Helmuth Gümbel -- Senior Research
Director, Managing Partner at Strategy Partners International -- asked an
excellent question at the close of my Sapience2009 presentation on Tuesday. The presentation, titled “Knowledge as a
Service,” described the KaaS concept in general and the SAP virtual helpdesk in
particular. The helpdesk allows IT staff
to get answers to technical and business process questions from senior SAP
consultants in the cloud, on demand.
The helpdesk is especially helpful when
you’re missing a key piece of knowledge, and that roadblock is preventing you
from making progress in your business — but it may not justify spending
thousands of dollars and waiting weeks to bring a consultant onsite.
Here a couple of the sample helpdesk
questions I used in my presentation:
We would like to
use the Capital Lease functionality delivered in the SAP Fixed Assets
module. However, standard SAP doesn’t fit our model….
and
How to default
profit center on billing document without Sales order?
So, as I wrapped up, Helmuth asked a
question that essentially was: Do you
take a customer’s question at face value?
What he was getting at is the fact that
very often people don’t know the right question to ask. They don’t know what they don’t know. And they may not know what they need to
know. So, here’s my answer to Helmuth:
When someone submits a question to the
virtual helpdesk, it is reviewed to see which consultants on the helpdesk have
been pre-qualified in that particular area.
Then the consultant who takes the question will very often start by
asking questions of his or her own -- probing the customer to make sure the
right issue is being addressed. Finally,
that consultant’s answer is quality-checked by an even more senior consultant
before it is sent along to the customer.
We don’t simply jump in and provide
answers to questions at face value -- answers that are technically correct, but
which may also be irrelevant or, worse, send the customer down the wrong path.
