Kurt Goldsmith Email Address

Enterprise Business Solution Architect

HD Supply is a wholesale company which serves as a industrial distributor that provides maintenance, repair and operations, infrastructure and power, specialty construction to serve contractors, maintenance professionals, home builders etc.

There are many SAP Business Solution Architects. We are each unique. Where we are common is in our need to be good listeners. To be able to speak to business users in their language and to tech experts in theirs. To have both a wide breadth and deep depth at SAP and non-SAP functionalities, methodologies, objectives, and challenges. And, to be committed to continuous learning. We all have deep experience with leading requirement gathering, configuration, solution design, multi-system design, integration, functional spec writing, training, process improvement, and support. Where we differ is in how we bring those skills to market. How we view our role. There are basically two ways to innovate and bring value. (1) To Build It. (2) To Liberate It. I am much more in the (2) camp. Over 25 years, I have become extremely proficient at finding low-effort, high-reward opportunities with the SAP scope that an organization already has. In particular, with an SAP site that has become over time quite custom, I have an extensive track record of improving end-user outcomes by removing (not by adding) code and/or configuration variables. This skill set fits very well with optimizations, upgrades, mergers, and with reducing Break-Fix Request average open ticket counts / response times. But, it also brings a lot of benefit to the search for newer software opportunities, in particular with the written content in an RFP. Although comfortable across business domains, my main focus has been in all Accounting-impact business processes: Order to Cash (OTC), Procure to Pay (PTP), Plan to Stock (PTS), Record to Report (RTR), Period-End Closing, Year-End Closing, and Integrated Planning. At the end of the day, all I.T. projects and proposals have to exist in a world where we estimate an effort, a benefit, and a certainty in outcome. SAP software tends to bring more complexity to those questions than any other type of business automation. If I am performing the SAP Business Solution Architect role correctly, the answers to those three questions become: Half. Double. More.