Secrets

However, that doesn’t mean that you are automatically entitled to use all of the functionality provided by the tool.  Your entitlement depends on your support agreement with SAP:

• Documentation of your Solution within Solution Manager
• Registration of your Solution with SAP
• Activation of Early Watch Alerts, collected and processed in Solution Manager
• Enablement of the Root Cause Analysis toolset, including the Wily Introscope framework
• Enablement of Remote Supportability tools

In addition, SAP can now support your custom code, but only if it is documented in the Solution Documentation tools and custom objects are registered in the Custom Code Management tools.

The most important step towards SAP Solution Manager success and organisation ALM maturity is to formulate an end goal.  Where do you want to be and, more importantly, when do you want / need to get there?  Now that you know more about the tool, what you are entitled to use and what you need to implement in order to get the most from your SAP Support arrangements, the next step is to define the functionality that will provide real value and tangible benefits to your organisation.

This should not be completed in isolation from your wider SAP programme of work.  If you’re planning an upgrade, consider how SAP Solution Manager might be able to help, such as exploring the use of the Upgrade Management or Test Management tools.  Likewise, if there are specific operational pain-points within your SAP organisation, then the time is right to explore corresponding functionality.  If managing change through your environment is costly or error prone, Change Request Management (ChaRM) might be precisely what you need.  If you are constantly facing business document backlogs or bottlenecks in executing core business processes and don’t know why, then you could benefit from exploring the Business Process Operations tools and processes.  Conversely, if an ALM process or aspect of SAP Solution Manager functionality is not going to be provide any business value, then feel free to de-scope it for the time being as long as there are no dependencies on functionality that you want to implement.  Be ruthless!

Ranking the relative importance of these inputs, and the relative benefits to your organisation of addressing them, will provide you with visibility of what is important to you so you can plan your journey’s route…

It is also important to understand how you expect to see the return on investment realised over time.  If you implement in a ‘big bang’ fashion, expect it to take some time to recoup the more significant initial outlay.  We tend to advise customers to take a more pragmatic approach:

• Implement functionality of immediate benefit first
• Realise the benefits / cost savings / efficiency savings from the initial implementations and allow the value to be proven
• Proceed with the next highest benefit implementations
• Repeat until you have arrived at the end of your journey

In order to facilitate this, a robust and intelligent roadmap must be produced that will define your journey towards ALM and SAP Solution Manager maturity.  This roadmap should take into account the relative value of each in-scope ALM topic or SAP Solution Manager functionality, your current pain points, your wider SAP programme of work and, last but not least, your organisational goals (e.g. Budget).  The key is that roadmap must be realistic and it must be achievable.

Also bear in mind that implementing the tools alone may not realise the benefits you are expecting.  Ensuring that appropriate corresponding organisational and procedural changes are made will enable maximum value to be extracted from the implementation. Organisational requirements should also be considered and built into the roadmap to understand and plan the impact.

If you do the hard work at this stage and commit to seeing it through, you should be able to sit back and watch the benefits unfold..

As such, SAP Solution Manager is continuing to evolve incrementally.  SAP are and have committed to further improving the tool, expanding the scope of functionality and enhancing what is already available.  The evolution to Solution Manager 7.1 was a huge stride in the right direction, and since it’s release SAP have further expanded on the functionality footprint with incremental Support Package releases.

It is therefore essential that customer and organisations embracing SAP ALM and the SAP Solution Manager tool remain updated on enhancements and that a mechanism for feeding this into the established roadmap exists.  Despite the name, a new Support Package release could provide some new functionality to address a specific pain point, or priorities may have changed since the roadmap was formulated.

Don’t be scared to adapt the roadmap over time to suit your changing requirements.  We recommend formally reviewing your roadmap at least annually, if not every 6 months or even every quarter.

In order to do this, be sure to capture a baseline of operations before the corresponding functionality is implemented.  This doesn’t have to be in monetary terms – resource effort, business disruption and user impact are all valid measures.  The best practice approach is to define your Key Performance Indicators, capture a baseline and ensure they can be measured once you have implemented the processes and SAP Solution Manager functionality identified to address them.

The last piece of this puzzle is to publicise your achievements.  It is important that organisations identify a owner / champion for each ALM topic area, who should take responsibility for making interested parties aware of what the problems were, how they were addressed and the benefits that were realised.  Backing this up with KPI measurements adds credence to the story and will help gather support and momentum for progressing along your ALM journey and ease the path to continued success.  Take it to the boardroom!

As mentioned a number of times already, you should always keep one eye on the ‘end goal’ – the outcomes that you want to achieve from your journey towards ALM maturity and more importantly, their value to your business.

This is especially prevalent when deciding on whether to adopt a new SAP Solution Manager support package release.

The advice here is to remain focussed on your goals.  You should absolutely evaluate the content, new features and enhancements delivered with a new SAP Solution Manager support package, but do not feel compelled to implement it if there is no, or limited, business value.

Depending on where you are on your ALM journey, even a support package upgrade could impose a significant testing requirement, particularly if you are using business critical functionality, such as ChaRM.  This will add to the level of investment that you will need to recover before starting to realise longer term value.

The decision to upgrade should be based around answering the following questions:

• Is there true business value in adopting new features and enhancements delivered with the upgrade?
• Is the level of investment required to realise the upgrade and any associated testing requirements proportional to the anticipated business value?
• Is there sufficient time and resource availability to support the upgrade, without adversely affecting your ALM roadmap timeline?

If the answer to all of these questions is ‘Yes’, then upgrading should be considered.  However, if any are answered negatively, then you should seriously consider the value of adopting the support package.

Whilst this eases the daily operation of the SAP components and environments, it can often complicate an ALM roadmap implementation as the division of responsibilities between the two organisations is often not clear.  Therefore, we always recommend involving your service provider organisation in the initial scoping and roadmap formulation discussions.  Committing to the journey together and clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of both organisations is key to a successful outcome.

Don’t be shy about clearly stating what you expect from them, from both an operations and implementation perspective.  If these are agreed at the outset, both parties can benefit from being committed to working towards a common goal.

It should also be noted that there are some significant benefits to adopting ALM best practices and process for service provider organisations, particularly where the technical support and operation of the landscape is a key deliverable.  Often SAP service providers are reluctant to invest in SAP Solution Manager implementation, due to either an internal lack of SAP Solution Manager knowledge, or a set of competing tools in their existing portfolio.  Encouraging your service providers to reduce their operational costs through adoption of ALM best practices should prove to be mutually beneficial for both organisations.

Embarking on an ALM journey does not need to be hard, but you will need the right level of support and guidance to help you along the way.  This is why it is important to seek the right level of guidance from independent, impartial experts that have a proven track record of driving success within organisations looking to improve their SAP operations and drive down the total cost of running SAP as a core business solution.

Leading companies on this journey is what we do, and what we do better than anyone else.  We are the UK’s first independent SAP consultancy focussing solely on SAP ALM with industry leading certified SAP ALM consultants ready to assist with making these concepts a reality utilising our unique, agile delivery methodolgy.

Explore our website to find out more about who we are, what we do or to get in touch.

We are Rapid ERP.  Helping Companies to Run SAP.  Faster.  Smarter.  Better.