Published on the SAP Community.

77% of the world’s transactions touch SAP systems. 400,000+ companies use SAP software. ~65 billion (USD) is the low-code/no-code platform market forecast by 2027 (Statista). And SAP S/4HANA Cloud is recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

Yet…up until now most business practitioners (aka Citizen Developers) would be unable to build a very basic app leveraging SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition to SAP Build Apps using “no-code” navigation to show data visibility.

Access to this data using an API, SAP BTP, and the SAP Business Acceleratory Hub is easy, straightforward, and a game changer!

Check out this new blog and video.

FYI: I walked several business colleagues, with VERY LITTLE experience with these tools, to achieve success in 25 minutes.

Please share this new blog and video with your networks.

Interview by Esmee Xavier. Originally pubished in the SAP Community.

The series highlights success stories from our SAP Builders community. Do you have a project you’d like us to feature? Reach out to us on the Builders Group or comment on this post.

This edition features Rich Blumberg, who has been part of the SAP world for 18 years.

As a long-time SAP consultant, Rich has been involved with multiple teams and projects, including SAP Innovation Awards, SAP Community, and weekly working sessions with customers to dive into SAP Build. His team also created the internal Help Center for SAP’s transition from SAP Jam to SAP Build Work Zone. During our interview, Rich shared his thoughts on teaching citizen developers and getting started with creating digital workspaces.

Builder: Rich Blumberg

Location: Pennsylvania, USA

Featured solution: SAP Build Work Zone Help Center (internal)

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Tell us first about your experience with the SAP Build Learning Journey.

Having gone through the low-code/no-code learning journey, it gave me an excellent foundation to learn more about SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation, and what I already knew about in
SAP Build Work Zone. Also, I was very excited to learn and put into practice the use of OData and REST APIs, which had been a big interest for many years.

What kind of gaps have you identified in the learning journey for real citizen developers?

Often the expertise is done by technical people with a deeper understanding of the technology, be they software engineers, developers, or pro-coders. They don’t always explain it the way that us business practitioners, AKA citizen developers, can fully understand.

As an analogy, it’s kind of like a coloring book. I want to see where the lines are, where the numbers are, where I can add colors, and where I can deviate a little bit. We need guardrails as business practitioners, and we also have a lot of time constraints.

For example, with SAP Build Apps or SAP Build Process Automation, I want to go in and be told to try these five things or these 20 things very clearly step-by-step. I don’t want to have to guess or have subject matter experts assume that I know what to do.

This creates an opportunity to bridge the much appreciated technical expertise with business practitioner’s knowledge to expand the use of SAP Build.

What other approaches would you recommend for teaching these concepts?

I’ll use formulas as an example. As a business practitioner, give me two or three of these and break down the steps to use them. If I can do this five times with five different formulas, I will start to get the hang of it.

As a parallel learning example, I started taking guitar lessons three years ago, so now I’m a lot more proficient with chords and strumming. I’m not ready to get on stage yet with the best of the best, but I have a lot more confidence, because I’ve gone beyond just understanding the basics. But as teachers and experts you still have to show me what’s required. Once it’s spelled out accurately, then I’ll take it one step at a time.

With SAP Build Apps, you can’t assume that us business practitioners know what properties are or that I know what the nodes mean. It took me a long time to get comfortable with nodes, components, and variables. The In-App tutorials were very helpful. While business people have many skills and work experiences… many of us need to learn it like the “For Dummies” book series!:-)

Tell us about the project around SAP Build Work Zone’s Help Center.

When SAP Jam became Work Zone, many valued customers, partners, and also SAP had to make that migration and move forward. SAP has tens of thousands of active workspaces, so we worked with SAP IT and the Employee Experience team to reduce the number of questions, concerns, and fears that the thousands of SAP employees had. We set up frequently asked questions like what can Work Zone do for workspace admins or users? What are the capabilities? And also, how can there be a feedback loop?

By teaming up with IT and the Employee Experience team, we were able to help reduce dramatically the number of questions and issues, which could have been a nightmare, and reduced the temperature of people heading to the unknown.

We also encouraged people to appreciate the SAP Build roadmap as it pertains to Work Zone, because the SAP Build family will continue to come closer and closer together, as well as how it will work with things like UI5 cards and widgets, which are really cool.

What are some of the biggest challenges teams might face when starting with Work Zone?

It’s like anything else, you have people at different parts of the learning curve, from beginners to experts. Beginners just need to get comfortable and familiar with the breadth of things that it can do. It never ceases to amaze me that as much as I know about Work Zone, there’s always new features and capabilities to discover.

The good news is that the SAP Build Work Zone is relatively easy to get started using. If it was compared to a swimming pool, you can walk into the shallow end and very quickly start doing things. We have weekly working sessions and I’m continuously amazed at all the different groups, use cases, and how they communicate the best information to the audiences that they serve.

What I’m passionate about it is knowledge management and speed to value.

In addition, we’re exploring helping groups that might have a thousand plus assets, be it documents, videos, or podcasts in a landing page or a community. We can help them validate and curate what is the most important information that the audience needs to do their jobs, be it for implementations, adoption, change management, solutions – you name it, and making it easy for them to find what they need, when they need it.

Each of the SAP Build family of products has an unlimited number of use cases to consider and discover. Looking forward to learning more, continuing to be hands on, and taking the value for employees, customers, partners, and users to the next level.

Each of us is collaborating more often, increasingly mobile, and working on a schedule that enables us to connect more virtually..

Thoughtful leaders working in SAP solution environments step back and ensure that SAP Collaboration represents how the business works both in the short-term and going forward.

