In this fourth episode of ASUG Talks: Can­did Career Con­ver­sa­tions, sea­son 2, we talk with Amy Her, Asso­ciate Part­ner with AscendN. 

A full tran­script follows:

Lau­rel Nelson-Rowe:

Today I’m joined by Amy Her, Asso­ciate Part­ner with AscendN. Wel­come to ASUG Talks, Amy.

Amy Her:

Thanks for hav­ing me, Lau­rel. Super excit­ed to be here.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Yeah, it’s a great day and a great con­ver­sa­tion to come. But before we get to those career details, we’d like to take a step back with a cou­ple of ques­tions about your back­ground. Where did you grow up, and did that affect you in want­i­ng to become a pro­fes­sion­al, and if so, how?

Her:

I grew up in the Twin Cities, in Min­neso­ta, and I think it def­i­nite­ly did affect me as a pro­fes­sion­al. ​“Min­neso­ta nice” is a real thing. As you’re pump­ing gas, for those five min­utes you’re pump­ing gas, you learn about the per­son next to you whole life. And it’s such a whole­some, gen­uine con­ver­sa­tion that it real­ly has trans­lat­ed into who I am as a pro­fes­sion­al, because every­one that I meet, I have these gen­uine con­ver­sa­tions with, no direc­tion or no inten­tion behind it.

And just hav­ing these won­der­ful, whole­some moments to get to know peo­ple, and when there’s oppor­tu­ni­ties to help, I’m will­ing to do that. And I feel like Min­nesotans def­i­nite­ly are always very neigh­bor­ly, very will­ing to help, and I think that’s trans­lat­ed across into my pro­fes­sion­al world.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Into your pro­fes­sion­al life. And along the same lines, what val­ues and prin­ci­ples from your child­hood have con­tributed to your career and the pro­fes­sion­al that you are today?

Her:

Well, I came from an extreme­ly large fam­i­ly. I have five broth­ers, four old­er than me. So my par­ents were obvi­ous­ly very busy, had their hands full. And so we were taught to be con­sid­er­ate of each oth­er, treat each oth­er how we want­ed to be treat­ed, and help where we could.

What­ev­er we want­ed, we had to work hard for it. There were no hand­outs. And then with my dad being a mechan­ic, he was a tin­ker­er by nature. So the val­ue there was that, ​“Always try to fig­ure it out your­self first, before you ask for help. And obvi­ous­ly if you need help, ask for it.” So I think those are the biggest val­ues and prin­ci­ples that I see in my every­day pro­fes­sion­al life. How I con­duct myself, always being con­sid­er­ate of oth­ers, and help where I can, and fig­ure it out first. And if I can’t, then I’ll tap into my resources.

Nel­son-Rowe:

A tin­ker­er, you had a mod­el tinkerer?

Her:

I did.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Did that influ­ence how you want­ed to pur­sue a career in infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and did you always want to pur­sue a career in IT?

Her:

That’s inter­est­ing. I did not actu­al­ly have any plans to pur­sue a career in IT, although the rest of my fam­i­ly mem­bers stum­bled into their IT careers. But my first taste in IT and tin­ker­ing, I worked as a cell phone tech­ni­cian in col­lege, where I actu­al­ly broke apart cell phones and replaced hard­ware, sol­dered things onto the moth­er­board. And it was real­ly cool because when I first start­ed, I mean I was replac­ing rub­ber key­pads on a flip phone, and by the time I left the job I was trou­bleshoot­ing soft­ware on the smart­phones that had no key­pads. So it was very cool.

Nel­son-Rowe:

And so that was a lit­tle bit of an expo­sure to IT.

Her:

I most­ly stum­bled into the IT world just from var­i­ous dif­fer­ent roles that I’ve had, and just grew from there.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Do you still fix phones?

Her:

I fix my own phones and I’ve saved many a friend from their cracked screens, from hav­ing to replace their cell phones, but I don’t do it anymore.

Nel­son-Rowe:

What was your first true IT role with SAP tech­nol­o­gy involved?

