SAP ASAP Methodology, Activate Methodology &

detailed info about SAP Versions

SAP ASAP Methodology in ECC 6.0

1- What is ASAP Methodology?

2- Phases of ASAP Methodology

3- Brief explanation of each phase

What is ASAP Methodology?

ASAP stands for Accelerated SAP.

Its purpose is to help design SAP implementation in the most efficient manner possible.

Its goal is to effectively optimize time, people, quality and other resources, using a proven
methodology to implementation.

Phase of ASAP Methodology:

ASAP focuses on tools and training, wrapped up in a five-phase process oriented road map for guiding
implementation.

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 The road map is composed of five well-known consecutive phases

• Phase 1 Project Preparation

• Phase 2 Business Blueprint
• Phase 3 Realization
• Phase 4 Final Preparation
• Phase 5 Go-Live & support

Brief explanation of each phase:

Phase 1: Project Preparation

Phase-1 initiates with a retrieval of information and resources. It is an important time to assemble the
necessary components for the implementation. Some important milestones that need to be
accomplished for phase 1 include

• Obtaining senior-level management/stakeholder support

• Identifying clear project objectives
• Architect an efficient decision-making process
• Creating an environment suitable for change and re-engineering
• Building a qualified and capable project team.

Phase 2: Business Blueprint

SAP has defined a business blueprint phase to help extract pertinent information about your company
that is necessary for implementation. These blueprints are in the form of questionnaires that are
designed to probe for information that uncovers how your company does business. As such, they also
serve to document the implementation.

Each business blueprint document essentially outlines your future business processes and business
requirements. The kinds of questions asked are germane to the particular business function, as seen in
the following sample questions:

1) What information do you capture on a purchase order?

2) What information is required to complete a purchase order?

Phase - 3: Realization

With the completion of the business in phase 2, “functional” experts are now ready to begin
configuring SAP.

The Realization phase is broken in to two parts.

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1) Your SAP consulting team helps you configure your baseline system, called the baseline configuration.

2) Your implementation project team fine-tunes that system to meet all your business and process
requirements as part of the fine tuning configuration.

The initial configuration completed during the base line configuration is based on the information that
you provided in your blueprint document. The remaining approximately 20% of your configuration that
was not tackled during the baseline configuration is completed during the fine tuning configuration.

Fine tuning usually deals with the exceptions that are not covered in baseline configuration. This final
bit of tweaking represents the work necessary to fit your special needs.

Configuration Testing:
With the help of your SAP consulting team, you segregate your business processes into cycles of
related business flows. The cycles serve as independent units that enable you to test specific parts of the
business process. You can also work through configuring the SAP implementation guide (IMG). A tool
used to assist you in configuring your SAP system in a step by step manner.

Knowledge Transfer:
As the configuration phase comes to a close, it becomes necessary for the Project team to be self-
sufficient in their knowledge of the configuration of your SAP system.

Knowledge transfer to the configuration team tasked with system maintenance (that is, maintenance of
the business processes after Go-live) needs to be completed at this time. In addition, the end users
tasked with actually using the system for day-to-day business purposes must be trained.

Phase 4: Final Preparation:

As phase 3 merges into phase 4, you should find yourselves not only in the midst of SAP training, but
also in the midst of rigorous functional and stress testing.

Phase 4 also concentrates on the fine tuning of your configuration before Go-live and more
importantly, the migration of data from your old system or systems to SAP.

Workload testing (including peak volume, daily load, and other forms of stress testing), and integration
or functional testing are conducted to ensure the accuracy of your data and the stability of your SAP
system.

Now is an important time to perform preventative maintenance checks to ensure optimal performance
at your SAP system. At the conclusion of phase 4, take time to plan and document a Go-live strategy.
Preparation for Go-live means preparing for your end-users questions as they start actively working on
the new SAP system.

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Phase 5: Go-live and Support:

The Go-live milestone is itself is easy to achieve; a smooth and uneventful Go-live is another matter
altogether. Preparation is the key, including attention to what-if scenarios related not only to the
individual business processes deployed but also to the functioning of technology underpinning these
business processes and preparation for ongoing support, including maintenance contracts and
documented processes and procedures are essential.

Activate Methodology in S/4 HANA:

The 3 Pillars of SAP Activate framework:

SAP Activate is a framework that consists of 3 important pillars:

1. SAP Best Practices

2. Guided Configurations
3. SAP Activate Methodology.

Pillar 1 – SAP Best Practices:

SAP, with their 45+ years of widely accepted industry-specific, best practice knowledge and experience
has delivered ready-to-run business processes that are optimized for SAP S/HANA.

