In this exclusive video interview live from the show floor of HR 2013, Doug Whittle of Whittle Consulting speaks with Lauren Bonneau of insiderPROFILES about the business side of HR IT. Whittle covers change management strategies in HR IT projects, preparing for generational issues in the IT environment, and provides his advice on breeding leadership in an organization.

Well SAPinsider Amsterdam has come to a close. Big congrats to the teams at SAPinsider and SAP for a job well done. In this "on the scene" video, SAP's Michael Lortz and our own Riz Ahmed close it down in Amsterdam (literally) and provide a sneak peek into  where the SAPinsider road show goes next -- Singapore! #SAPinsiderAPJ

By Dave Hannon
@Daveatwispubs 

In this interview recorded live at HR 2013, Eric Wood, managing consultant at Exaserv, discusses how structural authorizations can increase an organization's IT security. Wood provides firsthand examples of projects where structural authorizations were used to increase security.

By Dave Hannon
@Daveatwispubs 

SAP's announcement last month that it would recruit and hire more than 600 autistic workers struck a chord with me. Eventually.

As an optimist by nature, I want to believe good news is really good news, but as a business journalist for the past (coughs loudly) years, I know often it isn't quite as good as it sounds. We've all been burned a few times by lines like: "We really want to help low-income people secure mortgages and buy homes." (Translation: We're selling these loans immediately for profit knowing we've just ruined this family's life).  or "We are happy to bring jobs to this economically depressed area of the world." (Translation: We're starting a slave labor camp). 

So, in some of these situations we've been conditioned to skip over these types of initiatives. But SAP's program stuck in the back of mind, so I decided to read a bit more about it and consider both SAP's approach and its motives. And after having done that, I'm happy to say I'm enthusiastically optimistic about the program.

For starters, SAP is partnering with a specialist organization to gain business benefit out of this program and they're up front about that. In fact, that's the whole point. SAP's press release says "SAP sees a potential competitive advantage to leveraging the unique talents of people with autism, while also helping them to secure meaningful employment."

And don't take SAP's word for it either. According to research in this article in the New Scientist, "employees with autism bring more to the table than good concentration. Benedetto De Martino at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena has shown that people with autism make better decisions than "neurotypicals" when it comes to making a rational choice. They are less swayed by emotion." And there is a lot of other evidence out there if you are interested.

Of course, SAP did get some positive coverage in the mainstream media when they announced the initiative. Heck, even my mother said she saw the announcement in the newspaper and commented on it knowing my job is somehow related to SAP. 

So it certainly got the SAP name in front of people that might not otherwise see it --and in a very positive light. For a public company, that's great exposure, sure. But if SAP just wanted a bit of good press, it would partner with some celebrity spokesperson, take out the checkbook and make a big public donation to an autism-related charity, issue the press release, and be done with it. This goes so far beyond that (he said optimistically).

To me, SAP's true "hidden agenda" here is a great one -- to send the message to other major (public) companies and organizations that there are ways you can make the world a better place and gain business value. And today the big companies could use some inspiration. Weighing the benefits of socially conscious (for lack of a better term) programs vs. possible reputational/business risk is a very thorny issue for even the best intentioned companies and organizations. For example, major colleges in the U.S. are struggling with the popular demand by students that schools divest their fossil fuel holdings in their endowments. Sure, colleges and universities want to be on the forefront of the environmental movement, but would they risk financial gain to do so? Well, that's a completely different question.

The message SAP is sending is that if you are creative and if you partner with experts in a given field (Specialisterne in this case) and you don't just jump on the latest cause half-heartedly, there can be a win-win approach. And that "message" is, to me, the real value of SAP's program. In the grand scheme of things, giving 650 autistic people work isn't going to eliminate the challenges the millions of other autistic people face in their search for employment. But if it inspires other companies to change their perception and practices in this area, THAT could have a very big impact. Likely bigger than you might have thought. According to the Centers for Disease Control here in the U.S. in 2008, one in every 88 children -- more than 1% -- has an autistic spectrum disorder. That's up from one in every 150 only six years prior. If we can change the perception of 1% of people from being "unemployable" to being a "competitive advantage" that benefits all of us.

And just to make sure I wasn't being overly optimistic or naive on this whole thing I checked in with the president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, an advocacy organization in the U.S. run by and for autistic adults seeking to increase the representation of autistic people across society. And I'm happy to report he's in support of SAP's program.

