As 2012 winds to a close, I'm left thinking about how big of a year it was for SAP. The company experienced strong financial quarters, performed well in the public eye, expanded its reach with consumer-focused apps, said HANA 16 million times, and advanced itself in the cloud, mobile, and procurement areas via acquisition and integration.

It was a big year for us at SAPexperts as well. We unveiled our completely redesigned website, pushed out more content than ever before, and delivered it in a greater number of formats.

What will 2013 bring?

For SAP, I think their focus will be less on acquisition (at least, on acquistions of the size of Ariba) and more on continuing to get their message out there. SAP will look to show more and more successful HANA implementations, and also better explain its cloud and mobile roadmaps, which still are causes for confusion for many customers. Its biggest challenge will likely be riding the positive vibes its had in the press into a year when there will likely be far fewer press-worthy events -- fewer unveilings and acquisitions and massive upgrades. It will be all about execution.

And for SAPexperts, it will be building upon the site we've developed and continuing to provide the best SAP content on the Web. We're excited to keep it going.

Here's what I covered over at SAPexperts in my daily Today in SAP blog, recapping the big story in SAP as well as providing links to many others:

Monday: Tech Jobs Are Growing

Interesting to see the DC area so prominent in this list. Perhaps there are more public-sector tech projects in the works than we might typically think.

Tuesday: How Does HANA Compare to Other Popular Databases?

One of the foremost SAP bloggers, Alvaro Tejada Galindo, aka Blag, often compares different systems to measure their effectiveness one to one and see where they stack up. His latest effort is to measure HANA against MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Wednesday: Afaria's Upgrade Reflects the Changing Nature of MDM

It's no surprise to see SAP try to change the focus from MDM to another term (both enterprise mobility management and mobile enterprise management are used in the press release). And that's because MDM is frequently proclaimed to be dead.

Thursday: SAP's Changing Views on Customer Experience

But when you think about this one-to-one interaction point, it becomes clearer: The more SAP can interact with different types of people, the more they can see what makes these people tick, what they care about.

Friday: Are Ariba's Customers on Lock Down?

I come away agreeing with him -- while Ariba does have quite a hold on e-invoicing, it doesn't appear to be acting like a prison guard and throwing its customers in the hole.

And here's what's new for SAPexperts subscribers:

An Introduction to SuccessFactors [BI, HR subscribers]

Capture Service and Maintenance Costs at Operation Level from SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 [Financials subscribers]

Checklist of Top Tips for HR Hiring [HR subscribers]

Enhance Your CRM-to-BW Reporting with Marketing Attributes [CRM, BI subscribers]

A Step-by-Step Look at the Analytic Functionality in CO-PA and SAP CRM [CRM subscribers]

Parallel Posting of Asset Values to the SAP General Ledger [Financials subscribers]

A Glossary of CRM Security-Related Terminology [CRM subscribers]

2012 brought big acquisitions and new technologies for SAP and excitement amongst the user base about what these new technologies would mean for them. This year, insiderPROFILES magazine profiled some amazing SAP customers and published some terrific stories of their projects implementing SAP technology. Each of the business and technology leaders at these companies candidly shared their thoughts and experiences with us, giving us an inside look at the challenges and benefits of implementing these solutions. While these compelling articles amounted to a laundry list of case studies of businesses of various sizes and industries, I’ve narrowed down my list what I think are some of the most intriguing SAP case studies we’ve published in 2012.

10. Vodafone Goes Mobile with One of the World's Biggest SAP ERP Rollouts

The Vodafone name alone is noteworthy as the world’s second largest mobile service provider – surpassed only by China Mobile. The company has been in business for over 25 years and today serves over 400 million people worldwide – actually over 500 million people if you include the Verizon Wireless subscribers, a business of which Vodafone owns 45%. The mobile statistics are staggering. It’s undeniable that the world is going mobile – people feel lost without their cell phones constantly at their sides -- and businesses are becoming just as dependent on mobile technology. So I was not surprised when Niall O’Sullivan, Global Finance Transformation Director at Vodafone shared that the business plans, in the short term, to deliver 80% of its internal transactions on mobile devices – being that the company is in the mobile business. But what did surprise me was how seamless Vodafone’s global SAP rollout was, considering it was one of the world’s largest SAP ERP implementations to date.