Her:

I actu­al­ly was first exposed to SAP was when I worked for a con­sult­ing firm that pro­vid­ed IT solu­tions. And one of the solu­tions they pro­vid­ed was SAP secu­ri­ty. Through my inter­ac­tions with those SAP folks that I start­ed to learn just the vast­ness of SAP solu­tions. I saw only one small mod­ule and real­ized there were numer­ous mod­ules and numer­ous dif­fer­ent capa­bil­i­ties that SAP had.

Nel­son-Rowe:

And so that was a first step in this SAP world. Would you say that over time you’ve been a career oppor­tunist? Were you always tapped for roles? Are you a hybrid?

Her:

Yeah, I’m a big plan­ner. I had a path that I want­ed to take, and a path that I had carved for myself. But as most peo­ple know, life does­n’t always pan out the way you intend. So since then I’ve tak­en oppor­tu­ni­ties that were put before me, and oppor­tu­ni­ties that I nev­er real­ly con­sid­ered myself for, but I found it inter­est­ing, and I had the right skill set, so I fig­ured, ​“Why not give it a try?” So yeah, I think I’m def­i­nite­ly more of a hybrid per­son when it comes to the career path.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So we’re going to talk about that career path, but we’re going to chal­lenge you. ASUG Talks likes light­ning round ques­tions, so here, in two min­utes or less, share your career high­lights in the world of IT and SAP technology.

Her:

After I got my col­lege degree, I start­ed in mar­ket­ing. I did oper­a­tions, finance, and then I final­ly fell into IT. The biggest high­lights, it’s kind of hard to pick one spe­cif­ic one out, because in the realm of IT, there’s so many dif­fer­ent kinds of projects that you can get involved in. The biggest ones that stand out to me were projects that involved folks from dif­fer­ent divi­sions, dif­fer­ent depart­ments of the com­pa­ny, that came togeth­er to accom­plish a large under­tak­ing that affect­ed the entire company.

An exam­ple that comes to mind is when we did a big process own­er­ship con­ver­sion dur­ing a merg­er and acqui­si­tion, we had to take a whole HR process, IT com­po­nents includ­ed, and gath­ered all the com­po­nents that we need­ed to make sure that it was a seam­less trans­fer over, so our folks did­n’t get lost in the mix. So that was a real­ly cool project because we worked with busi­ness users, we worked with IT, very tech­ni­cal IT folks. We worked with HR folks that did­n’t know any­thing about the sys­tems or the process­es and hav­ing to under­stand how they use the tools.

And then anoth­er big project was imple­ment­ing a new sys­tem that improved effi­cien­cy in the process flow and the work stream, just gath­er­ing tech­ni­cal, non-tech­ni­cal folks, and get­ting their input to make sure that we were able to imple­ment this new sys­tem, with­out any big holdups or any big obsta­cles. You take the time to real­ly get into the details, and make sure you don’t leave any I’s undot­ted or T’s uncrossed, when you see a seam­less imple­men­ta­tion of it and there’s real­ly no big rework, it’s real­ly a big accom­plish­ment. And I feel like those are the biggest high­lights for my career that I can pinpoint.

Nel­son-Rowe:

On those two exam­ples, what role did you play?

Her:

I played more of a liai­son between dif­fer­ent divi­sions. I did lead the recruit­ing side, how we used the tools, the data man­age­ment, data migra­tion from our recruit­ing tools over to the HR sys­tems. And then anoth­er one that I did was I kind of led the project, I vet­ted the new sys­tem, had them come and present to our stake­hold­ers, and then decide from there which sys­tem we want­ed to go for­ward with, and then start the imple­men­ta­tion process from there.

Nel­son-Rowe:

It sounds like a lot of diplo­ma­cy through these activities.

Her:

Yes, very peo­ple-ori­ent­ed roles for sure.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So as you’ve reflect­ed back on career to date, what’s been the favorite job role or respon­si­bil­i­ty so far?

Her:

So far I would have to say, it’s hard to pick because there’s so many dif­fer­ent aspects of roles that you like, but my favorite job is prob­a­bly the one I’m cur­rent­ly in. And no, it was not a paid endorse­ment to say that. No, I real­ly do love this job, main­ly because I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet new peo­ple every day. I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to build rela­tion­ships, and then ulti­mate­ly con­nect these peo­ple to each other.