"We're very pleased by and applaud SAP's announcement and have reached out to them to learn more about their plans in North America," said Ari Ne’eman, president of ASAN. His priorities for these kinds of hiring initiatives are ensuring that autistic workers are offered the same wages and benefits as non-autistic workers and making sure these hiring opportunities take place within integrated workplace environments.

"We're excited about this development and want to encourage other companies to follow SAP's lead," Ne'eman said.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

By Dave Hannon
@Daveatwispubs 

Another SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG in the rearview mirror ... and I have the blisters on my feet to prove it. This year's event had a good blend of high-level big-impact news and tactical user-level information that should keep everyone in the ecosystem satisfied. At least for now. Here's a few notes. 

On the big-bang news side of things, SAP made a few major announcements at SAPPHIRE NOW. They include:

SAP Business Suite on HANA is now Generally Available to customers. As Hasso Plattner said in his keynote, "It's no longer about HANA, but the applications on top of HANA." 

Release of SAP Fiori, a collection of 25 apps that are focused on renewing the user experience for the most common business functions, such as workflow approvals, information lookups and self-service tasks. They're device-agnostic-- meaning they can be used on mobile devices and desktops using browsers that support HTML5.
As CTO Vishal Sikka pointed out, Fiori means flower in Italian, and flowers are "the perfect blend of mathematics and design" in nature. (That imagery figured heavily in Sikka's portion of the keynote.) 

Renaming of SAP Visual Intelligence as Lumira. (When the founder of your company calls it a "stupid name" it's time to switch).

Release of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 (I didn't personally catch much new on this, but I'm sure our in-house BI guru Scott Wallask will have plenty to say soon over on BusinessObjects Expert. Heck, he was way out in front of it all in a post here.

Announcement that SAP HANA is "no longer a little girl" by Sikka. (Note to SAP communications: That "little girl" metaphor's getting a little...uncomfortable. Just sayin'.)

But in addition to the big-splash keynote news, there were demos galore on the show floor and SAP continues to do a great job of making its technology available to everyone interested, from customers to partners to analysts and media. (I think some folks in the ecosystem might be a bit spoiled by SAP's openness in this area -- not all companies do this).

And the ASUG sessions up on the South Concourse provided a plethora of customer experience presentations across a wide variety of topics. In addition to what I outlined here I caught sessions on super user programs, IT testing practices, experiences in the early adoption of SAP HANA, best practices in deploying RDS, and best practices in educating SAP user base, all led by real SAP customers who were very frank about their experiences.

And in addition to all of that, here's a few of my personal notes from the week:

SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard was not at the conference because his "superdad" passed away and he was back in Denmark with family sharing the LarsLuv where it was needed most this week. (I did like the video he provided that compared the "promises" he made on the SAPPHIRE NOW stage last year to the results today. Fact checking himself--nice touch.)

SAP is continuing to stick its toe in the B2C water, which will be interesting to watch in the future. Right now, it still feels like.. a toe in the water.

At the risk of sounding like a blue kool-aid addict, I really like the keynote progression at the event. Bill McDermott's sports-related keynote on Tuesday got things off to a fun start. Jim Hagemann Snabe's more product and strategy focused keynote on Wednesday gives the roadmap junkies what they're looking for. And Hasso Plattner's professorial presentation on Thursday transitioned to Vishal Sikka's always engaging talk has a really nice "flow" to it.

The annual press event Wednesday night at the Harley-Davidson factory had a great "vibe" to it as well, although the length of the bus ride out there did have more than a few of us paranoid press types wondering if we had got on the wrong bus and were heading to a bingo weekend in Boca or something.

Dark data is the new old buzzword. If you've been around a while, it's not new to you.

Twitter continues to grow in the ecosystem. If I'm going to continue to live tweet keynotes, I'm going to have to run my iPhone on HANA.

A couple years ago, the question in mobility was if the iPad was going to be an effective tool for business. Yeah, we have our answer now.

The Ariba crew gets the most “road warrior” points. Last week Ariba LIVE in DC. This week SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando. Next week, Ariba LIVE in Berlin. These folks understand to grow a network you gotta rack up some frequent flyer miles, that’s for sure.

More from SAPPHIRE NOW 2013. Catch up on the week with our interviews and blogs:

• SAP mentor Jon Reed with SAPinsider's Ken Murphy on his predictions for SAPPHIRE NOW
• Keynote wrapup: Bill McDermott, HANA, sportsdesks, and dark data
• Kevin Benedict interviews SAP M2M expert Suhas Uliyar on the Internet of Things
• Customers share their (mostly) SAP HANA stories
• David Dixon on Mars’ BPC implementation, BW and Trade Promotion Management
• SAP and sports: What's the catch?