPI process map from ASTD can be applied directly to event based situations such as Technology implementations.  Frustrating at first, but then I see opportunities.......

The SAP Training Industry needs to find a way to tie training objectives to more tangible business results.  It is the focus of my previous blog, but I am continuing to do research on how to best go about it.  I plan to work on integrating the HPI model into the ASAP Training Methodology to find a way to absorb traditional SAP Training into SAP Performance.  It may need a new title, but it is the concept of ensuring a comprehensive people readiness program that goes beyond training users on a system.  To truly gain expected business results from an investment the size of an ERP software, it makes sense not only to train users, but to study potential barriers to performance that may exist other than the need for new system and process knowledge and skills.

Without addressing other performance factors and potential performance barriers, it is impossible to determine the true benefits and ROI from not only the training program, but the software and process redesign efforts as well.

I am very anxious to hear other's thoughts on this.

Moving forward, my blogs are going to be a mix of articles (such as my previous postings), random thoughts and ideas (such as this posting), and links to other information and worthwhile sources that I've come across.

In the current issue of SAP Insider, Katharina Müllers-Patel, PhD Senior Principal, Value Engineering for SAP America, Inc. participates in a Q&A session on the topic entitled How to Escape the Financials Transaction Processing Quicksand. The point of the article is to discuss how the new financials functionality in the SAP ERP 6.0 release enables companies to automate more transactional processing activities, which in turn can free up time and resources to focus on expertise based-business support and strategic decision support.

When asked how an organization is able to create value through strategic decision support, Ms. Müllers-Patel states ...

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We’ve all heard the expression “Pay me now, or pay me later”, but taken literally, and with a financial twist to it, I’d rather pay you later! And it’s become a problem for me when I find out “later” that I’m being charged 22% interest and late fees, etc. etc.

Recently, I got braces on my teeth for the first time. My brother in-law said to me “why in the world would a grown man want braces?” He’s right! The pain, look, and cost are all killing me! However, what I realized after visiting the dentist is that having ...

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Anyone ever had any issues or challenges with Super Users? If you haven’t, then you fit into one of two categories:

A) You don’t have a Super User Program OR
B) You regularly lunch with Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny

In my opinion, a strong Super User program is a must when implementing AND supporting an SAP solution in both the short and long term. However, there are different critical success factors that should be considered depending on the stage of your Super User program; during implementation is different than Post Implementation ...

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