It’s incred­i­bly sat­is­fy­ing when I can help, say, a can­di­date find a right oppor­tu­ni­ty, whether they’ve been laid off or if they’re just look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow or piv­ot their career, or maybe a con­sul­tant look­ing for anoth­er contract.

And then on the oth­er side of that, a client hav­ing a major chal­lenge that they have to work on, and hav­ing the exact right per­son with the exact right skill sets for them to take on that chal­lenge is real­ly sat­is­fy­ing, when you could see just two very hap­py par­ties join up and have a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial relationship.

Nel­son-Rowe:

And then is this role involved with plac­ing peo­ple in SAP tech­nol­o­gy projects specifically?

Her:

So a big chunk of what we do at AscendN is we work with SAP con­sul­tants, and we actu­al­ly help with SAP imple­men­ta­tion part­ners. So we work with clients who are direct­ly imple­ment­ing SAP, or imple­men­ta­tion part­ners who are help­ing clients imple­ment SAP. And we have a huge net­work of SAP pro­fes­sion­als that we’ve worked with for the last 15 years, that come on and off projects, that we know and trust. And we’ve had a great work­ing rela­tion­ship with them, and we’ve deployed them on these projects.

We’ve also done exec­u­tive search­es for com­pa­nies that are look­ing for folks to join them per­ma­nent­ly as well. So yeah, I mean through con­ver­sa­tions, you nev­er know when you meet the right per­son for the right opportunity.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So you’ve been there and done that on SAP projects, and now you’re plac­ing oth­er pro­fes­sion­als into those roles and responsibilities.

Her:

Cor­rect.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So you’re in your favorite right now. On the flip side, what’s been the most chal­leng­ing role and respon­si­bil­i­ty in your past life?

Her:

All these tough ques­tions, it’s real­ly hard to pin­point. I feel like any role that requires you to have to learn a new skill, or to have some vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and say, ​“Hey, I don’t know how to do that,” I think is kind of a chal­leng­ing place to be.

But one that specif­i­cal­ly comes to mind was my job as a finan­cial ana­lyst. I was not a num­bers per­son at all. It was def­i­nite­ly a huge weak­ness of mine. I bare­ly made it through my col­lege cours­es, my col­lege math cours­es, but it real­ly made me focus on some­thing that I did­n’t feel con­fi­dent about, a skill I did­n’t feel con­fi­dent about.

It made me real­ly hone in and focus on a weak­ness, and taught me to be com­fort­able with mak­ing mis­takes, and learn­ing from those mis­takes. And then also lever­ag­ing tools and resources to help over­come any short­com­ings that I might have. So, need­less to say, I got real­ly good at Excel in that role.

Nel­son-Rowe:

What’s been the best career deci­sion that you made, and why was it the best, and what did you learn from that deci­sion process?

Her:

The best deci­sion I’ve made to date is prob­a­bly leav­ing my old com­pa­ny and join­ing this one. That is because it’s always scary to go some­where new and start a new posi­tion. But it’s extra scary when you’ve been some­where for a long time: you have estab­lished rela­tion­ships, you know the busi­ness process and pro­ce­dures in and out. You’re a sub­ject-mat­ter expert in your area. And leav­ing that com­fort zone to some­thing that’s new and dif­fer­ent was incred­i­bly scary. It was a big chal­lenge for me because it’s a com­plete­ly new envi­ron­ment, new role, new skills. I took the risk and I did it, and it’s been just an amaz­ing, incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence so far.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Is there any­thing in your career, either project or career path, that you’d like to do over, and why would you like to do it over again?

