My wife makes me a glass of freshly squeezed juice before I come to work most mornings. And I am not talking about orange juices and apple juices. I am talking about juices involving Brussels sprouts. Kale and beetroot. Spinach and ginger.
She comes from a South American country where fruit and vegetables (and healthy living) play a more important part of daily life and has indeed made this part of her job here in the UK. I, on the other hand, come from a country that like their food deep-fried and their beverages made from girders. Until very recently, I ate a pork pie almost religiously at lunchtime.
Naturally, I initially resisted drinking freshly squeezed fruit juices, and especially ones involving Brussels sprouts and other vegetables (some of which I had never even heard of). The simple reason was that I didn’t like change. And I am not the only one.
Almost every time I give a demo of ActiveControl to a potential new customer, I hear somebody say something along the lines of “this tool is going to be put me out of a job”.
People see the capabilities of ActiveControl and fear for the future. Their future. They worry that if their employer is able to deliver SAP change with greater agility and efficiency, it could potentially put them out of a job. They fear that if this software automates all the things they currently do in their role (such as sequencing and moving transports, generating audit reports and build lists, coordinating approvals and test signoffs) – their current job could become redundant.
The truth is most of them do lose their current job. But not in a bad way. The reality is that instead, their job often becomes transformed into something infinitely more valuable for their employer, and more stimulating for themselves.
Make a positive change to your SAP change control process
No longer do Change Managers spend their working days cutting and pasting into spreadsheets for the upcoming CAB meeting. No longer do Basis teams spend huge amounts of time manually importing transports through the landscape. And no longer do developers spend their time investigating avoidable import errors because transports moved out of sequence with other SAP changes that they didn’t even know about.
They now have time to take a step back and do more value-add activities that benefit their employers (and impress their bosses). Like do upgrades and spend more time making the SAP systems perform better. Or deliver more SAP change to the business in a reduced time window. Or perform regular Production copy-backs in a fraction of the time they previously took. Things that keep the business happy (and just as importantly, their bosses).
Almost all the people I have worked with at organizations implementing ActiveControl over the last two years are still there. The few that are no longer there are the ones that have since moved on to bigger and better things of their own choosing.
Want to make your job more interesting? Have a look at ActiveControl, it might just change your attitude to making changes in SAP.