When SAP and Microsoft announced they are building integrations to Microsoft Teams across solutions many of us were inspired.  With the new reality of remote and hybrid work, the importance of holistic collaboration grows in importance.

Disparate information kept in silos and organized in ad-hoc ways becomes an impediment to performance and productivity. One of the hardest things to do is to keep Microsoft Teams and SharePoint along with the SAP portfolio organized so that the content is valuable to the users.

In order to elevate digital transformation, organizations must rethink how they address:
– Working Remotely
– Upskilling Employees
– Telling Customer Stories
– Deploying Communications
– Enabling Digital Supply Chains
– Re-positioning Products or Services
– Building Consortiums & Affinity Groups
– Ensuring Regulatory Compliance & Safety
– Developing Content & Information Architecture
– Increasing Demand Generation and Growing the Pipeline
– Scaling Revenue Objectives and Sales Operations Imperatives

Remove the Barriers by Collaborating and Enabling Knowledge Sharing

One of many examples exists between customers and sales, with key contributors including marketing, product teams, communications, pre-sales, and related key stakeholders.

For Industry 4.0, collaboration represents a core component successful business outcomes. The challenge is to recognize the need to optimize the information architecture and user experience, with a ONE CLICK goal to help users quickly gain access to the right information at the right time.

Here’s an interesting Account Executive example…

WSS can help you pinpoint which SAP Collaboration approach is best for your organization, and develop a Quick Start program to ensure rapid results and a longer term plan for continuity and success.

Originally published on the SAP Community

Now is a great time to pursue that high quality job that puts technology and related business skills and interests into action.

The tech sector’s long-term outlook continues to grow with many compelling career opportunities both now and into the future.

With the demand for reliable, skilled business and IT workers on the rise, now’s the time to write down your vision of a great position and set a path forward.

Unquestionably, SAP is one of the best career options. With over 105,000 employees, 22,000 partners, and a customer base generating 87% of total global commerce in over 180 countries, there are many opportunities.

Of course, there is competition for the best jobs, and you want to be prepared to get traction versus settling for just any position. So, what’s the best approach?

The SAP Community, with over 3 million users, recently published Spotlight Interviews with SAP Mentors who are top influencers representing customers, partners, and consultants.

In their interviews, the Community team asked the Mentors for their advice and insights for students and recent graduates to secure SAP and related IT and business jobs to help jumpstart their careers.

Top 7 SAP Mentor Insights

1. Learning is the “Secret Sauce”

Paul Hardy: My advice to young people just starting out in IT is a “secret sauce” which is not so secret. It’s simply this – take a little time each week outside of work to learn new things. If you spend even half an hour each week, you will be half an hour up on all the people who just play computer games or watch Netflix in their spare time.

Narasimha (Simha) Magal – The core advise is always the same: Technologies change constantly, so students must be lifelong learners. However, knowledge of how a technology works is never sufficient. What is critical is to understand why a particular technology is useful to an organization and be able to use the technologies to improve business processes.

Karen Rodrigues: First, improve skills as needed and fill gaps you have in relation to the new area you want to work in. Also, make sure you have a mentor, a person who can support you in this journey. Finally, make sure you understand that you will need to work hard to achieve what you want.

2. Build a Network

Peter Langner: Take the chance to build a network during your studies. Look for educational opportunities around your interests. Regarding SAP, there are training and certification possibilities for students which cost very little money. Take advantage of openSAP courses, visit SAP Community Inside Track events, and connect with experts and experienced professionals. Find a coach or advisor by looking out for them at a user group of your country.

Derek Loranca: Networking is still key, so finding and participating in community-centric data events (like hackathons or user group meetings) allows students to meet and greet with professionals.

3. Find Mentors and Coaches

Heather Hill: Don’t be afraid to ask for help along the way. Mentors and coaches can help you grow not only your technical skills but your soft skills as well.

4. Hands on Experience is Key

Abdulbasit Gulsen: I can assure that making a small effort in the beginning to get hands on experience, will make a big difference and positively impact your career journey.

5. A Balance Between Humanity and Technology Creates Opportunity

Robert Eijpe: The possibilities with technology in the digital age are moving fast. There needs to become a new balance between humanity on one side, and intelligence, machinery, and artificial intelligence on the other side.

6. The Need for Integration

Daniel Graversen: There will always be a need for integration because more systems will always pop up. I talk to a lot of people about ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming), SAP integration, and business process career opportunities.

7. Be Curious. Have a Great Attitude.

Tamas Szirtes: It’s about being curious, passionate, building a habit to learn and share, going the extra mile, and selecting a matching career strategy.

Graham Robinson: First, you need to be curious – and act on it. Second, you need to be a true professional. That means properly learning and constantly improving your skills. It also means acting professionally and with integrity.

Simon To: I have always advised new graduates to focus on or to develop quality problem-solving skills. That is the most sought-after skillset. The CEO of one of my previous employers has told us this: “Hire for Attitude and Train for Skill.” That is so true.

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What inspires you when you think about SAP and related careers?

Please share your comments below.

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Useful Links

• SAP Next-Gen
• SAP University Alliances
• openSAP – Free Online Courses
• SAP Spotlight Interviews
• SAP Mentors
• SAP Champions
• SAP Community

Enjoyed discussing Careers & Professional Development with Kelly Deilly, Drexel LeBow Career Services & Strategist.  Check it  out.

Together we shared insights on best practices, lessons learned, and insights on landing great jobs. What’s the process? What does it take to find success and new opportunities?