9: Nu Skin Fights Aging Systems with New HR Software

With so many people talking about the SAP acquisition of SuccessFactors this year, I was happy to see HR in the spotlight as such a hot topic. Even though human resources are at the heart and soul of every company, I find that HR IT projects often don’t get the attention they deserve. I was thrilled to be able to work with health and beauty products maker Nu Skin on a magazine profile. Nu Skin’s story represented a fairly common situation – a company with no centralized HR system to collect employee data or provide standardized HR reporting – and so the business elected to implement SAP ERP HCM. During the interview, I was struck by how NuSkin genuinely put its people first, because its people include more than 800,000 independent distributors. Lots of companies say they are people-centric but don’t follow through when you look below the surface. NuSkin’s project involved personal attention every step of the way, and is a great model for others to follow.

8: Fast, Detailed, Actionable Analytics at Graybar

Every company needs to focus first and foremost on getting new customers and retaining existing ones. However, it’s easy to see how salespeople naturally gravitate to paying the most attention to the customers that are spending the most money. Graybar’s story tells of a business that changed the way it managed its customers by providing sales with detailed, actionable customer analytics leveraging the processing power of SAP HANA. While the concept of customer stratification was a new one to me, after hearing from John Mansfield, Vice President of Business Development, I was sold on the idea and wondered how my own company could benefit from adopting a customer strategy like this.

7: Kraft Foods' Recipe for Successful Business Intelligence

The folks on the Business Intelligence team at Kraft Foods were such a pleasure to work with. They candidly discussed their experiences with adopting SAP BusinessObjects solutions, including the pitfalls, and were kind enough to share their four-point plan for speeding BI deployments. And speed was the main takeaway I got from their story. They sped up their report creation process enormously, where some reports that used to take weeks to create now only take minutes. And 500 million rows of data now render in less than three seconds. It’s amazing to think of what this means for business users and decision makers at Kraft. Not only the time saved but the faster analytics that can result, such as identifying and responding to trends like never before. That way they will know to keep up with product demands so they can ensure my favorite Kraft food -- Velveeta Shells and Cheese – is always stocked and ready for me at the local Ralphs market.

6: Mr. Potato Head Meets New Markets at Hasbro

Hasbro isn’t just all fun and games – there’s a serious side to the business and that was evidenced by the Way to Work initiative that Hasbro’s executives described in this profile. This initiative involved an IT-supported business transformation to standardize systems and processes on SAP software, ensuring that as the business expands into emerging markets those local businesses can be brought up onto the core systems quickly. In addition to this article, there’s a fantastic video that CIO Denise Clark and Dan Ratigan, VP of Global IT, participated in available for streaming, in which they provide some additional insights.

5: NVIDIA Saves Millions Through Improved Forecasting Accuracy

NVIDIA is really a giant in the electronics and computer chip-making industry – along with competitors like AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. To stay competitive in this field, it’s imperative to forecast customer demand and consequently inventory levels accurately. If demand dips, NVIDIA could lose millions of dollars from excess inventory. Deploying a new forecasting solution (SAP APO) and SAP BusinessObjects solutions brought about amazing changes to the supply chain. In addition to being able to visualize and plan chip production a year in advance, the business was able to reduce forecast inaccuracy by 2%. This reduction might not seem like a significant amount at first glance, but putting into perspective that this percentage translates to saving millions of dollars of potential inventory write-offs, it’s a pretty jaw-dropping result.

4: Early Adopter Surgutneftegas Takes SAP HANA for a Test Drive

SAP HANA was front and center at both of SAP’s events this year, SAPPHIRE and TechEd. Customers want to know what it is, how it works, and what it means for their businesses. Because the technology is still new to many users, and companies are just starting pilot projects with the software, it was not easy finding early adopters that were willing to speak about their experiences. I was overjoyed when Surgutneftegas’ CIO Rinat Gimranov agreed to share his story with insiderPROFILES readers. In the interview, Gimranov shared the real-time analytics and reporting advantages he sees with SAP HANA, even though the functionality is not yet in production for commercial operation. Anyone considering a HANA implementation or just wanting to know more about the technology should not miss this article.

3: New Balance Picks up the Pace and Closes Financial Books Twice as Fast

Not every customer that implements an SAP application is necessarily running SAP software for its back-end systems. New Balance is a great example of a company that continues to run non-SAP legacy systems, but has implemented an SAP application – SAP Business Planning and Consolidation in this case – for a specific business purpose. When support for its financial consolidation system was ending, New Balance selected the SAP application to replace the existing solution. This new application ultimately helped the company cut its average financial close time in half. In addition to dramatically streamlining the closing process, the business improved visibility to let the finance team focus on more strategic functions. And clearly, the less time people are bogged down running reports, the more time they have to analyze the data in those reports.