These business processes are well documented and pre-delivered by SAP and can be viewed in the Best
Practice Explorer. It consists of best practices for integration, migration, and extensibility to expand the
existing processes with the customer’s own processes.

This forms the first pillar of the SAP Activate framework.

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Pillar 2 – Guided Configuration:

The second pillar of the SAP Activate framework comes in the form of guided configurations to make
it an easier experience for consultants and customers to configure their SAP system.

SAP is working to globalize and standardize best practices across industries. In accordance with the
same, SAP provides users with standard configurations that can be used to run a business process.

Additionally, for customer-specific requirements, SAP is providing a self-service configuration user

experience. The guided configuration also offers capabilities of content lifecycle management that
essentially involves looking at the configuration settings and ensuring that the configuration settings
that are set in that solution are not impacted by a new version of best practices or a new version of
processes that are being shipped in the next release of the SAP solution.

Pillar 3 – SAP Activate Methodology:

Discover Phase:

The Discover phase is where the customer realizes there is a need for a solution to satisfy their business
pain point and starts looking out for the right SAP solution to map their requirements. During this
phase, customers can apply for a free trial solution if applicable and try it out for themselves to check
the features and functionalities of the solution. By the end of this phase, customers finalize to go ahead
with the required SAP solution and move to the next phase in their implementation lifecycle.

Prepare Phase:

As the name suggests, this phase is crucial to both customers and partners as key activities that are
crucial to the success of the project are completed with mutual consent. The system is provisioned to
the customer post-signing of the contract with SAP and the partner. Simultaneously, key resources are
identified from the partner side in terms of the SAP Consultants getting on boarded and enabled. From
the customer side, business process owners are identified to provide the right requirements to the
consultants implementing the project. A high-level project plan along with roles and responsibilities is
finalized along with the project team, project governance procedure and escalation matrix and the
project is ready to kick-off!

During this phase, an initial level of requirement is already collected when the business process owners
fill in the Business-Driven Configuration Assessment questionnaire. This is a readily available
document for the project team that can be downloaded and used to fasten the project delivery. Based on
the answers obtained from the assessment, consultants need to plan for the next and probably most
important phase of the SAP Activate Methodology – the Explore Phase.

Explore Phase:

The Explore phase is foundation for the success of the project. In this phase, customers and partners
collaborate with each other for one outcome to finalize the business process to be followed in the new
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SAP system. This is done by a series of “Fit-to-Standard Analysis” sessions, where the SAP Best
Practice business process flow is showcased to the Business Process Owner. Consultants first display a
flowchart of the business process and later drive a demo of the same using the initial system that was
provisioned to them. The project team then have a healthy discussion on how the business can map
their business to the best practices.

Another major point that SAP Activate has made easier for consultants is the standard migration
templates that are readily available to download. This comes as a point of relief, especially for
consultants who otherwise used to spend a lot of time coming up with a migration template to help the
business fill in the information that is required to be migrated to the new system. This helps the project
team save an immense amount of time and the business finds it comfortable to fill in the required
information as advised by SAP. The business users are enabled on the migration templates and they can
now internally start working on data consolidation, cleansing, and formatting to be filled into the
standard migration templates. This comes as a huge relief to both the customer and partner project
teams as working on data is arguable one of the most difficult portions of a project!

One of the best parts of the explore phase is the “Customer Execution of Standard Processes”. What
SAP Activate tries to achieve is to build an early relationship between the end-users and the SAP
system for an easier and accelerated adoption of widely accepted business processes. Consultants
provide the business users with the documents required and help them run an end-to-end cycle in the
SAP system. The previously self-enabled business is now familiar with the system and provides their
concurrence that they have executed the business process in the system. They are provided with their
own user access to explore and get familiarized with the system. This is great, especially in the initial
stages of the project because this helps for an easier UAT in the next phase of the project.

All of the customer’s requirements in terms of additional WRICEF objects – Workflows, Reports,
Integrations, Conversions, Enhancements and Forms along with the configuration values are noted in
the Backlog document provided by SAP which is then signed off to sign off mutually between the
partner and the customer. This backlog document consists of all the customer-specific requirements
that need to be available in the SAP system for the business users to perform their daily tasks.
Consultants then prioritize according to feasibility, difficulty and importance and plan the sprints for
the Realize Phase where the primary aim is to close each of the Backlog items one by one.

A change impact analysis is done to understand how the new system will benefit the business and
actions to enable a smooth transition to the new system are decided among the stakeholders of the
project. Key users are identified and an end-user learning needs analysis is done and a learning plan is
prepared for the key users who will help drive the success of the system during the duration of the
project.

