Our Philosophy at FirstPrise can be summed up in this clip from the documentary: “Steve Jobs, the Lost Interview”.
We have built the foundations of our business to only work with “A players”. FirstPrise is synonymous with what’s known in the industry as “Platinum Level” .
We look for consultants that can take on more than one module. They can communicate well with the business. They show up, and they work hard for a sense of accomplishment as much as to earn a living. A Players enjoy working with other A players, and they perform in our opinion 50 to 100 times that of B and C players.
“In Software, and it used to be the case in Hardware too, the difference between average and the best is 50 to 1….maybe 100 to 1. Very few things in Life are like this. But what I was lucky enough to spend my life in, is like this. And so, I’ve built alot of my success off finding these truly gifted people, and not settling for being C players, but really going for the A players. I found something, when you get enough A players, when you go through the incredible work of finding these A players, they really like working with eachother, because they never had a chance to do that before. And they don’t want to work with B and C players, and so it becomes self-policing, and they only want to hire more A players, and so you build up these pockets of A players and it propogates….”
-Steve Jobs
In order to illustrate the dynamic range of an A level SAP Consultant vs. a B or C, think of in terms of carpenter that arrives each day to build a house. How good a carpenter is important, but it’s also important that they arrive with the right set of tools. You may have a master carpenter that arrives with merely a saw, while an average carpenter arrives with a complete set of power tools. You may end up with a better product with the master carpenter, but it may take years to finish the job, and it may be drastically more expensive.
Like a carpenter, an SAP Consultant arrives to a project with a set of tools: skill sets. Most consultants in the industry have transactional, master data, and configuration knowledge in their specific area of expertise, and basically stop there. These are the C players.
The B players arrive with other skill sets. They may have a broader knowledge of other modules, which allows them to better design an integrated process. They may be aware of user exits available to them, but won’t know how to program them . They may know the important tables that store the information in the system, and they can output the data to excel. They may have excellent ‘soft skills’ and speak well and engage with the customer well.
The A Players are those that bring a comprehensive set of tools to the job. They have 15 or more years experience. In addition to knowing the transactional, master data, and configuration necessary to excel in their particular module, they know the available user exits, and they can also program them . They can string together queries , and LSMW’s, in a matter of minutes and be able to analyze data to validate, correct, and solve problems. They have a catalog of knowledge of how many other companies have leveraged SAP. They have excellent ‘soft skills’ and work well with the client engagement.
FirstPrise is made up of A players. Our brand is synonymous with delivering the value of what an A Player brings to your engagement.
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