2: How McCormick Cut Its Database Size in Half with No Negative Effects

All companies, whether big or small, need to think about data storage. They need to question how long it is necessary to hold on to data, what the process is for data retrieval, and what back-up plans are in place. With a rapidly growing database at McCormick, the IT team became concerned about the time required to back up the company’s database — in some cases, it took as long as 24 hours. The team identified data compression of its IBM DB2 database as the solution and was able to reduce its database size by 50% without affecting performance. Previously, backup was taking 24 hours, and after compression, the process was cut to about 10 hours. For those thinking of ways to cut back on database size, the lessons learned from McCormick’s experience will be invaluable.

1: Standard Bank Shows How Mobile Devices Can Help Reduce Poverty in Africa

Living in a major city with an ATM a block away from my house, it’s hard to imagine what life would be like living in a remote area of Africa with no access to a bank branch, or better yet a computer terminal to do online banking. But that’s the reality for a large amount of the world’s population. And without easy access to banking services, people can have a hard a hard time doing simple tasks that I take for granted such as applying for credit cards, managing savings, or paying bills. Standard Bank saw an opportunity to leverage SAP and Sybase technology to originate new accounts by offering a way for people to easily open bank accounts and access banking services with their mobile phones. Not only did this story pull on my heartstrings but it also showed how SAP technology is not just helping businesses run faster, better, and stronger, but could actually help improve economic conditions in nations in ways I never could have imagined.

It's been a refrain of sorts for SAP: They are constantly seeking new users. 

This week provided a steady reminder of that goal as I curated content for the Today in SAP blog posts I write at SAPexperts. Whether it was their increasing efforts in small and midsize, or attempts to make a wide range of apps that are used by a variety of users across different organizational units, SAP's goal is clear. They want to be in everybody's hands.

And to do so, they know they don't have all the answers. In addition to their co-innovation strategy, leveraging partners for the next great idea, they've also developed an internal program for entrepreneurship and brought in outside employees to help build that culture.

For SAP to succeed, they know that have to be more pervasive. It's not about appealing to companies -- they need to appeal to people, plain and simple.

Below you'll find links to each of my Today in SAP blog posts with a sample statement or two to entice you to click over. (Pretty sneaky, huh?) Each post contains the story of the day as well as links to other SAP-related content from around the Internet.

Monday: Is SAP's SMB Focus a Problem?

It's also a concern from the sales point of view: If you're a company with a lot of cloud DNA, so to speak, you might be able to better position yourself as an expert in the area, and a company with no ulterior motive.

Tuesday: Boston Uses SAP in Transparency Efforts

These factors should combine in an effective program in Boston, though one that might not be replicated in all cities in the same way.

Wednesday: Bill McDermott Is Don Draper

That story speaks to the emphasis McDermott has -- and thus, SAP has had since he ascended to executive level -- on their image.

Thursday: SAP's Internal Entrepreneurship Program

Many of us who observe SAP had believed that the company couldn't keep snapping up other companies and expect to continue reporting big profits -- at some point you have to generate new ideas internally.

Friday: SAP Releases 6 Windows 8 Apps

I was struck by the employee-centric nature of the six apps. If you look at all of them -- including SAP Interview Assistant, SAP Learning Assistant, and SAP Manager Insight -- they are all intended to give employees access to actionable data at any time.

And here's what new over at SAPexperts this week. Pay special attention to the first entry, a free excerpt you can download from our special report on SAP HANA, the most popular piece we've developed this year.

Free Briefing on Our HANA Report Is Now Available

Helpful Hints for Maintaining an SAP ERP HCM System with Management of Global Employment [HR subscribers]

Best Practices for Managing the Food Supply Chain [SCM, Project Management subscribers]

Increase Data Visualization in Mobile Apps Using the Mobile Analytics Kit [BI, Project Management subscribers]

Decision Tree Guides You on SAP General Ledger Extractors for SAP NetWeaver BW [BI subscribers]

Webinar: Create an Effective Roadmap for Global Payroll in SAP [HR subscribers]

Sometimes, it may not be obvious that your project actually is an international project...  That's just one tip from this interview with Rosemary Lavoie of HCL, held at the Managing Your SAP Projects 2012 conference in Las Vegas. 

Rosemary shared her  practical advice on managing international SAP teams - and understanding the cultural borders of your project - with SAPinsider's Dave Hannon.

You can listen to the podcast  or read the edited transcript, here:

Dave Hannon, SAPinsider: Hello, this is Dave Hannon with SAPinsider. I’m at the Managing Your SAP Projects 2012 conference and I’m speaking with Rosemary Lavoie, senior project manager at HCL. Welcome, Rosemary.

Rosemary Lavoie, HCL: Thank you.

Dave: Rosemary is presenting this week on “Best Practices for Working Efficiently Within an International Project Team: Tips and Tricks to Move from Chaos to Success.”  First off, Rosemary, I wanted to ask: Are international project teams more common today?  

