This month, JonERP.com released a new book, The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide. The author of this book, SAP pricing consultant Matthias Liebich, is a twenty year SAP pricing consultant. Over the years, Matthias has become a good friend and valued colleague. But up until two weeks ago, he and I had never met. With the first copies of his book proudly in hand, I paid a visit to Matthias at his home office in Atlanta, Georgia. During the visit, we shot three short videos on SAP pricing skills I am going to share with you in this blog post, along with a few notes from the interviews.

My agenda during our video interviews was as follows: I wanted to get Matthias’ take on why we need an SAP pricing book in the first place. What makes this functionality important, and why does he think a book can help? What inspired him to write it? Since Matthias has weathered many economic cycles over his consulting career, I also wanted to get his keys to success as an independent SAP pricing consultant. Last but not least, I wanted to hear his tips on how SAP hiring managers can hire good SAP pricing consultants. Resumes have a way of looking the same - what makes a good SAP pricing professional stand out?

Video number one gets into why Matthias wrote the Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide:

In this video, Matthias talks about why he wished he would have had a book like this when he started out. There was really no practical guide that contained this kind of information. SAP pricing was always too complicated. In his book, Matthias broke out all the pieces of SAP pricing into basic steps, from master data to condition types to how products are priced. We also hear about the reaction of Matthias’ colleagues to the book. Matthias explains why SAP projects need to understand the components of pricing (discounts, freight charges, rebates), and how they fit together. Matthias also shares what it was like to write the book and his advice for others who might aspire to putting their SAP know-how in book form.

Video number two explores the role of the SAP pricing consultant:

During this video, Matthias explains how an SAP pricing design should be structured. The first step is always to understand the SAP customer’s pricing structure, such as discounts, prices, and rebates. Once you understand the whole pricing design, you can now build the components in the configuration. Don’t start configuring and work backwards. I also asked Matthias what skill level could benefit from the SAP pricing guide. He explains why the book’s structure makes it useful for both junior and senior level SAP pricing folks. It was fun to ask Matthias his keys to success over twenty years of consulting.

It comes as no surprise to learn that Matthias credits his longevity not to configuration skills, but to his ability to talk to customers. He has been able to advice customers on how to optimize their SAP pricing systems, take advantage of unused functionality in the configuration, and improve performance by tactics such as streamlining SAP master data. Matthias cites an example of how he eliminated master data to improve system performance and reduce the amount of manual work for customer service. "Great SAP consultants don’t just configure tables - they solve real business problems for customers." Matthias closes with an important point about undertaking SAP configuration in a way that is more transparent to customers.

Video number three looks at how SAP hiring managers should evaluate SAP pricing talent:

In this third video, Matthias starts by sharing SAP pricing mistakes to avoid: one mistake is applying legacy rules to the SAP context, including the unwise attempt to do one-to-one condition record conversion. Matthias then offered up tips on hiring a good SAP pricing consultant: first, make sure that the resume has more content than listing experience configuring the IMG. Look for examples on the resume of how the consultant optimized system performance in SAP pricing, or how they customized SAP pricing to meet customers’ needs.

Matthias explains that The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide is structured to walk the reader through SAP pricing basics, then on to master data, and finally how to apply the master data for customer system configuration. Step by step instructions include the base structure of a conditions table, which is established before the books moves into condition types and SAP pricing procedures. As he says, "everyone could pick up the book and configure an SAP pricing system." 

I suspect many readers of this blog have thought about undertaking their own SAP book project. Perhaps you have already done so, and know about the intense push that is required to get information into a useful book form. It’s hardly as simple as compiling blogs into a collected volume. Matthias put vision and a serious amount of elbow grease into this book. Yes, we both lost some sleep over it, but once we decided to call the book "The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide" we knew that readers would expect a real "Ultimate" guide. A "halfway decent" guide to SAP pricing was not going to cut it.

We plan to post some sample content from the book on JonERP.com, and perhaps share some new material and tips from Matthias from time to time. There is also a podcast we will share which gets into more keys to successful careers in SAP pricing and tips for project teams. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you want to get some more takes on the book, there are a few reader reviews of The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide to check out. In the meantime, I would like to thank Matthias for the commitment to excellence he showed throughout this publishing process.