Reed: I'm glad you brought up the question of value in this economy because those of us who follow the Enterprise software field were really hoping that the new year would start out with a loosening of IT budgets and a bit of forward momentum. But the signs so far seem to point to a continued period of sluggish spending and perhaps even what we might call a bunker mentality by some companies, and we have the rumors of impending layoffs from major players like IBM and Microsoft, which cloud the picture.

How do you see this year for Business Objects? And, as you mentioned already, how can business intelligence be relevant to companies that actually don't have a lot to spend but want to be competitive?

Aman: Those are really great questions. I think you and I and everyone in the current economy are just a little bit more careful in what we do. When we make investments, we think twice about it: is it the right investment, are we going to just have five minutes of fun or is this going to be something longer lasting that's going to give us bang for the buck? I would say every enterprise would be well off being really careful in their investments.
But you look at the investment priorities, and Gartner just came out with the latest CIO priority survey, and BI is again on top of the list. This is like the fourth year running that BI's on top of the list. Now, when you actually look at making conservative or more conservative investments, if you're concerned about ROI, there's certainly spending that you're going to be careful with or not go ahead with, but certainly the top of your priority list is something you want to keep investing in. So what we see is that companies continue to invest in BI and everything around it and associated with it simply because it actually helps them compete in this kind of crisis situation, but also because it's been on the top of their priority list for a long time.

I couldn't be more excited to be in that part of the IT business, and we've certainly seen great interest from customers. I see so many opportunities, so there's no going into lower gear that I've seen in this space. It's kind of logical and it's understandable, and I would recommend every customer and company to really look at BI as a must-have in these times. It's simple things, like who are your best customers? Who are the customers you're actually making not just revenue with, but you have contribution from and you have margin? How do you actually figure out that when you respond to customers through customer support, service, whatever, you are actually taking care of your best customers first and foremost, and we reduce the cycle time to a minimum?

There are so many scenarios like that where it is essential for survival of businesses to know and without a doubt make the right decisions. We've done some research with economists on C-level executives: what they need and what they think they have or don't have for decision-making. A huge percentage of C-level execs tell us that they don't have all the information they need to make really good decisions, and that's the fundamental job that we have from a BI perspective. We need to make sure we can get all the decision-quality information to all the people in the company who need it to get their job done.

That is more critical now than ever before. Whether it's just giving people an up-to-date status and dashboards of what's going on, or it's helping them answer really tricky questions where they want to understand the variables that are truly driving a business trend. Not just gut feelings, but what is it that causally drives my business trend, going up or down? You need to understand that because you want to be able to do more of what works and less of what doesn't work.

How would you identify that without BI? There's just no other way. That's what value I'm seeing. I certainly see customers being careful, spending in a very focused fashion, but I do see them continuing to spend on the BI side.

Reed: The continued relevance of BI fits in with the theme of the second half of our podcast which is the skills component. The focus of JonERP.com is helping SAP professionals and project teams anticipate the SAP skills they're going to need. I wanted to ask you what your advice to SAP project teams is for those who want to foster the kinds of skills that are needed for success on these projects.

Aman: You talked about potential layoffs, etc. This is a time where not only companies are careful with their investments, but I think every employee is also making sure they can provide a value to their employer on a day-by-day basis. I would just encourage everyone in the SAP install base to definitely brush up on your Business Intelligence skillsets and learn about the Business Objects BI tools. Fundamentally, this is the kind of stuff that helps the business get the most out of all the assets and everything that IT has done over the last couple of years.

So many IT organizations have worked really hard to make the companies run very efficiently, effectively on beautiful ERP implementations, putting in CRM systems and so on, so there's great infrastructure in place in so many companies now, but how do you make that most of it? And how do you make sure that the business, despite having all the operational tools, isn't in the dark around what's going on? It's a natural extension in these times to have everyone up on how to treat data properly, how to make sure that data is high quality and that everyone has access to the information they need. You need to make sure it's decision-quality information but then make sure everyone can get to it.

So what are the right tools to now expose the huge value in all that transactional information to everyone in the organizations? I always encourage IT folks to look at two sides of the coin: first, you have to have the product knowledge, so definitely brush up on BI technology, the SAP Business Objects portfolio and all that. You have to have that technical knowledge, understand the products, what their value is, how to best deploy that to the business, but brush up on the business side. Really understand and build a bridge to the business side to make sure you know what problems the business has to deal with. Really understand what the questions are that the business is grappling with.

Don't just ask for requirements. The business, a lot of times, has a hard time spelling it out. And, as we know, business and IT aren't always talking the same language. You have to brush up more on the business issues and questions and take a couple of courses on the marketing side, for example, if you're working with the marketing folks; on sales if you're working with the sales folks. Understand their issues.

When they come to you with questions, a lot of times they will say, "I need this, that and the other." Ask them what it is they're trying to accomplish. What do you need the outcome to be? What are you trying to prove or what are you trying to figure out here? Ask the people questions, make sure you understand the business side, and then, once you've helped them, I always encourage IT folks very much to take a marketing course or two. Understand how to spread the good news and also sell internally and market the value of what you're doing.

So all that combined, understanding both the IT and the business half and then doing some marketing around it, would really help every one of these employees to just do a stellar job and be not just well-respected, but be there for the long term. That's how I look at the needed skillsets and things that people working on SAP implementations ought to be doing right now.

Reed: I think that's great career advice. I see how that applies on the technical side, and one of the interesting discussions that I've seen and been a part of on SAP's online communities is the extent of what functional business folks should be doing in terms of BI and, of course, now Business Objects. When you look at these classic functional SAP skills profiles where you might have an SAP financials expert or an SAP human resources HCM expert who focuses in that area of the product line, how do you see their skills changing in the BI world and what should they be paying attention to?