Rosemary:  I believe they are.

When you look at the cost pressure that we have right now, the ability just to get a project funded, it’s so hard and the budgets are so tight. Then you look at the cost differential between on and off shore, you’ve got to have an off-shore development center.

What’s more, we’re using them for more and more things. Whereas we used to just do ABAP offshore, now we’re doing BI, we’re doing BOBJ, we’re doing all kinds of configuration, functional consulting, etc.

Dave: I want to ask you about some of the common mistakes project leaders make in managing these international teams. I know you had some do and don’ts from your session, so let’s talk about some of the don’ts.

Rosemary: Sure. Probably the number one is not understanding that you have an international project. If you have a rollout to international locations or plants, you may think, "I can handle that the way I’ve always done my SAP projects." And it’s simply not true.

But even more so, if you have only a US project, but you’re using an offshore development center, you still have an international project - you just may not realize it! So you still have to think about all those tips and tricks and how to manage people over time and space.

Dave: I know your session touched on the use of multimedia to help manage these teams. Can you give an example of that?

Rosemary: Well, the old Net Meeting and using that for a team meeting or sharing some slides on it, we’ve done that for years.  What teams are doing now are using it for informal sessions, as well.

So when you have a work session, you’re sharing one SAP screen, you can look at the piece of configuration, you can look at the piece of development, you can look for where the problems are. You feel as if you’re working together more closely because you’re sharing a visual.

Dave: I know you also touched on some cultural issues that come up during a typical international project meeting. Maybe you can give us a few anecdotal examples, if you have any?

Rosemary: I was at a project meeting not very long ago where one of the speakers said we had needed to “get down and dirty with it.” You look around the room and there were people in that room that had no idea what he was talking about.

But even more so, there were people who were offended because they thought it was something wrong with that expression!

You have to be really careful with your language. I say, keep it formal, practice it, and really watch the colloquial expressions - even when you’re dealing with people who speak English. There are people in the UK who may not understand an American expression, so that’s really number one.

Number two -- it’s silly but true --  is food. People forget that, culturally, there are a lot of different dietary restrictions, and you bring in lunch and you don’t think about them, then there will be a group of people who cannot eat. So I tell people: Always make sure you have a basic vegetarian choice, you’ve got to cover your bases.

Dave: That’s great advice.  Lastly, I wanted to ask you about some of the less visible, but important benefits of working with an international, multicultural team. What do folks gain from that?

Rosemary: We tend to be a little bit ethno-centric here in the US and think that we always do things the best. When we have international teams, though,  and we look at a business practice in, for example,  Italy and see the way that they do it, sometimes we can get improvements that we didn’t intend!We have SAP improvements, but we also have business practice improvements by adopting something that another company or group is doing.  

There is also a fun aspect to this: You get to travel. I got to go to India. There’s nothing quite like going out for Chinese food with people who speak Chinese and can order something new for you.  You can learn a new language, learn a new culture, learn about a new group of people.

Dave: I want to thank Rosemary for joining us. Rosemary Lavoie is the senior project manager at HCL. Thank you, Rosemary.

Rosemary: Thank you.

By Dave Hannon @Daveatwispubs 

"They didn't know what they didn't know."

That was the way an IT contact I spoke with recently described the end users' enthusiastic reaction to its implementation of a new SAP application. Users were surprised by how much more they could do with the data they had available.

It's not the first time I've heard that type of phrase to describe the reaction from business users -- pleasantly surprised about what they could do with their new application. But after giving it some thought, I realized that might not be the reaction you want from business users. Why? Because it indicates that that users aren't thinking about how they can leverage data -- regardless of technology -- to its fullest potential. It means that only when the IT organization (and perhaps a high-level business leader) forced a new application at their users did the users start to see the value of their data.

If I were a CIO and I had just spent $x million to roll out a new application to hundreds of users, I'd want to hear people say "Now I can execute on those business initiatives I had planned but were being held back by poor visibility or technology." I'd want to know this new solution is exactly what the business has been looking for and not a surprise present delivered to them without their asking.

Is this unrealistic? No. In fact, a recent story in insiderPROFILES describes how Vodafone did this. The company's SAP ERP implementation was driven by clear business goals -- they knew what they didn't know and they knew what they needed to know it. The project head was a former business CFO, not an IT manager. And a business committee had final say on any scope or process change during the implementation. The result is an ERP implementation that is very closely mapped to Vodafone's business priorities and processes. No surprises--just well-planned technology selection followed by expected benefits.

So the next time your users are surprised at the benefits a new IT project brings, ask yourself if those are the benefits your organization really wanted or just a "happy accident" along the way?