Her:

The one thing that real­ly, real­ly stuck out to me was not tak­ing a risk because of the fear of fail­ure. So I actu­al­ly had just start­ed at a com­pa­ny, I was about five or six months in, and a man­age­ment posi­tion had come open, and my man­ag­er came in and said, ​“Hey, did you put your name in for the role?” And I said, ​“No, I’m brand new, I just start­ed, I don’t think I’m ready for it.” And so she’s like, ​“Okay.” And she took my word for it, but I even­tu­al­ly end­ed up in that man­age­ment role a year and a half lat­er. Once I was in that role, I real­ized that I should have just tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty, and tak­en the risk, of maybe I was­n’t 100% ready for it, but I would’ve learned along the way, because I did just fine in that position.

So I think if I could have done it again, I would’ve tak­en a moment to pause and think about whether or not I should have just thrown my name in the mix and see how the inter­view process went, and if they thought I was ready for it, regard­less if I did­n’t feel that way or not.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Is there any time or oppor­tu­ni­ty or job that you went after and did­n’t get, and what might that have taught you?

Her:

I want­ed to be a fight­er pilot, but appar­ent­ly I did­n’t reach the height minimum.

No, in all seri­ous­ness, I feel like it’s hard to remem­ber a job that I real­ly want­ed and did­n’t get, because I felt like if it was­n’t meant for me, it was­n’t meant for me. And the biggest les­son learned was there was a rea­son why I did­n’t get that job, whether I did­n’t have the right skill set, or I did­n’t fit the team dynam­ic, but what it did allow was for me to get the roles that I have got­ten in the past, and that have shaped me to who I am today.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Great, great. Are there aspects of edu­ca­tion train­ing, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment that have been essen­tial for your suc­cess in your career path?

Her:

Yeah, I’ve tak­en dif­fer­ent cours­es and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, but I felt like the best expe­ri­ences for growth and edu­ca­tion was get­ting hands on and learn­ing from oth­er folks, whether it’s events like ASUG, or dif­fer­ent train­ing events where you can col­lab­o­rate on a mock project. I think there’s some­thing real­ly incred­i­ble and valu­able in learn­ing from your peers, through their obsta­cles and their expe­ri­ences and their chal­lenges that they’ve over­come. And it gives you a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on things, too.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So we’re going to go to a next light­ning round, two min­utes or less, to explain what are the three things that you’ve learned from being in this field of IT and SAP tech­nol­o­gy, that peo­ple should know as they’re con­sid­er­ing careers in IT with SAP?

Her:

Yeah. The IT world, as big as it is, it is a very tight knit com­mu­ni­ty. You’re nev­er alone. There is plen­ty of SAP users that are very eager to help each oth­er through chal­lenges and talk about dif­fer­ent obsta­cles that they’ve overcome.

Anoth­er thing is that you may think you’re going through a very unique chal­lenge, but more often than not there’s some­one out there that’s already gone through that same exact chal­lenge and could help you through with approach­es and ideas. All it takes is just hav­ing those con­ver­sa­tions and ini­ti­at­ing those col­lab­o­ra­tive moments, where you can talk to each oth­er about it.

And then anoth­er thing is that I feel like the under­ly­ing tone to every­thing I’m say­ing is that peo­ple are such great assets in gen­er­al, when it comes to resources, when it comes to edu­ca­tion, knowl­edge shar­ing. They are just the great­est asset to orga­ni­za­tions. And orga­ni­za­tions that val­ue those folks will keep them inspired, moti­vat­ed, and def­i­nite­ly invest in training.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Has it been a chal­lenge for you to get out and find peo­ple who’ve been help­ful? Some­times IT peo­ple are asso­ci­at­ed with being intro­verts. I sense you’re not an intro­vert, but has it been chal­leng­ing to find the right peo­ple and the right network?

Her:

Some­times it could be. I feel like the SAP com­mu­ni­ty, though, is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. They are a lot more open, and open to talk about dif­fer­ent things that they’ve come across, and will­ing to learn from each oth­er. Say if you’re talk­ing devel­op­ers, out­side of SAP, maybe, but in gen­er­al, SAP, I feel like it does a real­ly good job of cre­at­ing that community.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Across indus­tries, and across jobs and func­tions. What are you most pas­sion­ate about in what you do now? What dri­ves that passion?

Her:

Well, I think the bot­tom line is being able to help peo­ple, being able to con­nect the right peo­ple at the right time. And I’m just lucky enough to get to do that for a liv­ing. And that’s not just for IT in gen­er­al, it’s every­thing in life. If I come across peo­ple that may be inter­est­ed in a non­prof­it that some­one else I know is run­ning, I def­i­nite­ly would love to con­nect those peo­ple. And there’s so many dif­fer­ent avenues that what I do allows me to just reach out beyond IT, and beyond the pro­fes­sion­al realm of my life.

Nel­son-Rowe:

What kind of feed­back, by the way, do you get from those pro­fes­sion­als that you place in great positions?

Her:

A lot of times it becomes a long-term rela­tion­ship, because it’s not just a quick, ​“Oh hey, you have skills A, B, and C. This per­son­’s look­ing for skills A, B, and C.” It’s real­ly tak­ing the time to get to know them, and who they are, and what they val­ue, on both sides. When a hir­ing man­ager’s look­ing for some­one, not only do they want cer­tain skill sets, but they want this type of per­son­al­i­ty. And so I feel like I real­ly get to know these folks and the reac­tions, to answer your ques­tion, the reac­tions I get from them, it’s not so much a reac­tion, it’s just more of a long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship, and then there’s lots of trust there, so we can work with each oth­er over time and it’s not just a one-time thing.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So that’s the pos­i­tive and the pas­sion and the feed­back. What’s most dif­fi­cult about what you do now?

Her:

Most dif­fi­cult would def­i­nite­ly be tim­ing, because I might know the exact right per­son you’re look­ing for, but they may not be avail­able at the time, or the project comes along when oth­er folks are unavail­able for what­ev­er, if they’re work­ing on anoth­er project or if they’re deal­ing with some fam­i­ly things. So it’s tim­ing, for sure, I think is the most dif­fi­cult thing.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Does the pace of tech­nol­o­gy change also chal­lenge you and the peo­ple that you’re attempt­ing to place in positions?

Her:

I feel like most folks in IT, espe­cial­ly in regards to SAP, there’s always this con­tin­u­ous edu­ca­tion that is part of the cul­ture of IT. And I don’t real­ly see those chal­lenges because most of the folks that I inter­act with are always on top of that con­tin­u­ous edu­ca­tion. When a brand new solu­tion, or a brand new tech­nol­o­gy comes out, it’s going to be hard to find folks that have tak­en the ini­tia­tive and tak­en the train­ing right away, but I feel like most folks are so resource­ful and on top of con­tin­u­ing to learn, that it’s not real­ly that big of a challenge.

Nel­son-Rowe:

And is the demand for SAP IT pro­fes­sion­als grow­ing? Do you have that sense?

Her:

Yeah, we’ve seen a surge in it in the last year. It real­ly was a can­di­date’s mar­ket as well. There were so many oppor­tu­ni­ties that can­di­dates had their pick­ing, but it ebbs and flows with every­thing else. Some­times there’s a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty, and oth­er times not as much, just depend­ing on what com­pa­nies are going through and what their bud­gets allow.

Nel­son-Rowe:

As you reflect back, what are you most proud of across your pro­fes­sion­al life so far?

Her:

I’m a bit of a per­fec­tion­ist. So for me the things I’m most proud of is actu­al­ly allow­ing myself to make mis­takes, to, what do they call, fail for­ward. So mak­ing those mis­takes and learn­ing from them and grow­ing from it. It is ter­ri­bly fright­en­ing to not be able to deliv­er 110% all the time. But as hard as it is to take those lessons, it is kind of great to see that, look­ing back at myself say 20 years ago, it’s just great to see the growth from there, from all those mis­takes that I’ve made and learned from.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Either from the feed­back that you get from clients placed in roles, or from your own expe­ri­ence, are there things that you’d like to change about the field of IT and the field of SAP IT?

Her:

Well, I’ve heard a lot of my clients say that they would wish that there was a lit­tle bit more trans­paren­cy with­in SAP – how they present their solu­tions, and where they are in that life­cy­cle, the solu­tions being devel­oped, and then trans­paren­cy in plans, pric­ing, just because there’s a lot of hid­den fees lat­er on down the road.

