SAP applications are the backbone of every business. Therefore, the CEOs and owners put in all the efforts to make SAP implementation a success. It is said that the probability of success with SAP is 50%. That’s the reason why many businesses don’t get the right start.
It is important to consider, plan, and follow all key phases of SAP implementation for successful SAP implementation companies. Be it SAP B1 HANA, SAP ERP, or other SAP systems, these stages are standard across all SAP implementations
SAP, like many ERP systems, needs thorough planning and effort for successful planning. It’s not an out-of-the-box solution but needs to be adapted to fit your specific business needs, often requiring extensive configuration.
Considering something as basic as order processing, you consider when orders enter the ERP system, where the order processing takes place compared to the transaction with SAP. So, extending and using the SAP system is challenging because it is an incredibly powerful ERP that requires careful planning and configuration to align with specific business operations. And often, businesses are not well-prepared for it, which makes implementation faulty.
The SAP implementation process is a multi-faceted implementation journey that businesses initiate to introduce the SAP suite of applications to their business lineup. Implementing SAP is a strategic move for any business trying to facilitate its operations, automate its processes, and improve overall efficiency. Here are some of the key challenges organizations experience during the SAP implementation journey:
A deep understanding of the complexity and functionality of the SAP ERP solution is required in order to properly use it. Organizations cannot have a dedicated team of experts, who are well acquainted with the SAP ecosystem, at the beginning stages of implementation.
Successful SAP implementation also requires comprehensive resources that businesses may fail to realize. The whole SAP implementation can take months or even years for big companies, so time is one of the main resources.
SAP is loaded with features, and you should configure them as per your business processes. It is equipped for a wide range of industries, making it a highly versatile and powerful tool. However, this versatility translates into comprehensive configurations and testing requirements, which becomes a challenge for most businesses.
SAP also offers many customizable solutions to expedite the creation of workflows for specific business needs. Customization is not needed often. In fact, over-customization can make your system excessively complex and difficult to work with.
Sometimes, when SAP workflows appear complex or heavy, the reason may be that the underlying business process itself is ineffectively designed. When businesses consider using SAP systems, they often expect powerful features that automatically facilitate their processes, rather than monitoring their own operational efficiency first.
One of the standard methodologies for project preparation and system implementation is Accelerated SAP (ASAP). You can productively optimize time, cost, and quality, and accelerate your SAP implementation process by following this SAP implementation methodology. There are seven key stages in this SAP implementation journey.
This is the beginning phase that leads to SAP implementation failure, as it involves planning the entire project after considering all the details and factors, which can be difficult due to the vast landscape. Therefore, it is important to choose one of the best SAP implementations, or, in other words, SAP MSPs. They can help you in many ways to create the most efficient SAP roadmap.
You need to stipulate your requirements to the SAP implementation companies like Zyple Software and define objectives, scope, and priorities. Choose the operations that should be migrated to SAP or a modern system as soon as the tools and approaches have been selected. It is also crucial to plan how there will be no downtime while the SAP ERP implementation process ensures business continuity.
Before implementing the ERP methodology, it is important to understand and outline your future business processes in detail. There will always be a few differences or gaps between your current and future business processes. These gaps will be addressed through the creation of a blueprint document, ensuring that SAP project planning is as smooth as possible.
This stage also includes the identification of satellites and organizational structures, together with other details. The changes to the organizational structure include the basic information to be tailored for the successful implementation of SAP and the SAP or ERP software. On the other hand, the satellites are a list of programs that you don't need to change, because SAP software doesn't require them, but they'll be used after you're live.
Once the gap analysis has been completed, your SAP Business partner will provide you with a baseline system configuration. In order to meet all your business and process needs and to eliminate all the gaps identified in your business plan to ensure a smooth implementation of SAP, the ERP implementation project plan will adapt this system to meet your needs. The SAP Implementation Team shall also take care of all the necessary modifications during this stage.
Converting non-productive systems and making all the adjustments to assimilate the infrastructure with the ERP implementation processes occurs in this phase.
During the migration and implementation, testing will also begin similarly (it goes hand-in-hand with the realization phase). The ERP implementation phases will begin by conducting multiple tests (Unit and Integration tests) to determine how well the implementation is proceeding and to make sure that the SAP systems deliver results.
The integration stage is segregated into many setups. Only half of the current process can be migrated and tested in the first setup. Another setup can be testing one whole process after implementation on the SAP landscape. Finally, in the end, the entire process and workload are tested.
As the name implies, the final preparation stage includes activities required to prepare both systems and your employees before going live. Based on the realization and testing stage results, an ERP implementation methodology will make any changes if required for the whole migration to the SAP systems.
People will be trained to carry out their day-to-day operations using SAP and ERP software. This stage serves as a kind of pre-check to make sure everything is perfect before going live.
During this stage, you move from a pre-production environment to a live environment and migrate all the data to the production environment’s SAP systems. Once all the data is migrated to the new SAP systems, the former systems are no longer used. Along with the data migration and use of new applications, the project managers will also assure running frequent tests to check if everything works as expected.
SAP systems are monitored consistently and optimized for performance. Also, the ERP implementation project plan and production support system setup is done during this phase.
This stage involves setting up a committed support team and handing over from the implementation team to the support team that can continuously monitor and remediate any production issues. The support team will also help the users and root users get used to the SAP systems and applications whenever needed. Support documents are built and kept to ensure seamless operations.