Realize Phase:

Once the Explore Phase deliverables are signed off, the project team can start working on the Quality
system provisioned by SAP. In this phase, the SAP consultants start configuring the SAP system
according to the Backlog document that is signed off. This happens in an iterative approach where the
project team works based on multiple sprints that have been planned to execute the project by breaking
down the backlog requirements into smaller deliverables that need to be showcased to the business
process owner and signed off as completed once it matches the agreed-upon completion criteria. This is
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the phase where consultants are in regular touch with the business process owner to showcase to them,
the SAP system they are building through multiple Solution Walkthrough’s that are scheduled through
the Realize Phase.

The technical teamwork on completed the WRICEF objects that were noted in the Backlog document
during this phase and work hand in hand with the SAP functional consultants and business users to
ensure the custom objects are delivered with quality within the timeline.

User Roles and Authorizations can be a hectic process to finalize on, especially in large projects. For
the same, SAP has provided us with standard persona-based roles that help the business users with their
tasks through an End-to-End business process. For example, a maintenance technician will be provided
with standard roles required for a maintenance technician in the SAP system and a maintenance
manager will be provided with the standard role enabling him to perform his tasks as per the best
practice in the SAP system.

In this phase, multiple levels of testing such as Unit Testing, String Testing, Integration Testing and
User Acceptance Testing is performed to ensure the SAP system is configured according to the
customer requirements provided by the business process owners. Data migration testing is also done to
ensure the data filled in by the business users are in the correct format and ready to import to the brand-
new SAP system.

Once all the deliverables are satisfied, a cutover plan is made to move the configurations, WRICEF
objects and master and transactional data to the Production system which will be the system used by the
business in real-time. This signifies the end of the Realize Phase.

Deploy Phase:

In the Deploy Phase, once every checkbox is ticked and everything is ready, the business faces a
temporary downtime as the new SAP system is deployed for usage to the business users. This is
typically done during a weekend to ensure that customers have less effect due to the downtime. The
cutover is a process that sometimes gives consultants sleepless nights as this is the conclusion time of
all their hard work being moved into the SAP system for the usage of an entire organization.

Once the cutover is done successfully and checked by the partner and the customer, the business users
are supported by the consultants and the key users who now form the first line of defense in case users
have doubts or face an issue. The customers and partners can now relish the success of the project
through an intense time filled with dedication and hard work from all stakeholders involved.

Run Phase:

The run phase signifies the end of the customer’s lifecycle from identifying a solution for their business
need to finally implement the solution and running their business process on the same. In the Run
phase, the customer project team are given task to be updated with the latest innovation and
technologies in SAP, especially in the product they have implemented by having a “Continuous
Learning” to keep up with the pace of technology.

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Additional Info:

The SAP ERP Business Suite is SAP's ERP offering prior to the introduction of the SAP HANA
platform. The SAP ERP Business Suite is also known as SAP ECC or simply SAP ERP. The latest
version of the SAP ERP Business Suite is SAP ERP 6.0.

Business Suite on HANA is the name given to the operation of SAP ECC on the HANA database. It
has been possible to follow this path since 2013. Users could thus benefit from the advantages of the
HANA in-memory database even before the introduction of SAP S/4HANA (available since 2015).

SAP S/4HANA is the latest ERP software suite from SAP. It is completely based on the HANA
platform. SAP S/4HANA is an "intelligent" solution that enables companies to simplify, accelerate and
improve their business processes. Among other things, SAP S/4HANA offers a new user interface for
all devices, real-time analysis functions and the free choice of operating model.

SAP R/3 Version Releases:

SAP ECC Versions:

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S/4HANA Versions

S/4 HANA is offered on two different platforms: On-Premise or Cloud. Both products
are very similar in terms of lines of business, coverage and functionality.

• On-Premise is located on your organization’s own servers and managed in-

house. It has an annual innovation cycle with several smaller updates each
year.
• Cloud is hosted externally on SAP’s servers and maintained by SAP. It has a
quarterly innovation cycle.

Until 2020, all S/4HANA versions were named after the year and month that they
were released (YYMM). For example, S/4HANA 1909 was released September
2019.

SAP revised the naming convention in 2020. Going forward, On-Premise releases
will be named for the year only (YYYY), starting with S/4HANA 2020 in October
2020. Cloud releases will continue with the YYMM naming convention.

