Identifying current organizational pain points, finding the required SAP solution to meet your needs, and deploying that solution across your entire enterprise can be complicated without the right team and resources for the job.
Read on to learn how SAP Activate Methodology can simplify system implementation, conversion, and migration, as well as how our top-notch consultants can help.
What is SAP Activate Methodology?
SAP Activate Methodology is a project management framework that provides the technical flexibility and functional agility needed to help project teams outline detailed project goals and phases and allow project managers to deliver projects more accurately and efficiently.
SAP Activate Methodology is used not only to plan and execute complex SAP solutions, but also improve the quality and success of SAP-related projects. And, by following the methodology’s framework, project managers can complete projects and lead teams to success in an easier, more efficient way.
Choosing an SAP Activate Methodology Roadmap
The first step in implementing SAP Activate Methodology is determining the correct roadmap to meet your organization’s needs. Each roadmap is designed to meet a certain need or criteria for business users, whether that involves using Agile Methodologies for on-premise implementation, customizing the solution for SAP S/4HANA migration, or anything else in between.
Here’s a closer look at the two main roadmap categories offered by SAP.
General
- New Cloud Implementations: This roadmap is intended to be used by SAP cloud solution teams that do not have solution-specific roadmaps to help guide them through a general SAP cloud implementation.
- Business Suite and On-Premise: This roadmap helps guide system administrators and users through on-premise SAP implementation, including both Agile and Waterfall methodologies.
Solution-Specific
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud: This is designed to help teams implement the SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution more efficiently and effectively.
- Transition to SAP BW/4HANA: This roadmap guides teams through the transition from other systems and solutions to SAP BW/4HANA.
- SAP S/4HANA Upgrade and Product Integration: This is intended to help customers who have already migrated to S/4HANA plan and run necessary upgrade projects to keep their system and applications up-to-date.
- SAP Service Cloud: This roadmap guides customers through Service Cloud implementation and helps connect customer service operations to the SAP system.
- So many more!
Main Components of SAP Activate Framework
In addition to the SAP Activate Methodology, there are two other main components that make up the total SAP Activate framework. Here’s a closer look into how these defined pillars can help project managers and end-users more easily understand the SAP solution needed to solve their biggest system issues and optimize business processes.
SAP Best Practices
SAP delivers business processes that are based on industry-specific criteria and best practice knowledge, optimized for SAP S/HANA, and located within the Best Practices Explorer (BPX). The BPX helps users find and navigate best practices for system implementation, integration, migration, and extensibility.
SAP Best Practices offers standardized business process information that allows for more predictable results, faster time to value, simplified cloud onboarding processes, and more.
Guided SAP Configurations
As part of its efforts to standardize best practices across systems and industries, SAP offers guided configurations that make it easier for teams to configure their SAP system to fit their specific needs. SAP offers standard configurations to meet general business process and configuration requirements.
But for more customer-specific requirements, self-service configuration options help SAP project managers and teams define best practices, outline configuration settings, and ensure their configuration values are not affected by new releases or upgrades to the SAP system.
What Are the Phases of SAP Activate Methodology?
Once your project team has chosen the correct roadmap for your organizational and operational needs, the next step in the process involves navigating through the six phases of the SAP Activate Methodology. These phases are outlined to provide the best possible solution for any project or business needs, regardless of how simple or complex they are.
Discover Phase
The first phase of the SAP Activate Methodology involves realizing the need for a solution that will fulfill business requirements and meet workforce needs. In this phase, customers are able to browse potential solutions, understand the value of each possible solution, and find the right one for their needs.
During the Discover phase, SAP users can also access the SAP Roadmap Viewer to find which roadmap aligns best with their needs and the built-in capabilities of their chosen solution.
Prepare Phase
Once your team has chosen the right SAP solution for your needs, you will move into the Prepare phase, which outlines project planning and preparation activities and defines a project timeline.
This phase ensures that project managers and their respective teams are on the same page when it comes to implementation methodology, employee roles, project activities, system responsibilities, and project goals.
Explore Phase
During the Explore phase, project teams will build the foundation for the entire project. This includes outlining key deliverables (i.e., standard migration templates), project requirements (i.e., WRICEF – Workflows, Reports, Integrations, Conversions, Enhancements, Forms), configuration values, and SAP Best Practice business processes.
Once the foundation is laid out, teams will conduct Fit-to-Standard analysis, and key stakeholders will sign off on key deliverables, activities, and business objects. SAP also offers a Fit-to-Gap analysis to identify additional business requirements and outline a feasibility plan to map them to the SAP system.
Realize Phase
Once deliverables are signed off on during the Explore phase, the business process owner and members of the project team are now focused on outlining user roles and authorization requirements and testing key SAP system configurations. Defining user roles can be a complicated process for larger enterprises or projects, but SAP offers standard persona-based roles that make it easier for project teams to outline roles and assign employees to tasks throughout end-to-end business processes.
Testing is another essential aspect of the Realize phase, but, like user roles, it can get a little tricky without the right resources or personnel. During this phase, Unit Testing, Integration Testing, User Acceptance Testing, and Data Migration Testing are completed to ensure the new SAP solution is configured to meet specific business needs and requirements.
Deploy Phase
During the Deploy phase, your organization will face a temporary period of downtime as your new SAP system is deployed for employee use. This phase involves the cutover of master and transactional data, configuration settings, and other key business objects outlined in previous phases.
The deployment phase ensures system conversion is done properly to keep all data safe, secure, and in the right place and provides a smooth transition between systems for employees.
Run Phase
The final phase of SAP Activate Methodology signifies the end of the customer’s lifecycle for customers. This phase involves keeping up with the latest SAP upgrades and innovations and shifting the focus to risk management and continuous system improvement.
Key integrations with the SAP Solution Manager are also made during this phase to help users automate, centralize, maintain, and improve system management practices and manage both their SAP and non-SAP applications in a more efficient way.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help from one of our SAP functional consultants to conduct a seamless implementation and integration processes, an extra hand setting up your production system, or additional support outlining key business scenarios and objectives for your project, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our team of senior-level SAP consultants has the skills, experience, and techno-functional expertise needed to guide your team to success, no matter what. We keep your needs above our own every step of the way and provide unmatched project quality for your organization.
Contact us today to learn more or get started with one of our expert SAP consultants.
