Thread 1 – Explain your staffing choice.  You are the Vice President of Operations at a mid-size Chemical Company and your CEO has placed you in charge of a project to modernize all company systems using SAP.  You know your company and its current Business Processes very well.  You are presented with a list of people that you can have on your team BUT you can choose only two of these people.  The rest you will have to find and hire. The list follows Question 3 below.

Question 1: Which of two of these people would you choose? (Note:  There is not a “right answer” to this question.)
Question 2:  What criteria did you use to select these two people instead of one of the other people on the list? 
Question 3: Is there any person on this list that you would not allow on your project?

1. SAP Expert – This person is familiar with all the SAP components that will be used including all their functions, how to configure each component and how to install the component
2. Database Software Expert – This person has been the Database Administrator at two large companies that currently run the SAP software and was the person that installed ORACLE and configured it to run SAP at both companies.
3. Major Consulting Firm (Accenture, IBM, EDS etc.).  This firm offers to manage the project and provide most of the staffing.  The firm offers a project manager that has installed SAP in a mid-size chemical company previously. 
4. Project Management Expert – this person has successfully managed projects that installed SAP at three other companies (one bank, one automotive parts supplier, and one government agency).
5. Industry Expert – this person has worked in every management position in mid-size Chemical Companies.  He is a Chemical Engineer and has an MBA degree.
6. Quality Assurance Expert – this person has run the testing team on several successful SAP projects and is known to have caught major problems and suggested corrections to them.
7. Hardware Expert –This person knows how to size hardware and select and configure software. This person has a good working relationship with all the major hardware vendors, has installed Storage Area Networks and has managed the construction of several large data centers.

Thread 2 – Listen to and analyze the Itelligence presentation. Think about the following questions as you listen to the 1 hour and 3 minute Itelligence presentation. Then answer then in this thread.
Question 1: What did you learn from this presentation? (List two things that you learned. Then, list one additional thing that you learned that surprised you.)
Question 2: What value do you think the consultant that gave the presentation brings to an SAP project?
Question 3: What (if anything) surprised you about this presentation/