SAP

In the previous blog we discussed about what are SAP Best Practices, why do we need SAP Best Practices and various approaches to use SAP Best Practices. In this part, we will discuss the approaches in details with pros and cons of each of them.

Approach A:  Deploy a rapid prototype to preview and understand SAP applications and processes

In this approach, all the scenarios for the Best Practice will be installed on an SAP instance and this will act as a prototype environment. The prototype environment will be used to:

·         Determine the scope of the requirements

·         Select the relevant scenarios

·         Refer Best Practices master data

·         Train the project team

·         Study the processes

Once the prototype scope is identified, it is frozen and only the selected scenarios in scope will be installed on the Development instance using the Building Block approach.      

Pros:

1.     Rapid Prototype deployment will help the customer evaluate how the Best Practices will work in the live system before making a commitment

2.     Prototype will have all the preconfigured scenarios and implementation content thus enabling the business process owners, analysts, SMEs and users to evaluate their relevance

3.     Rapid prototype will enable us to expand the scope further to other process areas in the organization during realization phase

Cons:

1.     Prototype development and deployment before realization calls for additional effort as Best Practice scenarios need to be installed in a sandbox environment for prototype and then on  the development environment for realization

2.     An additional step will need to be accommodated in the implementation roadmap and may result in a minor extension to the overall timeline and added cost

3.     A certain amount of discipline will need to be enforced on the user community's desire to extend the scope of the prototype to other scenarios

Approach B:  Use Best Practice as a reference system to accelerate blueprinting and solution scope definition

In this approach, all the scenarios available for the Best Practice will be installed on a sandbox environment, which will act as a reference system. This reference environment will provide comprehensive details about how the various scenarios mapped by SAP as part of Best Practices. They will act as a reference during blueprinting and realization phase. Configurations / documentation available will be referred while doing blueprinting / realization by the implementation partner. No Best Practices will be installed on Development and subsequent environments.

Pros:

1.     Since this will serve as a reference system, the scenarios from the Best Practices can be emulated during actual blueprinting / realization phase

2.     Only the applicable scenarios from the best practices can be picked and chosen for implementation, avoiding an overkill

3.     Best Practice scenarios / configurations can be duplicated and then tweaked to accommodate customer specific Business Requirements

Cons:

1.     SAP Best Practices need to be installed on a sandbox initially so as to make them available for evaluation, leading to additional cost of hardware and installation.

2.     Best Practices will not be directly used in solution definition however they will serve as a reference system

Approach C:  Use Best Practice as a starting point for implementation project; 30 - 70% of business needs are met, and the rest can be flexibly added during the project

In this approach, blueprint phase will start with Best Practices installation. Implementation partner, in consultation with business process owners will try to align most of the customer business processes to the processes defined in SAP Best Practices. Wherever there is no alignment possible, the preconfigured scenarios will be re-configured to address the customer business requirements. 

Pros:

1.     Considerable decrease in implementation timeframe and costs, as most of the business requirements will be covered by the Best Practices

2.     Most of the delivered content in Best practices, like documentation, configurations etc can be utilized significantly reducing the cost and efforts.

Cons:

1.     Customer Business needs to align its processes to the SAP Best practices offering little flexibility to save cost and time

2.     In cases where is a misalignment, this approach may involve Business process Reengineering to align processes to Best Practices resulting in additional change management exercise. Works best in cases where the setup is new and business processes are yet to be defined

3.     If misalignment is big huge efforts are involved in realignment, not to mention the wasted initial configuration effort, which may not be used,

Approach D:  Use Best Practice for accelerated rollout of SAP to subsidiaries in different regions or industries from the parent company

This approach is relevant in the case where the subsidiaries have more or less identical business processes, so that it is possible to have an accelerated roll-out in different regions using the available SAP Best Practices. This approach will not be relevant in the case where there is Global Solution definition which will be implemented across all its subsidiaries.

Pros:

1.     Considerable decrease in rollouts timeframe as most of the business requirements will be covered by the Best Practices itself

2.     Most of the readymade content in form of documentation, configurations etc can be utilized

Cons:

1.     Subsidiaries need to have more or less similar type of business processes

2.     This type of situation is highly improbable in case of customers where the subsidiaries belong to different countries and have different set to statutory / business / legal requirements

Posted by Siddharth Tavargeri at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )