SAP Has Found the Secret Sauce for IBP Collaboration

By Robert Birdsall, Senior Manager SCMO2

SAP provides numerous reasons for using SAP Jam with its Integrated Business Planning (IBP) tool. But are there any reasons why you shouldn’t? We review the five most common objections in today’s post, and debunk each of them.

#1 – My people are too busy for some sort of collaboration boondoggle!

A case of self-fulfilling prophesy—your teams already struggle with unmanageable e-mail inboxes, are spread out geographically, work virtually and need to effortlessly collaborate with low overhead. Without strong change management and good buy-in, you are doomed to failure.

SAP Jam eradicates these challenges, helps enforce best practices and supports qualitative and quantitative discussions that can be captured dynamically. Throw in its native mobile capability, and deploying SAP Jam is an efficient, money-saving dream.

#2 – We already have collaboration tools!

Whether it’s Facebook for Business or a similar application, this concern holds weight, particularly when combined with a document management system like SharePoint or Google Drive. When deploying SAP IBP, recognize that SAP Jam provides direct integration and two-way task management for recurring business processes.

This key collaboration capability can potentially eliminate a third business process application. And since SAP Jam can sit atop your document management application, it can work seamlessly with them so you have a fully integrated platform.

#3 – Many of my people work with external contacts—I can’t have one application for internal and another for external communication!

Have no fear! SAP Jam allows easy and secure collaboration with both internal and external audiences. SAP themselves use SAP Jam to collaborate with consulting partners and customers right now. Managing user access levels for various resources and tools is a simple and straightforward process. Bring the right content to the right audience at the right time and reap the benefits.

#4 – This integrated decision support thing makes no sense for my business!

Sure, we can all use whiteboards and massive post-it collages. But if you can’t capture and retain that content, it has no value. SAP Jam does exactly that. Capture these flows natively from SAP IBP to track and trace tasks. Whether it’s pro/con tables, crowd-sourced solutions, Q&A forums or alternative ranking and aggregation, these tools guide brainstorming and decision-making, and do it seamlessly within SAP IBP.

#5 – My IT organization is already stretched. We can’t take on any new applications!

SAP Jam has a very small IT support footprint because users can quickly generate content and collaborate using time-saving templates and intuitive tools. IT is contracted mainly for security needs and a minimal amount of technical integration for setup. What’s more, SAP’s development roadmap includes initiatives to bring even more data and analytics capability to SAP Jam—a boon for your future business endeavors.

Mischief managed! Perhaps these objections are just excuses?