Aug 31, 2016
The Birth of the Knowledge Share Group
Late in 2015 Precision Sourcing embarked on a number of new differentiating strategies within our niche markets which have proven to be value ads for our embedded communities. One of these strategies was to begin hosting events. Managing Director, Simon Hair, initially built the SAP desk at Precision Sourcing 7 years ago, and now, he and I continue to ‘Help Talent Achieve’ today. We wanted to start giving back to the SAP community and flourish those already strong relationships we have within the market. With all this in mind, the ‘ Knowledge Share Group’ was born.
What is the Knowledge Share Group?
The whole aim of the event was to bring like-minded leaders together, within the SAP Sydney community in order to collaborate, share challenges, successes, and knowledge in a relaxed environment. From this, we expect the attendees to learn and gain insight that will add value to their own professional SAP development, outside of their current employment. We aimed the event at senior levels, from CIO/CTO level, with the most junior being Project/Programme managers, as this level of personnel would have a fountain of knowledge and insight. We ultimately want the attendees to be able to go back to their desk on a Friday morning (not just with a hangover) but be able to pick up the phone to a peer to get advice, knowledge, and insights.
Previous Speakers and Background
Our first event was held in partnership with LinkedIn and we were lucky enough to have 2 fantastic speakers;
Steven Wales – Senior Project Manager
Steven shared his experiences and knowledge around the much-discussed topic ‘Agile vs ASAP methodology’. Within 5 minutes of the presentation, a hand went up with the first question and we were off on a journey of opinions. Steven will forever hold the pleasure of setting the tone for the event and it has certainly followed the similar collaborative path since his presentation.
Andrew Simmons – SAP HANA Practice Lead
The second presentation on the night came from one of our previous contractors Andrew Simmons. He was one of the first Program Managers within Australia to implement SAP HANA which was a great achievement (ERP SAP HANA Modernisation Program). Subsequently, Andrew’s discussion at the Knowledge Share Group was around this hot topic in the current SAP market. Once again the questions, insights, and knowledge were extensive.
Bernadette King – HCM Programme Manager
After the success of the first event, discussions quickly moved onto our next event. Born was Knowledge Share Group v.1.2. We were honoured to have the lovely Bernadette King present on what can only be described as a ‘World Class Career Defining Achievement’ delivering the world’s largest HCM programme replacing a 20-year-old legacy system with SAP including success factors. To give you an idea of the scale of the programme, they ‘used 25,000 employees in the system on a trial run’.
Bernadette Takes on Everest
In October this year Bernadette is planning to trek to the Everest Base Camp and as part of that journey, she is raising awareness and much-needed funds for homeless and orphaned children in Nepal.
Nepal is considered to be the poorest country in South Asia with 30-40% of Nepalese living below the poverty line. This situation has been severely exacerbated by the devastating earthquakes that hit in April 2015 which has affected over 8 million people.
“Reach Out Nepal” is an Australian-based organisation that supports Nepal in a number of ways:
* To maintain a residence from which orphaned and abandoned children in Nepal are provided with shelter, food, clothing and education
* Directly helps relieve poverty & distress of children in Nepal
If you would like to contribute to Bernie’s Basecamp Challenge, please click on this link and make a real difference to the lives of kids in Nepal:
https://www.gofundme.com/berniebasecamp
Precision Sourcing Presentation
The SAP team at Precision conducted a talent survey at the turn of the new year. Some interesting insights from this survey displayed some key drivers in the talent of SAP today, i.e. remuneration or type of work/projects. Both Simon Hair and I presented these to the group and, like the 3 previous presentations, this also ignited some interesting discussions.
To summarise, we concluded that Australia has a “highly experienced talent pool originating from overseas, that is highly likely to move position in the next 12 months using a recruiter. They will also base their decision predominantly on how interesting the work is, career progression and remuneration”
We then shared a number of strategies and actions clients can execute in the battle to attract and retain this talent.
What’s Coming Up
We are already planning the next event which will be before the craziness of Christmas begins and are excited to tap into the Knowledge of Dr. Andree Leidenfrost. Andree has certainly made a telling contribution at the previous two Knowledge Share Group events and he will be presenting an interesting topic around Transformation & Delivery, Collaboration & Business Partnering as Value Drivers.
Please note that this event is invite only and brings together a roundtable of some of Sydney’s most influential and talented within the SAP community.
If you wish to express your interest in this event, please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss further.
