How SAP Consultants Try To Rip Off Brightwork Research

Executive Summary

• Lying and cheating are so endemic in SAP consulting firms that they constantly reach out to Brightwork Research to get free advice.

Introduction

SAP consulting firms lie so frequently it is hard to keep up with all of their scams. One of the common scams is to pretend that they have capabilities that they do not have. How do we know this? Well, for one, we have subcontracted to many consulting firms and seen them lie about this with impunity and no guilt. Secondly, consulting firms routinely reach out to Brightwork and try to extract free information from us.

One such example is as follows.

Hi,

We are a small German Consultant Company focused on SAP Technology in Regards to BW reporting & planning.

Just read your article about IBP: Is SAP IBP Good? – Brightwork Research & Analysis

In regards to one of our customers thinking about moving his BW-based S&OP-Planning towards the IBP-planning, I am searching for points that should be checked in advance.

So do you have maybe the biggest pain-points that IBP has and maybe other weaknesses the customer should first check & test to ensure that IBP is really what fullfills his requirements in regards to S&O?

That would help a lot. Also maybe a rough estimation on licensing costs, both: for the developer users as well as for the later planning users.

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Klaus
_____________________________________________________

S4-Analytics GmbH & Co. KG
Klaus Reiner
Gründer und Geschäftsführer
Im Nieber 4
D-88090 Immenstaad am Bodensee

This type of email is amazing because it assumes that Brightwork Research & Analysis should provide free advice to S4-Analytics, that then S4-Analytics will then lie to their client that they came up with it. It is doubtful that S4-Analytics informed their client that they do not have the background to answer the question and that they hit Google to try to find information so they could present it as their own.

Interestingly notice how specific some of the information that Klaus is requesting.

That would help a lot. Also maybe a rough estimation on licensing costs, both: for the developer users as well as for the later planning users.

Really. Klaus would like us to provide free estimation for them as well? Simply amazing. S-4 Analytics is a consulting firm with zero supply chain planning expertise that is presenting itself as a subject matter expert in a topic they know nothing about. They then reach out to people who do know and ask them to do their work for them.

Using Positivity To Extract Information

Notice how uplifting the email is. All of the emails we receive looking for free information are like this. Through positivity, the sender of the emails thinks that we will disregard that we do not know them. Oddly, a person working for an SAP consulting firm would think we would provide them with free information that they would then turn around and bill a company.

Now lets move on to example number two.

Guidehouse Knows Nothing About Forecasting, But Still Gets Project From the US Navy

We received this email from a managing consultant at Guidehouse.

Hope your day is going well. Reaching out to see if its possible to grab 30min of your time.

My team is struggling with an SAP Auto Modeling issue for the Army Enterprise and quite honestly has no idea where to find an expert to point them in the right direction on this. I thought maybe a quick discussion with you (you are an expert on this) might help. The Army has no idea and we feel it is doable to use SAP Auto Modeling for the Army enterprise but are getting hung up. Sometimes an outside view can see what those of us stuck in it cannot which is why I’m reaching out.

If you can give us 30 minutes, I’d be extremely grateful.
To focus the discussion – Army Material Command (AMC) is using SAP 713.17 CM.

1. How to set up the Best fit model to fully utilize the tool to select the best forecast model.
2. How to run the model to ensure we get valid / believable results. I have read that the model will produce bad results if it is run in the background.

Any resources you could point us to would be helpful too. We are really struggling on this.

Thanks for taking time to read this. I appreciate any help you can offer on this. We are at a point where we don’t know where else to go so I figured it never hurts to ask. Your book and Brightworks have helped to this point. Ask the expert.

Notice the same upbeat tone. However, the issue is the same, but she admits to using the Brightwork website as a resource. However, now she expects even more advice for free. This is our response to this person.

My name is Cynthia and I administer Shaun’s LinkedIn account and inbound correspondence through the website. So one of the problems with having a popular website is that we end up with a lot of requests for assistance, even from hedge funds to help them do analysis. Companies will contact us that have billions under management, or CostCo or similar companies with significant resources, however, the similarity is they have absolutely no money for anything but can use our help for free. They tell us they need free support because bringing in new consultants is “political.”

Because of this a few years ago we had to put into place a policy whereby we charge for anything like this. Shaun has done a lot of work in the past on auto modeling. My recommendation is to get funding for an initial research project where we review the settings, check the requirements, and then provide a recommendation.

So observe what we are saying, that we constantly receive free inquires from companies with enormous financial resources. Notice how this person from Guidehouse responds.

Cynthia,
I appreciate your time. Thanks for responding.
Definitely understand your perspective. This was a hail mary which it appears failed.

Unfortunately, I’m not a big company or hedge fund. The US Army is not going to do a research project for this – they’ll cancel the project and move any associated funding to a higher profile project. Never hurts to ask for help. At least I know I tried all avenue’s.

Thank you for your candid response. I wish you and Shaun well.
Have a great day.

Guidehouse is not a big company? The US Army is not a big company? Let us review Guidehouse by showing screenshots from their website.

Guidehouse states on their website that they have 12,000 employees. How is this not a large company? This is her current employer. There is no other way to look at this than as a lie.

Notice that there is nothing on their website about supply chain. Why does Guidehouse have this contract with the Navy? 

Conclusion

Observe that in both examples consulting firms sought to use our information to fake their knowledge to their clients. Notice in both cases they have no experience in any of the subjects they are asking us questions of on their websites.

We have yet to run into an honest SAP consulting firm. This is just yet another in a long history of consulting companies reaching out that are deceiving their clients about their capabilities and their knowledge.