While outsourcing your SAP analysis, configuration, and testing needs to foreigners may seem like a cost-effective staffing solution, one top SAP staffing firm has consistently invested in rigorously testing and training domestic consultants, believing the opposite to be true. John R. Miles of Enterprise Resources International (ERI) provides 5 good reasons why using American SAP resources rather than foreign workers makes more sense for the bottom line.
1. The most successful companies in the world use only highly qualified staff.
No IT company can achieve sustainable success without a commitment to training its most valuable asset - its people. Companies like IBM, Microsoft and Google understand this, but most companies fail in this area, believing that saving on training expenses will improve their profit margin.
John Miles disagrees with this way of thinking. "With the way the economy is right now, we need to really consolidate and nurture our own talent, because it's the only way to stay ahead globally. " A study done by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) shows that a group of thirty-seven highly successful companies spend an average of $1190 annually per employee for training, whereas the average company spends approximately $750. The numbers tell the story.
2. Training Americans is a sustainable proposition - they don't suddenly lose their US work status or return to their own country for personal reasons in the middle of a critical assignment.
"Honesty, and I can speak from the experience of my clients, there is nothing more expensive than losing a consultant in the middle of a systems integration project" says Miles. "The new guy has to re-learn the project specs from the ground up." Add to this the fact that the entry-level resources in ERI's level-1 program are much less expensive than even foreign resources, yet still can produce much of the documentation and testing work right out of the gate - and you have a much more economical position. Clients that groom these level-1 resources thereafter have the first right of refusal for using these consultants.
3. There is no language barrier - grammatical ambiguities in front-line orders have been known to lose wars - what could it do to your project?
Small misunderstandings can have disastrous consequences in programming as in life. A sign stating, "We're here to help," would definitely disappoint the customers if the apostrophe were removed, for instance, and an incorrectly placed symbol in a block of code can cause havoc with the way the program works - or doesn't.
4. Hiring highly-trained consultants is critical to complex SAP projects, and this is another area about which Miles is passionate. "At ERI we have developed a very thorough standard proprietary testing system for our SAP resource staff. It is quite rigorous, and would be beyond the scope of most employers to perform, but it guarantees our clients an incredibly high standard of expertise in the consultants they get from ERI."
5. You will earn a powerful commitment from an employee whose qualifications you value, and in whom you are prepared to invest by providing ongoing training.
"Again I can speak from experience here," explains Miles. "At ERI we nurture business and economics college grads and provide invaluable 'over the shoulder' mentoring and on-the-job training. The grads appreciate that level of commitment from us, and project leaders appreciate their level of real world experience." ERI provides experienced SAP services as well as its Level-1 program, but clients are fast learning the merits of having on-demand inexpensive consultants that they are confident in, having assisted in their growth from the outset.
The message is clear - although it's often hard for companies to see the direct ROI of hiring well-trained domestic SAP consultants in the short-term, for the long-term the way to reduce the risk of downtime and stay competitive is to have loyal, committed, and dependable domestic employees.
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