SAP Enable Now Implementation - Author Coaching

Let’s make content!

Software implementation is a serious business. This also applies to a learning platform like SAP Enable Now. Successfully implementing Enable Now requires the right people to be involved, strategic decisions to be taken and certain prerequisites to be met. My Enable Now implementation strategy consists of 7 steps, which I would like to explain in 7 blog posts. Written from a consultant’s perspective and based on my personal experience.

SAP Enable Now Implementation Approach

This post focuses on coaching authors. After the author training, key users (or other members of the project team) dive into creating learning content. And no matter how good my author training was, most questions come up when people start really working with Enable Now. The presentation I used in the training covers a lot, but has not all the answers. For me, coaching and supporting authors is an essential part of an Enable Now implementation.

Shoulder to shoulder

Call me old-fashioned, but in my opinion, helping people and answering questions can be best done by standing next to them. However, it’s sometimes difficult to organize. Personally, I don't believe in ‘fragmented’ content creation, where you quickly create a bit of eLearning when you have half an hour free between two meetings. I don't think that is a very efficient way of working. I believe in planning fixed time slots for content creation. It gives focus. If it's possible I would even like to have all authors physically together in the same room. And then I just join them during these timeslots for coaching and support. In case there are no questions at all, no worries, I have plenty of other work to do.

However, this requires discipline. From authors, not to schedule other appointments during these blocks. And from other teams not to continuously interrupt with the well-known short and oh-so-urgent questions. Project management has an important role here. I'm convinced that if you plan fixed blocks for the various project activities (learning content, data migration, testing, etc.), effectiveness increases dramatically. Unfortunately, too often I see a lot of attention for testing and data, while training is at the bottom of the priority list. This makes coaching authors very difficult and that inevitably affects the quality of learning content. If you consider it less important than all other topics, why invest in a product like SAP Enable Now?

Question Time

Another strategy could be to facilitate online consultation hours. E.g. every afternoon between 13:00 and 14:00. Compare it to the weekly Question Time in the Dutch Parliament at Tuesday in which MPs have the opportunity to raise questions to the government. During Question Time, it is exclusively “question and answer”. Interruptions and proposals are not allowed. It’s not a debate. Same here. I don’t need authors submitting their questions to me in advance. Authors don't need to reserve a time slot within this consultation hour. I thinks it fits perfectly when authors work on different locations. It offers a structure and dedicated moments for asking questions. It's a setup that works well in an online environment. If you as an author don't have questions, there is no need to dial in and you can continue the work you were doing. In worst case, you just missed the consultation hour and have to wait a day with your question.

Of course, there are questions that even I cannot answer immediately. Because it requires a bit of research. Because of the complexity in the answer. Or because there's more going on than initially suspected. I will follow up on these individually. Perhaps as a fixed rule: if a question cannot be answered within 5 minutes, I will follow up outside Question Time. To prevent the same question recurring every day, we could set up something like an Authoring FAQ.

Master Author

In a previous post, I've already written about roles and responsibilities. When we are at the stage of coaching authors, I immediately think of the Master Author. Like any application, Enable Now requires some management. I consider it a combination of functional management and application management. The functional part is the bridge between the application and its users, with main goal of maximizing usability and ease of use. The application part is the more technical functioning of the software. Master Author is supposed to be the point of contact for problems and questions after go-live anyway. And also the designated person to train new authors. Why not pull this forward and have the coaching primarily done by the Master Author, with the Enable Now consultant as backup? An important advantage is that this person knows the authors much better than I do, and is much closer to them.

If you want to do this well, the Master Author must be able to grow into his or her role gradually. This can be done, for example, by assigning an active role in the various workshops and by participating in the author training sessions. Coaching authors can be part of this as well. By also serving as the contact person between the Enable Now consultant and the technical team, topics such as Single Sign On and the integration of SAP Companion can be addressed more easily.

Conclusion

It’s an open door when I say that coaching a large team is more difficult than coaching a smaller team. Personally, I prefer 5 people who create a lot of learning content full-time for a few weeks, rather than 25 people who create a handful of objects spread over 2 months. Faster learning curve, more consistency in the material, easier to coach. And therefore a better end result.

This was my final post in the series about how to effectively implement SAP Enable Now. My 7 steps explained in 7 posts. It’s obvious that every customer and every project is different, but these steps are the standard components of my approach. After all, there are always certain choices to be made. There are always templates needed. And there are always authors to be trained and coached. Size and complexity of a project will not result in a completely different approach!

Let’s Enable!

Transform an SAP project into a success that goes beyond time and budget. Make your SAP solution is truly adopted by your people. Enable Now is SAP's platform to accelerate the development of training materials and support effective training and support of employees. A foundation for creating and optimizing learning content. Not only for SAP, but for other applications as well. The knowledge and experience of Let's Enable guarantee utilization of the full potential of Enable Now.