White-glove SAP training service for the CFO

The key to successful training….think about the audience. Right… and the culture of the organisation, of course. However, I remember in 1997 the Senior Partner of a professional services firm decreeing that everybody should receive exactly the same training experience, including himself.  This caused debate within the team as SAP Training professionals we are expected to differentiate the audience, with the higher echelons of the organisation being offered a specially tailored white-glove” learning experience. 

Years later, at short notice, I was asked to provide a “white glove” training service to the CFO of an organisation undergoing a SAP transformation program. This was to be delivered at her desk at a time/date of her choosing.  On the day, I brought along a sample of the training materials my team had developed, which covered all sorts of SAP tasks and processes that should interest her. Mindful of time, I planned to showcase some of the more whizzy things across the whole of the SAP Finance universe.  

She was a hands-on CFO and had dipped her toe into Data Migration, Security and Testing. Hence she had access to various SAP environments for development, testing and production, and some of these were open on her desktop.

During our session, due to many interruptions, it was difficult to maintain focus and pace, but we carried on and covered the key topics of period-end and then finally year-end. 

At the session ended, she was incredibly gracious and complimentary about her experience, and I walked back to the project office with a spring in my step. However I noticed a certain quietness due to some crisis unfolding. 

“Have you heard? Nobody in the whole company can save anything in the Production system. Seems like the system is locked or something. Who's done this?”

On a hunch I turned around, walked back to the CFOs desk, and checked which system we had been in for our training session. Production. Accidentally we had closed the financial year in Asset Accounting. Nobody could do anything until we reversed it – which we did swiftly.

On reflection, I felt we took risks in trying to piece together a “white-glove” learning service at short notice.  Also I could not help thinking that the Senior partner was onto something back in 1997 in providing consistent training to all users of the organisation regardless of level.  There is a time and place for tailored white-glove SAP training for our execs, however this needs to be carefully considered, resourced, planned and executed.

Author: Ian Hanson

Category: Learning and Adoption