SAP is certainly one of typically the most popular technologies in the world today allowing companies to operate and manage their end-to-end business processes on a single integrated technology platform. SAP NetWeaver allows companies to integrate 3rd party systems and external web applications along with SAP core ECC system(s) thereby providing an effective technology infrastructure. This helps enterprises that have already committed to other 3rd party systems to preserve their investment to support their business growth. Now having said all about SAP, you all realize that any SAP transformation project is a huge undertaking and every customer wants to place maximum effort and a passionate workforce to help make the implementation successful.
Today I want to emphasize on some best practices all SAP customers may choose to consider to minimize any risks and ensure the success of your IT transformation project. Qué es ABAP every company has different business needs to generally meet their corporate growth strategy making each SAP project unique in a unique way and I will share some best practices on a very high level that the SAP project leadership may use for their advantage to ensure that their SAP project is setup for success.
So how does a IT Transformation project begin? Typically, An IT strategy to support a company's short-term and long haul business growth is made by the C-level executive leadership (mostly by CEO, CIO, CFO, Vice Presidents of business and IT / Systems). Once the IT strategy is defined and approved, an executive steering committee is formed with a few of the above executives and key leadership people representing the business. The project is then officially kicked off into planning, preparation, blueprint, functional design, technical design & build, test, deploy, go-live, and maintenance phases. You will find different best practices or actions I suggest with respect to the client and project circumstances. It may possibly not be practically possible to cover best practices for several scenarios in this article. But, I will make an attempt to cover the most effective practices and proactive measures at a macro level that needs to be followed during all the implementation phases to minimize risks and avoid any unforeseen challenges to budget and go-live dates.
Partly 1, I will discuss best practices for SAP project planning phase including business readiness, technology (and SAP modules/packages) selection, collection of SAP implementation partner (also referred to as SAP Systems Integrator) and finally the project preparation phase. Part 2 and 3 will cover the rest phases of your SAP project.
In early stages in this phase, the steering committee should meet and establish the initial composition of project leadership that will include a program sponsor, business lead and IT lead that are element of your company today and shall continue to lead the IT strategy of the organization going forward.
In the planning phase, initially, the project leadership should meet with key stakeholders and define their department objectives that needs to be met by the SAP project. As an example, if the new transformation project includes a new business initiative or significant enhancements to existing business processes, then time and energy to go-live will be a major factor. Is the go-live timeframe aligning with the time when you are planning to launch the new business initiative? Next thing I will recommend is to prioritize the important project factors such as for instance schedule, budget, and quality so why these constraints could be clearly articulated during owner selection process. Also, define the advanced scope of the project into 3 distinct categories for every business work stream such as for instance 'High', 'Medium' and 'Low' priority. Also, business stakeholders and leadership needs to identify scope items which can be eliminated if the project budget and schedule is challenged. To the minimum it will be good to have a PMO process in place to de-scope any of the items when time or budget is challenged.
During this phase the project leadership team should review the scope of the project and determine the engagement model with the program implementation vendor. Typically you can choose between a 'Fixed Fee' or 'Time & Materials' engagement model. Fixed Fee model means owner has to implement the entire project or each phase of the project for a fixed price. With Fixed Fee model, you as an individual need to define your scope clearly so that you can include it in the statement of work.
The fixed fee will also mean that you will be typically charged generally about 20% surcharge by systems integrator to cover the risk to provide the project on a scope that has been mutually agreed upon at a fixed price. The drawback with this process might be there's a possibility of quality of deliverables to be impacted in the act of delivering solution as quickly that you can within the predefined budget. An alteration control board should really be established and protocol for handling change requests should really be defined. It's advisable to complete quality reviews on deliverables and overall implementation to ensure that solution delivered is of high quality. The other engagement model is 'Time & Materials' wherein the client is spending money on resources punctually and material basis.
The project management office (PMO) has to monitor the project budget with respect to progress on deliverables very closely to ensure that project is delivered within the budget. It is straightforward to include scope and resources to generally meet deadlines thereby overshooting the planned budget. With this specific model I will recommend one more third-party or in-house SAP project manager (apart from SI project and/or delivery manager) to make certain project delivery with time and within budget. Estimates and re-estimates should be achieved in a reasonable manner at appropriate milestones within each phase when using this model. If the SAP implementation project is complex and scope is not clearly known then this might be a much better option. Now, in this phase, you ought to analyze all the professionals and cons of both of these models and pick the one that suits the most effective for your business.
Usually, the planning phase can last between couple of weeks to a couple months and if you have business team members already identified for the implementation, you can engage them in defining the near future state business requirements. Qué es ABAP this would help accelerate the business enterprise requirements gathering phase and creation of BPRDs through the blueprint.
Technology in this information an assumption is created that you have already made a decision to choose SAP, but nevertheless, not absolutely all projects choose a presumed technology of choice. In very brief, if your company needs to select a technology to support your IT growth strategy there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration including the following: