SAP Implementation Life Cycle

SAP Implementation is the whole of processes that defines a complete method to implement
SAP software in an organization. It is based on best practices and case studies from various
literature sources and presents a collection of processes and products that make up a complete
implementation method to allow any organization to plan and execute the implementation of
SAP (ERP) software

The SAP implementation process is made up out of four main phases,

The project preparation where a vision of the future-state of the SAP solution is being created,
a sizing and blueprinting phase where the solution stack is created and training is being
performed, a functional development phase and finally a final preparation phase, when the
last tests are being performed before the actual go live.
The data table below provides a summary of all the concepts addressed in the process-data
diagram.

Concept Definition

***Activities involved in (1) defining and installing new values,

attitudes, norms, and behaviors within an organization that
support new ways of doing work and overcome resistance to
CHANGE change; (2) building consensus among customers and
MANAGEMENT stakeholders on specific changes designed to better meet their
needs; and (3) planning, testing, and implementing all aspects of
the transition from one organizational structure or business
process to another. (www.gao.gov)

All documentation that is required and being delivered whilst

CHANGE performing change management, e.g. the functional test cases and
MANAGEMENT all the other documents a new end-user of SAP requires and the
DOCUMENTATION various tools and approaches used to manage change by the TSO.
(Anderson, 2003)

Determination of where and when the costs are inquired within

COST OF OWNERSHIP the context of the SAP solution stack and ongoing operations.
ANALYSIS The analysis addresses all internal and external costs, both
one-time as well as recurring (Anderson, 2003)

The process of transitioning from one system to a new one

CUTOVER
(Anderson, 2003)

All documentation related to planning, preparing and executing

cutover, describing how to lock down the system from a technical
CUTOVER PLAN change management perspective, preparing the TSO for its new
role and rolling out the SAP graphical user interface to all future
end users. (Anderson, 2003)

A data center is a facility used for housing a large amount of

DATA CENTER electronic equipment, typically computers and communications
equipment. (www.wikipedia.org)
 A requirement for the SAP data center, i.e. a physical requirement
DATA CENTER like power requirements, a rack requirement, a network
REQUIREMENT infrastructure requirement or a requirement to the network server.
(Anderson, 2003)

DISASTER RECOVERY Requirement that focuses on downtime that lasts many hours to
(DR) REQUIREMENT days or even weeks (Anderson, 2003)

A set of conditions or variables under which a tester will

FUNCTIONAL TEST
determine if a certain business process works
CASE
(www.wikipedia.org)

Requirements that describes the amount of time that the system

HIGH AVAILABILITY
needs to be available to satisfy the needs of the users. (Anderson,
(HA) REQUIREMENT
2003)

INSTALLATION All documentation related to the installation of an end-to-end

DOCUMENTATION SAP solution (Anderson, 2003)

The collection of current state system documentation, day-to-day

and other regularly scheduled operations tasks, various
OPERATIONS MANUAL
installation and operations checklists and how-to process
documents. (Anderson, 2003)

SAP AG is the name of the biggest European software company.

The head office is in Walldorf, Germany. SAP was founded in
SAP 1972 as Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung ("Systems
Analysis and Product") by five former IBM employees in
Mannheim, Germany. (www.wikipedia.org)

SAP A comprehensive project plan that contains all products that are
IMPLEMENTATION delivered whilst performing an SAP implementation project
PROJECT PLAN (Anderson, 2003)

Set of software subsystems or components needed to deliver a

SOLUTION STACK fully functional solution, e.g. a product or service.
(www.wikipedia.org)

SOLUTION STACK A list of all vendors that deliver the products that make up the
PARTNERS LIST SAP solution stack (Anderson, 2003)

SOLUTION VISION A vision of the future-state of the SAP solution (Anderson, 2003)
 A test plan that is focused at determining the stability of a given
system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational
STRESS TEST PLAN
capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results.
(www.wikipedia.org)

A detail of how the test will proceed, who will do the testing,
TEST PLAN what will be tested, in how much time the test will take place, and
to what quality level the test will be performed. (IEEE 829)

The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes as a result of

TRAINING the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that
relates to specific useful skills (www.wikipedia.org)

Consisting of training units, a training plan is the result of

hierarchical decompositions of a training goal, tailored according
TRAINING PLAN to the learning preferences and prior knowledge of the trainee. A
plan is the means by which the trainee satisfies the goal.
(www.ece.eps.hw.ac.uk/)

Technical Support Organization. The people that are committed

TSO
to implementation and management of SAP. (Anderson, 2003)

TSO CHART A chart that depicts the structure of the TSO. (Anderson, 2003)

Activity table

The following table provides a summary of all of the activities that form the SAP
implementation process. These activities will be described with more detail and elaborated with
examples in the rest of this entry.

