SAP Activate

The Discover Phase

In this phase, the project teams discover the SAP solution’s capabilities, so as to better
understand the business value and benefits of implementing S/4HANA. It also enables the
team to define the target technology architecture as well as determine the implementation
strategy to follow. This phase also enables the business users to prepare the business case
for implementing SAP S/4HANA as well as preparing the deployment roadmap of the digital
transformation journey.

The Prepare Phase

In this phase, the initial project planning and preparation at the project management level
takes place, which entails preparing the project plan for the S/4HANA implementation as
well as team assignments. Other critical activities of this phase are defining the S/4HANA
project’s goals, identifying and quantifying business value objectives for implementing
S/4HANA. Executive sponsorship is secured and project standards, governance and
organization are established. Reporting and tracking the project’s progress is finalized. The
roles and responsibilities of the project team are also finalized in this phase.

The Explore Phase

In this phase, the business users explore the SAP best practices and standard business
processes (known as Fit-to-Standard) such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay or hire-to-retire
that are mapped for S/4HANA. Sample data of a fictitious company is also available to enable
business users to run the end-to-end processes to evaluate how closely a standard solution
meets the company’s business needs. Here, the business users and the SAP consulting firm
agree on the configurable objects required for the company. Configurable objects can be a
company code responsible for all legal and financial reporting, a plant that can also be a
manufacturing unit or a head office, a warehouse or sales organizations such as one is
responsible for local sales while the other handles export sales. A complete fit-gap exercise
ensures greater visibility of the gaps that the standard S/4HANA is unable to offer. In such
cases, a fit-gap strategy decides if a system’s enhancement, a customized application, or
activating a business add-in will address the identified gaps.
Additional but critical activities of this phase include master data load preparation, wherein
data templates in MS-Excel are shared with the business users so they start working on and
preparing clean, correct and comprehensive master data for loading in the S/4HANA system.
Further, an initial groundwork on SAP testing and training’s needs also take place in this
phase. A special emphasis is placed on planning the integration testing that entails bringing
people, processes and teams working together in an ‘integrated’ or in a closed-loop
environment.
The Realize Phase
In this phase, a series of activities incrementally build, test and validate the business
scenarios and processes identified in the previous phase (the Discover phase). Master data is
loaded to check and validate the correctness and completeness that ensure smoother, error-
free transactions and business processes’ working. All custom-developed objects are also
tested in the realize phase. Key business users are trained as ‘trainers’ with the objective
that these SAP trainers will eventually train the end-users (the train-the-trainer approach).
End-users’ training is also planned so that relevant end users can be engaged at the right
time and be trained only in their specific areas of working. The business users and SAP
consultants delve deep into end-to-end integration testing involving different SAP
components to ensure the data and information flows from and into various SAP
components are complete and correct.

The Deploy Phase

In this phase, the master trainers conduct end-user training. The cutover activities, in which
the company transitions from legacy systems to S/4HANA, take place. Some of the critical
cutover activities include preparing the SAP production system with final master data
uploads, uploading the cutover or the closing financial and inventory balances from the
legacy systems into S/4HANA, testing and validating all roles and authorizations for business
users and end-users. The change management activities culminate with all stakeholders
aligned for ensuring a transition to S/4HANA is not only accepted but is also smooth. The
S/4HANA system goes live and business and end-users can begin entering the data by
starting with first entering the backlog data that accumulated during the transition from the
legacy systems to S/4HANA (this period is known as the ‘blackout’ period in which no data is
entered into the legacy systems).

The Run Phase

In this phase, the S/4HANA system is further stabilized by ensuring all of the possible issues,
errors or incorrect entries that may have occurred during the first few days of S/4HANA
going live are quickly corrected. Establishing a dedicated IT or SAP helpdesk to resolve such
issues goes a long way towards the smoother working of S/4HANA. Here, the business users
again play a critical role in ensuring trouble-free S/4HANA, by closing working with a
company’s internal SAP helpdesk as well as with SAP consultants to quickly and
comprehensively resolve the issues faced. A successful and timely financial closing of the
first month within the S/4HANA is a litmus test to validate the correct and reliable business
processes’ working.