And then SAP’s future roadmap, so that com­pa­nies can plan accord­ing­ly as well. And also the num­ber of acronyms that they have. With­in SAP, we can bare­ly keep up with the ones that are already there. So I feel like when­ev­er there’s a new solu­tion or a new tool, they have a new acronym to come with it. 

Nel­son-Rowe:

So to your last point in some recent announce­ments, they lit­er­al­ly had infor­ma­tion about, ​“It used to be called this, and now it’s called this.” And then that was very, very help­ful. If they could always give that kind of primer along with what they’re doing, it would pro­vide for greater clar­i­ty and transparency,

Her:

Like a cheat sheet or some­thing, of acronyms, would be great. A glossary.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Glos­sary. What have been the most help­ful resources that you’ve used and uti­lized, and advise your clients to use along the way? And you men­tioned ASUG and oth­ers as well.

Her:

Yeah, I mean ulti­mate­ly, obvi­ous­ly ASUG is a great com­mu­ni­ty for peo­ple to join and be a part of, because I feel like the most help­ful resources are peo­ple. I keep com­ing back to that, but I tru­ly believe it’s the knowl­edge base. Train­ing can only cov­er so much, where with peo­ple, they’ve expe­ri­enced so many dif­fer­ent things, and have tack­led so many dif­fer­ent kinds of prob­lems, and cre­at­ed so many dif­fer­ent solu­tions. And I feel like that’s def­i­nite­ly been the most help­ful resources that I’ve encoun­tered along the way.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Great, great. So your last light­ning round ques­tion: what are the three best pieces of advice that you’d give to those, either con­sid­er­ing their career in IT and SAP tools, or along the path of IT and SAP? What are the pieces of advice?

Her:

I would say, first and fore­most, con­tin­u­ous edu­ca­tion. Take advan­tage of attend­ing events, like the ones that ASUG puts on. They include train­ing events about what’s new and what’s going on with­in SAP. They have extra tid­bits from clients about dif­fer­ent cas­es they’ve been through, or expe­ri­ences that they can share. You get to meet oth­er folks in the industry.

So to the sec­ond point, get out there and net­work. You can def­i­nite­ly meet some real­ly inter­est­ing folks, where maybe you can help them or they can help you and open up oppor­tu­ni­ties to collaborate.

And then my last tip of advice with SAP, in par­tic­u­lar, is if you’re start­ing out in it, learn as much as you can tech­ni­cal­ly, func­tion­al­ly about dif­fer­ent areas of SAP. Wear var­i­ous hats, but at some point find a niche that you find that you enjoy, and plays on your strengths, whether it be BTP, GTS, trea­sury, IBP. I’ve seen so many folks that spe­cial­ize in those areas that become very valu­able folks to the orga­ni­za­tion, or to any projects that they par­tic­i­pate in.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So spe­cial­iza­tion, and grow that net­work, and get out there and learn.

Her:

Yeah. Yes.

Nel­son-Rowe:

So we’ve come to the wrap up ques­tion. If you could have that one super­pow­er to be bet­ter at your job and more suc­cess­ful in your career, what would it be?

Her:

So I wish there was a way for me to make fly­ing work as a super­pow­er, but more prac­ti­cal, I wish that my one super­pow­er would be pic­ture-per­fect mem­o­ry, so I could recall all the right peo­ple at the right moment. When I’m talk­ing to some­one who might be need­ing some­one exact­ly like that per­son, it’s kind of like a mov­ing puz­zle piece. I wish I had a per­fect recall of the per­fect piece to put into that spot when it becomes available.

Nel­son-Rowe:

Sounds like a database.

Her:

Yeah, it sure does.

Nel­son-Rowe:

A for­ev­er data­base. All right. Those per­fect peo­ple. So any­thing else? 

Her:

No, I feel like I’ve talked a lot about myself, so…

Nel­son-Rowe:

Shar­ing with your­self and con­vers­ing about your career, that’s the point. So thanks very much for join­ing us today.

Her:

Well thank you so much for hav­ing me.