The applications developed by SAP serve as the primary support system for all businesses. Therefore, the chief information officers (CIOs) and company owners put in all their efforts to ensure that the SAP implementation was successful. But despite all the steps and difficulties, many SAP implementations are not impactful. People believe there is an equal chance of failure and success when using SAP. The reason for this is that a lot of businesses don’t get off to a good start.
It is essential to consider, plan for, and adhere to all of the critical stages of SAP implementation to have a successful one. It doesn’t matter if it’s SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP, or one of the other SAP systems. These steps are always performed in the same order during SAP implementations.
Important Milestones on the Road to SAP Implementation for You
The methodology known as Accelerated SAP (ASAP) is one of the standard SAP methodologies for project preparation and system implementation. If you follow this SAP implementation methodology, you can optimize your SAP ERP implementations in terms of time, cost, and quality and accelerate them. Within this SAP implementation process, there are seven critical stages.
Planning and Preparation for the Project
This is the beginning phase of the SAP implementation project that we discussed earlier, and it ultimately results in low effectiveness. It is necessary to plan the entire project after considering all the specifics and factors, which can be difficult due to the expansive nature of the environment. Because of this, it is essential to choose an excellent SAP implementation partner, also known as an SAP managed service provider (SAP MSP). They can assist you in various ways to help you develop the most effective SAP roadmap possible.
You need to provide the SAP implementation partner with a detailed description of your requirements and objectives, scope, and priorities. With the MSP, you can choose the appropriate tools and approaches to meet your requirements based on your needs. This can be done based on a collaborative effort. After the tools and strategies have been decided upon, the next step is determining which operations should be migrated to SAP or updated.
Blueprint for the Company
There will always be distinctions or voids between the business processes you use now and those you will use in the future. To help mitigate these gaps and ensure a smooth SAP implementation, creating a blueprint document will be of great assistance.
Realization/Implementation
Your SAP implementation partner would then configure your baseline system, also referred to as the baseline configuration, once the gap analysis has been completed. To ensure a smooth SAP implementation, the implementation team will make any necessary adjustments to the system so that it satisfies all of your business and process requirements. Additionally, they will close any gaps discovered in the business blueprint. During this stage of the SAP implementation process, the team also takes care of any necessary customizations.
During this stage, non-productive systems are converted, and all necessary adjustments are made to integrate the existing infrastructure with the SAP processes.
Examinations of Integration
In parallel with the migration and implementation, testing will also be carried out (it goes hand-in-hand with the Realization phase). The testing team will begin conducting various tests, including Unit and Integration tests, to determine how smoothly the implementation is progressing and to guarantee that the SAP systems will produce the desired outcomes.
The integration phase is broken up into several different setups. Only one-half of the current process needs to be migrated and tested before the first setup can be used. Another possible configuration involves testing an entire process on the SAP environment after implementation. The whole procedure, as well as the amount of work done, are eventually put to the test.
Completed Preparations
The final preparation phase includes all of the activities that are necessary to prepare both your systems and your employees before going live, as the name of this phase suggests. An SAP implementation partner will, subject to the Realization phase and the testing phase outcomes, make any necessary adjustments to carry out a complete migration to the SAP systems.
People will be trained to use the SAP and ERP software to carry out their day-to-day operations. Before moving on to the live stage, we will perform a checkup to ensure that everything is in perfect working order.
Go-live
During this phase, you will transition from a pre-production environment to a live setting and migrate all of the data to the SAP systems used in the production environment. When all the data has been transferred to the new SAP systems, the older systems are decommissioned and no longer in use. In addition to the transfer of data and the implementation of new applications, the project managers will ensure the execution of frequent tests to determine whether or not everything functions as anticipated.
The performance of SAP systems is continuously monitored and optimized for maximum efficiency. In addition, the configuration of the production support system takes place during this stage.
Support for Production and GO Live
During this phase, you will establish a dedicated support team and then hand over responsibility for the system to the support team. This support team will be able to monitor the production environment continuously and fix any problems that arise. When necessary, the support team will also assist the users in becoming accustomed to the SAP systems and applications. This assistance is provided to root users as well. Support documents are constructed and kept up to date to guarantee that everything runs smoothly.
Conclusion:
You can simplify the SAP implementation process and reduce the overall cost of the SAP implementation if you follow these seven critical stages of SAP implementation. With improved management and governance of your company, you can realize all of your company’s goals and objectives.
About Us:
Highbar Technocrat Limited, an SAP Gold Partner, helps clients in India and abroad to help them manage change. Highbar adopts an integrated approach to help you rethink your business, with a high level of agility and efficiency. At Highbar we see disruption as an opportunity to help clients transform their business with granular solutions. Handling change requires confidence in decision making and Highbar enables this confidence in clients.
Our forte is offering digitally integrated solutions for the Infrastructure, EC&O, Real Estate, Mining, Oil & Gas, Power, Smart Cities, Government, Manufacturing sectors, and a lot more. Our domain expertise combined with the ERP helps clients become intelligent enterprises and highly receptive to the needs of customers. With our strategic alliances, we help clients transform business operations, leverage data, and integrate sustainability to match the speed of change.
For further information, don’t hesitate to contact us by e-mail at enquiry@highbartech.com or by telephone at +91 89767 11399.
