Achille Steffano sent a message to James Goodnight that said:
Dear mr. Goodnight
Iâm working in UBIS IT Solution, a department of Unicredit Business Integrated Solutions, that for sure within our Group is not the most relevant department for SAS institute but nevertheless it has an interesting history with SAS for our Internal BI tools with an overall yearly recurring cost of about 1 mio eur (currently under renegotiation with our PO).
As per my user knowledge of SAS tools and my consultancy experience, last year I was appointed as internal SAS Senior Advisor with challenging goals: to design strategy for evolution of BI & EGRC internal tools, to improve the quality of delivery and (whatâs new?) ⦠to reduce Cost or at least inefficiencies.
After one year I really have difficulties to see a successful story and now I take the opportunity to knock also this âdoorâ that you opened on internet for sharing some points on which I really trust to get suggestion also from your side
Itâs definitively clear to me that responsibilities are not only on SAS side but also on internal team and on System integration partner, beside we are not looking for the guilty but for identification of corrective measure in order to reach the challenging goals
Let me try to share 3 key pain points
1) Cooperation between Partners
Six month ago we have introduced a new delivery model with Accenture - our Golden partner â as prime contractor. As of today we still experience lack of communication and conflicts between the two partner. It appears that SAS prefers to run alone. This has impact on Cost, inefficiencies and Quality
2) Quality of delivery & Customer Satisfaction & Usability
Quality of delivery is partially improving but still with relevant overrun and with critical customizations of the tools that will reflect on further cost in maintenance. Lack of standard utilized in implementation, we are not sure to use the tools properly
We are getting very often critical feedback from our Customers in term of lack of usability of solution implemented on SAS. In some cases we get a refuse, in other we had to set-up a recovery plan. It seem that we are still working as in the past without considering the up-to-date expectation of Customers in terms of User-Experience.
3) Support on tools old and new
o We are experiencing difficulties in definition of an effective strategy of evolution on VA, EGRC and FM. New commitment recently declared but not yet effectively in place
o Lack of internal capacity and capability force to look for support from Solution Expert for correct design and utilization the tools: itâs difficult to have the right support from SAS Solution experts and also our partner (Accenture) has difficulties to provide required skill
o Time to market of SAS Standard support for bugs on the tools could be improved (e.g more than six months for bug fixing on standard BI tools like WRS and BI Dashboard)
o Reaction to our request of new features on the tools appears for sure not aggressive (and if we stress comparison with feature from competitors reaction is very defensive)
Thanks a lot in advance for your time and for your attention.
Looking forward for your feedback
Regards
Achille Steffano
Italy
+393351831624
