My personal experience and views on Remote Work as an SAP Consultant

n today’s world, marked by the Covid19 pandemic, I read a lot of articles and posts talking about remote working and how this “new” way of working could become, maybe not the norm, but an existing form of working that will be more and more used.

In my 20 years career pre-Covid19 as an SAP Consultant, I have been in a lot of project where I had or chosen to work remotely, and not because of the physical distancing that is being enforced by most governments in the world.

So here I would like to share the 5 main reasons why I worked remotely my pre-covid19

1. Not all the phases of an ERP implementation project need people to meet physically on a daily basis

An ERP implementation project usually goes through different phases: Scope Definition, Conceptual Design, Detailed Design, Build & Testing, Deployment, User Acceptance Test and Gol-live. All of these phases usually require different amount of discussion between the consultants and the company subject matter experts.

During the initial phase of a project (Scope Definition to Detailed Design) more intensive discussion/workshops must take place to ensure that one the requirements are well defined and understood by the consultants and two the solution being proposed is well understood by the subject matter experts.

Most of these discussions are better handled in face to face setting, simply because we have developed a way of communicating as Consultant that require face to face workshops (the famous white board drawings), but also because it helps us create this bond between the consultant and the client that can help break the ice and enable a smoother communication between parties throughout the project (we are social animals).

I think a lot of things are being communicated by body language and expressions. It makes it difficult to get this job done more efficiently remotely. But it is not impossible to do so. So, if a project has the Financial and physical means to go through these phases with face to face discussion, it will do so.

But for other parts of a project, like Build & Testing to Deployment and User Acceptance Test, fewer intensive discussion/workshops are needed. Of course, there will be needs to clarify points, there and there, but this can easily be done through a conference call.

As long as the conference call are organized to address specific points and keep to this scope, a conference call can do the job.

2. Project budget does not allow to pay for travel and accommodation costs, but still needed access to the right knowledge and know how

In this specific case, the project has no choice. They can’t have access to the required knowledge on-site and they do not have the budget to bring the knowledge on-site.

In this situation, it is very important that the project get access to resource they trust. In my experience, I’ve only be hired on this type of project when trust with the project management was already built, i.e. I worked with the client before.

This is because, in my opinion, most recruitment agencies, not all, have difficulties to one, understand the client requirement and two, to assess the level of knowledge and know-how of a consultant that will match these requirements. These agencies also rely a lot on trust relationship with the consultants they present to the Client.

So yes, having precedent work relationship is key to ensure you get the right resource in that specific case.

3. Big Bang roll out and the impossibility to duplicate a resource to be physically present at all sites at the same time

That one should be a “of course remote, who else?”. Basically, you work on an implementation project through all the phases, you know all the Subject Matter Experts in your area, you proved your knowledge and your issues resolving abilities, you’ve been through User Acceptance Test successfully. You will be supporting the go-live and the post go-live support remotely.

4. Family/Personnel requirement

Sometime during an implementation project, someone close to you will need you for a while, and that person might not be living in the same part of the world. It happened to me once, when I had to travel to support a relative while on a project. I was lucky enough to have a Project Lead who trusted me enough to allow me to travel and still continue working on the project.

When trust is there, people, in their vast majority, respond to it by delivering more.

5. The scope or work does not justify bringing someone full time on site when it is not really necessary

Sometime a project only needs an outsider eye for few days, few weeks. This expertise can be accessed through a conference call, and there is no need to spend money on travel and accommodation because it will not increase the value you get from that on-demand expertise.

Conclusions:

Building good business relationship with your Customers is key to get the possibility of working remotely.

This situation will probably have to change in the current conjuncture as we need to adapt to a sanitary problem. Businesses and Projects will have to resume and therefore a need for some sort of quality check on Consultants must be available for Customers to trust they will get the value they pay for a high-added value remote service.

This, I think, is an opportunity that can bring more value to both Customers, Project Management and Consultants as it could remove the obligation of having the Demand and the Offer at the same location.