General7.12.2012

KID offers SAP MDM consulting

Knowledge Integration Dynamics (KID), the enterprise information management (EIM) business, has broadened its portfolio of consulting solutions by gaining certification as a SAP Special Expertise Service Partner by SAP Africa.

The special area of expertise is EIM with a specific focus on master data management (MDM) and master data governance (MDG) and KID will work alongside SAP on mutual business opportunities, software, partner and consultant training, marketing, current and future software implementations and more.

“We have a long history working alongside SAP in our special area of expertise,” says Johann van der Walt, MDM practice manager at KID. “This certification formalises the relationship and gives both companies formal access to a wide range of skills, expertise, and support functions and services in a standard method.”

One such service is called Partner Edge: SAP’s portal for partners. It contains a wealth of information that van der Walt says is extensive and covers every requirement he may have. It contains, among others, training material, demonstrations, collateral, slide presentations, white papers, and use cases that van der Walt says are invaluable in providing a holistic MDM service to his customers.

KID has SAP MDM skills rare in South Africa and will continue to build on its capabilities during the next 18 months. It will specifically focus on candidates with SAP skills as it makes new appointments and also has SAP’s extensive training programmes open to it. These consist of modular exposure to SAP’s solutions that facilitate expert transfer of knowledge.

SAP also makes demonstrations of its solutions available to partners such as KID. These can be generic demonstrations based on abstract data. What is invaluable, says van der Walt, is the private demonstration sessions that SAP makes available to its partners so that they can securely load sample customer data into their solutions.

“It gives customers a real understanding of how the solution is going to function in their organisation,” says van der Walt. “It demonstrates the value of SAP’s support for partners because it means we don’t have to take special systems to a customer’s premises to give them a demonstration of how the system will work in their business – and that means no setting up and creating secure, virtual environments. We simply access it via the cloud.”

SAP’s master data services focus on creating, distributing and maintaining complete and accurate master data so that everyone in an organisation can gain access to a single version of the truth. It drives better, more informed business decisions, more efficient processes and quicker responses to change.

“SAP has a long history in the ERP market but following key acquisitions and product development specifically in the data aspects of their business, with a track record of successful implementations, customers can now get MDM in their ERP environment, alongside their ERP environment, or a combination of the two, as it suits their business,” says van der Walt. “They have strong reporting, strong data integration, and strong EIM.”

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