HANA Team Works to Engage Customer Community

[Former Member]

In light of the recent announcement of SAP Business Suite to be made primarily available on HANA, the HANA team is moving towards creating a more comprehensive customer community around its new strategic direction.  Recently the HANA team has re-branded its VIP customer community and has rolled out the international Focus Group, or HANA iFG.

"This exclusive international Focus Group community will support HANA implementations and adoption initiatives, globally," this according to SAP HANA team Senior Director Scott Feldman.  "Participation will include on-site activities as well as a call series around topics which help customers deliver HANA solutions to their organization."

According to Feldman, the HANA iFG will consist of several levels of interaction and feedback mechanisms to greater position and time new capabilities for the SAP Business Suite roll-out on HANA:

• HANA iFG will be open to all SAP user groups and all SAP customers, focusing on 4 things: HANA Strategy, Customer Feedback, Knowledge Transfer and Co-Innovation
• HANA iFG will have 3 distinct levels inclusive of customers and user groups:
  • SAP customers and prospects who are interested in HANA for learning & education but have not yet licensed SAP HANA (Level 0)
  • SAP customers who have licensed HANA but are relatively new or implementing. (Level 1)
  • SAP customers who are “live” on SAP HANA, are a bit more experienced and wish to have a platform for information exchange, brainstorming,

Feldman sums it up this way: "This program is designed by customers for customers. The topics covered will be based on the successes, challenges and issues that they face - which will then benefit their organization as well as other customers."  Additional cooperation with key customer engagement initiatives (CEIs) are in the concept stages, however the intent is for the iFG to be its own, stand-alone initiative.

SAP customers wishing to learn more about the HANA iFG should visit http://www.saphana.com/welcome/#ifg or contact the HANA Community Team via SAPHANACommunity@sap.com or directly to Feldman at scott.feldman@sap.com.  He can also be contacted via http://twitter.com/sfeldman0.