Activity Sub-Activity Description

Refine and communicate a SOLUTION VISION of the

future-state of the SAP solution, to sketch a design that
Craft solution meets both business and financial requirements. The focus
vision should be on the company’s core business and how the
Project SAP solution will better enable that core business to be
preparation successful.

Design and
Design and staff the key positions of the SAP Technical
initially staff the
Support Organization (TSO), the organization that is
SAP TSO
 charged with addressing, designing, implementing and
supporting the SAP solution.

Perform a COST OF OWNERSHIP ANALYSIS to

Perform cost of
determine how to get the best business solution for the
ownership
least money i.e. to determine where and when the costs are
analysis
incurred within the context of the SAP solution stack.

Identify high
Determine all HIGH AVAILABILITY and DISASTER
availability and
RECOVERY REQUIREMENTS, to plan what to do with
disaster recovery
later downtime of the SAP system
requirements

Select the best SAP hardware and software technology

Engage SAP
partners for all layers and components of the SAP
solution stack
SOLUTION STACK, based on a side-by-side sizing
vendors
comparison

Staff the bulk of the TSO, i.e. fill the positions that
directly support the near-term objectives of the
Staff TSO
Sizing and implementation, which are to develop and begin
blueprinting installation/implementation of the SAP data center.

Train the various members of the SAP TSO, like data

center specialists, high availability specialist and network
Execute training
specialists and train the end-users to give all the required
SAP knowledge and skills

Build a new SAP DATA CENTER facility or transform

Setup SAP DATA
the current data center into a foundation capable of
CENTER
supporting the SAP SOLUTION STACK

Install the (My)SAP components and technological

Perform
foundations like a web application server or enterprise
installations
portal.

Identify and staff the remaining TSO roles, e.g. roles that
Round out support
relate to help desk work and other such support providing
for SAP
work.
 Develop a planned approach to the changes in the
organization. The objective is to maximize the collective
Address Change
efforts of all people involved in the change and minimize
Management
the risk of failure of implementing the changes related to
the SAP implementation.

Address SAP Create a foundation for the SAP systems management and
SAP systems and SAP computer operations, by creating a SAP
functional operations OPERATIONS MANUAL and by evaluating SAP
development management management applications.

Test the SAP business processes, by executing functional

Perform tests to ensure that business processes work, integration
functional, tests to ensure that the organization’s business processes
integration and work together with other business processes and
regression tests regression tests to prove that a specific set of data and
processes yield consistent and repeatable results.

Plan, script, execute and monitor SAP STRESS TESTS, to

Perform systems
see if the expectations of the end users, defined in service
and stress tests
level agreements, will be met.
Final
Preparation
Plan, prepare and execute the CUTOVER, by creating a
Prepare for
CUTOVER PLAN that describes all cutover tasks that
cutover
have to be performed before the actual go-live

Go Live Turn on the SAP system for the end-users

Implementation processes

Project preparation

The project preparation phase, depicted below, focuses at two main activities, i.e. to make a
setup for the TSO and to define a solution vision. These activities allow an organization to put in
on the right track towards implementation.

Figure 2: Project preparation phase

Design and initially staff the SAP TSO

Figure 3: TSO chart example

The first major step of the project preparation phase is to design and initially staff an SAP
technical support organization (TSO), which is the organization that is charged with addressing,
designing, implementing and supporting the SAP solution. This can be programmers, project
management, database administrators, test teams, etc. At this point, the focus should be at
staffing the key positions of the TSO, e.g. the high-level project team and SAP professionals like
the senior database administrator and the solution architect. Next to that, this is the time to make
decisions about choosing for internal staff members or external consultants.

The image at the right shows a typical TSO chart.

