Headquartered in Miami, Florida, US, Answerthink is the SAP division of The Hackett Group and a United VARs member for the USA and India. With more than 20 years of SAP experience, the company has completed over 500 SAP implementations.
John McGrath is the Principal and Managing Director of Answerthink’s SAP division and a member of the United VARs' Management Board. He lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire, with his wife, Carol, and their Cockapoo dog, Max. John and Carol have two children who have both left home.
In his spare time, John loves to be in the great outdoors. He enjoys hiking and biking in the beautiful mountains of the northeastern US, especially in the autumn when the leaves turn to their stunning fall colors and transform the entire landscape. Even in the middle of winter, John and Carol enjoy traversing the snow-covered mountains on their 'fat bikes' - bikes with high-volume tires that can cope with difficult terrain like snow and sand.
Pioneering SAP Solutions for Mid-market Companies
When working for a previous company that implemented SAP, John and his colleagues, Ted Fernandez, and David Dungan, recognized an opportunity in the market. "We saw that there was a lack of focus on mid-market implementation partners," John explains. “There were many system integrators, but they mainly focused on large companies.” The problem was solved by founding Answerthink, which became one of the first SAP resell partners in North America dedicated to serving mid-market companies.
"Answerthink is known for our experience in life sciences, which includes medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and biotech companies. We also serve consumer goods, distribution, and professional services organizations. These industries drive our go-to-market strategies, IP (intellectual property), and the solutions that we build.”
Answerthink was one of the first SAP partners to implement SAP S/4HANA in North America. The company is now on a mission to move SAP customers from on-premise, legacy ERP environments to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and is focusing on AI and other emerging technologies.
The Benefits of Being a United VARs Member
United VARs is a global alliance of more than 70 independent SAP consultancies which together cover over 100 countries. Answerthink joined the United VARs alliance in 2008 so that it could support its clients with international SAP implementations. John explains, “Becoming a member of United VARs was a no-brainer and fundamental to our existence. As a member of United VARs, we can make global deployments happen successfully. By collaborating with other United VARs members on SAP rollouts, we bring in local expertise that can relate to our clients’ workforces in their own language and time zones, and who have the in-depth knowledge and experience in regional business processes and regulations”.
Beyond these rollout collaborations, Answerthink's engagement with United VARs has evolved to include participation in Centers of Excellence (CoEs). "We've really evolved to facilitate knowledge sharing between partners because as an SAP partner network, we all face the same challenges," John explains. "Rather than every partner having to solve those challenges individually, United VARs has created Centers of Excellence to share best practices among their members. This collective knowledge-sharing has been invaluable in helping Answerthink stay ahead of the curve and provide greater value to our clients.”
Global SAP Support Powered by United VARs
One CoE that Answerthink is particularly excited about is the United VARs Global SAP Support Services CoE which enables Answerthink to provide around-the-world support to its customers.
“This service will be key to our ongoing success in the future,” says John. “Most worldwide support offerings are based on global or regional delivery centers of SAP expertise with large-scale teams and mixed levels of experience and expertise. This service has the advantage of lowering cost but does not always provide the best level of service, regular contact with the same consultants, or high levels of interaction with the customer”.
"Through United VARs, we can provide a support model that uses our flexible operating model with local support from multiple locations nearly anywhere in the world. Local support means providing expert SAP consultants who speak the local language, are culturally aligned, understand the localizations, and are in the same time zone. Thanks to United VARs, we can now give our clients local language SAP support in nearly any country or time zone, for any SAP skillset 24/7. As the United VARs motto says, we truly are ‘stronger than one’.”
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stronger than one