One of the key instructions when I worked at META Group was to be vendor neutral if not vendor hostile. Our CEO and founder, Dale Kutnick, was often heard to exclaim: “the vendors all suck.” I would venture that, during my time there, META Group was the analyst research firm that was the toughest on vendors seeking to kiss our analyst rings. My point here is that I do not easily praise an SAP service provider. Indeed, most of those I have analyzed fall far short of expectations, most especially in the realm of post-implementation support services.
In late 2004, a client threw a lot of money my way to shortlist acquisition targets to buck up its SAP support services. Two of us scoured North America for likely candidates and came up with very little. Today, if you simply scan web sites, you will find literally hundreds of firms that claim to provide such services but very few of them actually have full-time staff, repeatable delivery and billing methods, or client references. If you retain them, they tend to put together a posse of bench-staff and contract consultants, thus eroding any chance of high quality delivery.
In this context, I am pleased to have a found a firm that is truly one of the best kept secrets in the realm of SAP support services: itelligence. I had the pleasure of spending a day with their leadership this past week and, mirabile dictu, found something I’ve been seeking for some time. I was already aware of itelligence in regard to their systems integration capabilities as they are one of the few solid second-tier firms in the North American SAP consulting eco-system. However, the quality and span of their support services was an eye-opener.
Itelligence has been active in support services since 2001. They now have a base of 80 help desk staff in Cincinnati and back-up groups in Chicago and Poland. It is largely a rookie-free group and, unlike most of their competitors, itelligence can provide a roster including photos and thumbnail resumes of their staff. The pricing is transparent and the delivery model is flexible and sensible. While many firms degrade service levels by over-deploying the remote/offshore mix, itelligence leverages its Poland staff with moderation. I was most impressed with the depth of experience, both industry and SAP skills, arrayed across a huge room and organized into process groups.
I am a firm believer in the outsourcing option for SAP support and have a new white paper on the subject, “We Do It Themselves: Outsourcing SAP Applications Support”, that can be obtained here: http://www.michaeldoane.com/SAP%20Research.html
It is excerpted and adapted from The SAP Green Book, Thrive After Go-Live which will be available in mid-September, 2009.
I urge you to check out this white paper and, if you are in the market for dependable SAP support, you can shortlist itelligence with confidence.