Craft solution vision

The second project preparation job is to define a so-called solution vision, i.e. a vision of the
future-state of the SAP solution, where it is important to address both business and financial
requirements (budgets). The main focus within the vision should be on the company’s core
business and how the SAP solution will better enable that core business to be successful. Next to
that, the shortcomings of the current systems should be described and short but clear
requirements should be provided regarding availability (uptime), security, manageability and
scalability of the SAP system.

Sizing and blueprinting

The next phase is often referred to as the sizing and blueprinting phase and forms the main chunk
of the implementation process. The phase is illustrated below.
Figure 4: Sizing and blueprinting phase

Perform cost of ownership analysis

Figure 5: Solution stack delta analysis

This phase starts with performing a total cost of ownership analysis (TCO analysis) to determine
how to get the best business solution at the lowest costs. This means to compare SAP solution
stack options and alternatives and then determine what costs each part of the stack will bring and
when these costs will be incurred. Parts of the stack are for example the hardware, operating
system and database, which form the acquisition costs. Next to that, there should be taken a look
at recurring costs like maintenance costs and downtime costs. Instead of performing a complete
TCO analysis for various solution stack alternatives that would like to compare, it can be wise
just to do a so-called delta analysis, where only the differences between solutions (stacks) are
identified and analyzed. The image at the right depicts the essence of a delta analysis.

Identify high availability and disaster recovery requirements

The next step is identifying the high availability requirements and the more serious disaster
recovery requirements. This is to plan what to do with later downtime of the SAP system, caused
by e.g. hardware failures, application failures or power outages. It should be noted that it is very
important to calculate the cost of downtime, so that an organization has a good idea of its actual
availability requirements.

Engage SAP solution stack vendors

Figure 6: Simplified SAP solution stack

A true sizing process is to engage the SAP solution stack vendors, which is the next step. This
means selecting the best SAP hardware and software technology partners for all layers and
components of the solution stack, based on a side-by-side sizing comparison. The most important
factors that are of influence here are the estimated numbers of (concurrent) users and batch sizes.
A wise thing to do is to involve SAP AG itself to let them create a sizing proposal stating the
advised solution stack, before moving to SAP’s technology partners/SAP vendors, like HP, Sun
Microsystems and IBM. A simplified solution stack is depicted at the right, showing the many
layers for which software and hardware has to be acquired. Note the overlap with the OSI model.

Staff TSO

The TSO is the most important resource for an organization that is implementing SAP, so
staffing the TSO is a vital job which can consume a lot of time. In a previous phase, the
organization should already have staffed the most vital positions. At this point the organization
should staff the bulk of the TSO, i.e. fill the positions that directly support the near-term
objectives of the implementation, which are to develop and begin the installation/implementation
of the SAP data center. Examples are: data center experts, network infrastructure experts,
security specialists and database administration experts.

There are many ways to find the right people within or outside the organization for all of the
TSO positions and it depends on the organization how much time it wants to spend on staffing.

Training

One of the most vital stages of the implementation process is training. Very few people within an
organization are SAP experts or even have worked with SAP software. It is therefore very
important to train the end users but especially the SAP TSO: the people who design and
implement the solution. Many people within the TSO need all kinds of training. Some examples
of these positions:

• SAP Network Specialists

• SAP Database Administrators
• SAP Security specialists
• Documentation specialists
• Et cetera

All of these people need to acquire the required SAP knowledge and skills or even SAP
certifications through training. Moreover, people need to learn to do business in a totally new
way. To define how much SAP training every person needs, a company can make use of a
skillset matrix. With this matrix, a manager can identify who possesses what knowledge, to
manage and plan training, by defining the height of expertise with a number between e.g. 1 and 4
for each skill for each employee.

Setup SAP data center

The next step is to set up the SAP data center. This means either building a new data center
facility or transforming the current data center into a foundation capable of supporting the SAP
solution stack, i.e. all of the technology layers and components (SAP software products) in a
productive SAP installation. The most important factor when designing the data center is
availability. The high availability and disaster recovery requirements which should have been
defined earlier, give a good idea of the required data center requirements to host the SAP
software. Data center requirements can be a:

• Physical requirement like power requirements

• Rack requirement
• Network infrastructure requirement or
• Requirement to the network server.

Perform installations

The following step is to install the required SAP software parts which are called components and
technological foundations like a web application server or enterprise portals, to a state ready for
business process configuration. The most vital sub steps are to prepare your OS, prepare the
database server and then start installing SAP software. Here it is very important to use
installation guides, which are published for each SAP component or technology solution by SAP
AG. Examples of SAP components are:

• R/3 Enterprise - Transaction Processing

• mySAP BI - Business Information Warehouse
• mySAP CRM - Customer Relationship Management
• mySAP KW – Knowledge Warehouse
• mySAP PLM - Product Lifecycle Management
 • mySAP SCM - Supply Chain Management
• mySAP SEM - Strategic Enterprise Management
• mySAP SRM - Supplier Relationship Management

Round out support for SAP

Before moving into the functional development phase, the organization should identify and staff
the remaining TSO roles, e.g. roles that relate to helpdesk work and other such support providing
work.

Functional development

The next phase is the functional development phase, where it is all about change management
and testing. This phase is depicted below.

Figure 7: Functional development phase

Address change management

The next challenge for an organization is all about change management / change control, which
means to develop a planned approach to the changes the organization faces. The objective here is
to maximize the collective efforts of all people involved in the change and to minimize the risk
of failure of implementing the changes related to the SAP implementation.

The implementation of SAP software will most surely come with many changes and an
organization can expect many natural reactions, i.e. denial, to these changes. To fight this, it is
most important to create a solid project team dedicated to change management and to
communicate the solution vision and goals of this team. This team should be prepared to handle
the many change issues that come from various sources like:

• End-user requests
 • Operations
• Data center team
• DBA group
• Systems management

SAP systems and operations management

Next thing is to create a foundation for the SAP systems management and SAP computer
operations, by creating a SAP operations manual and by evaluating SAP management
applications. The manual is a collection of current state system documentation, day-to-day and
other regularly scheduled operations tasks, various installation and operations checklists and
how-to process documents.

Functional, integration and regression testing

Testing is very important before going live with any system. Before going live with an SAP
system, it is vital do to many different kinds of testing, since there is often a large, complex
infrastructure of hardware and software involved. Both requirements as well as quality
parameters are to be tested. Important types of testing are:

• Functional testing: to test using functional use cases, i.e. a set of conditions or variables
under which a tester will determine if a certain business process works
• Integration testing
• Regression testing

All tests should be preceded by creating solid test plans.

Final preparation

The last phase before going live can be referred to as the final preparation phase and is depicted
below.

Figure 8: Final preparation phase

Systems and stress testing

Another vital preparation activity before going live with SAP is systems and stress testing. This
means planning, scripting, executing and monitoring system and stress tests, to see if the
expectations of the end users, defined in service level agreements, will be met. This can be done
with SAP’s standard application benchmarks, to benchmark the organization’s configurations
against configurations that have been tested by SAP’s hardware technology partners. Again, a
test plan should be created at first.

Prepare for cutover

The final phase before going live with SAP is often referred to as the cutover phase, which is the
process of transitioning from one system to a new one. The organization needs to plan, prepare
and execute the cutover, by creating a cutover plan that describes all cutover tasks that have to be
performed before the actual go-live. Examples of cutover tasks are:

• Review and update all systems-related operations procedures like backup policies and
system monitoring
• Assign ownership of SAP’s functional processes to individuals
• Let SAP AG do a GoingLive check, to get their blessing to go live with the system
• Lock down the system, i.e. do not make any more changes to the SAP system

Go Live

All of the previously described phases all lead towards this final moment: the go-live. Go-live
means to turn on the SAP system for the end-users and to obtain feedback on the solution and to
monitor the solution. It is also the moment where product software adoption comes into play.
More information on this topic:

• Product Software Adoption: Big Bang Adoption

• Product Software Adoption: Parallel Adoption
• Product Software Adoption: Phased Adoption

Critical success factors

In order to successfully implement SAP in an organization, there are several things that are of
great importance. First it is very important to get the support from all the people that are involved
in implementing SAP, but also the people that will actually use the SAP software. Second it is
essential to create a solution vision at the beginning of the implementation track, so that
everybody within the organization knows why SAP is being implemented. Third and last it is
very important to test the SAP hardware and software rigorously and to ensure that the end-users
are ready to use SAP before going live, because there are many known projects that failed
because of a lack of support and SAP knowledge...