SAP S/4HANA On-Premise releases:

SAP Version
SAP S/4 Simple Suite for HANA
SAP S/4HANA Finance 1503
SAP S/4HANA 1511
SAP S/4HANA Finance 1605
SAP S/4HANA 1610
Year Architecture
An imagined platform that combines data
February processing, database, and in-memory processing,
2015 provides libraries for planning, text processing,
predictive, spatial and business analytics
March
2015
S/4HANA 1511 release simplified the business
processes.
Streamlined Procure to Pay
November Accelerated Plant to Product
2015 Optimized Order to Cash
Enhanced Request to Service
Core Human Resource
Core Finance
May 2016
SAP S/4HANA 1610 with SAP Fiori 2.0 , Industry
October to Core – Retail , Advanced Availability to Promise
2016 and Efficient Procurement , Extended Warehouse
Management and Quality Management

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 SAP Version Year Architecture

SAP S/4HANA 1709 On-Premise just got released

in September 2017. With this latest version of
SAP’s most modern business suite, embedded
Transportation Management (TM) as well as the
second release of embedded Extended Warehouse
Management (EWM) are key innovations that
customers can now adopt. Traditionally, supply
chain processes used core ERP systems, supported
by siloed applications that provide additional, more
September
SAP S/4HANA 1709 advanced functionality around TM and EWM. This
2017
approach worked very well in the past, but is no
longer sufficient through today’s pressure on order
fulfillment and logistics processes like Omni
channel retailing across all industries or
technology innovations such as machine learning,
real-time analytics and the Internet of Things
(IoT). In-memory computing and cloud
architectures have opened the door to a new suite
of integrated in-memory enterprise applications.

SAP S/4HANA 1809

Year: September 2018

Supply Chain: This involves

AATP, i.e., advanced available to promise: alternative based confirmation and other one is product
allocation: calculate non-reserving availability.
Industry to the Core- Utilities: This includes

Analytical insight and exception resolution in billing and invoicing

Meter reading analysis
Embedded Transportation: This includes

Mixed pallet building, and load optimization

Carrier invoicing through SAP Logistics Business Network
Industry to the Core- Utilities: This innovation covers

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Analytical insight and exclusion resolution related to billing and invoicing
Meter reading analysis
Industry to the Core- Retail, and Fashion: This innovation mainly involves

Merchandise management: Clears in warehouse management integration

Improved season management
Customer Management:

Entrenched service management with removed middle-ware, consistent data models

Digital Manufacturing:

Demand-driven perceptibility and interactive planning

Capability evaluation and MRP controller’s adjustment
Finance:

Central finance: it delivers a finance data hub for real-time consolidation

Intercompany reconciliation report
Sourcing and Procurement:

Consolidated purchase requests through hub and central contract management hub
Incorporation of SAP Ariba buying with SAP S/4HANA
Asset Management: It contains

Overview page for the planner

Technical object damage analysis
Task list and operations
Sales and Distribution: This covers

Streamlined sales order creation

Perform split analysis in sales billing and invoicing
Approval workflow for acclaim memo requests
Extended Warehouse Management: This innovation includes

Item’s new identification

Innovative report to categorize products based on history warehouse tasks
R&D Engineering: This innovation involves

Alternative configuration, multilevel, CPQ, classification

Product marketability and chemical agreement
Inventory Management:

Predictive analytics and machine learning for decision support

Placing the goods receipt for the production order
Migration Cockpit: This particular innovation involves:

Transfer data by staging tables

Adjust the migration objects which are utilized with the Object Modeler
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 Quality Management: This innovation involves:

Quality inspection, recording results

Complaint management recording and monitoring

Examine KPI’s regarding quality management data

SAP Version Year Architecture

With the 1909 release of SAP S/4HANA, SAP continues to
focus on delivering leading-edge value in three key areas:
September
SAP S/4HANA 1909 intelligent automation, insight and prediction, and next-
2019
generation best practices. And tremendous progress can be
seen across all lines of business.

The new 2020 release provides companies with 1,269 major

and minor innovations - for example, in the area of user
guidance (SAP Fiori) or in the further automation of business
SAP S/4HANA 2020 October 2020
processes through machine learning and predictive analytics.
With Release 2020, SAP has integrated the SAP Analytics
Cloud into the on-premise version of SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA 2021:

Year: October 2021

Sales & Marketing:

Create Sales Orders SAP Fiori app
Mass Change of Sales Documents

Service:
Warranty end dates in In-House Repair

Supply Chain:
Review Availability Check Results
Advanced Shipping and Receiving
Manufacturing
Manage Process Order Operations:
Alert Chart for Projected On-Hand Alerts

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Sourcing & Procurement:
Price History for Central Purchase Contracts
Contract Consumption Display and Print Preview in Central Purchase Contracts

Research & Development:

Classify Packaged Dangerous Goods
Asset Management
Maintenance Backlog Overview
Spatial Asset Management:

Finance:
Machine Learning for Intercompany Document Matching

SAP S/4HANA Cloud releases:

SAP Version Year

SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1603 March 2016
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1605 May 2016
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1608 August 2016
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1611 November 2016
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1702 February 2017
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1705 May 2017
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1708 August 2017
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1711 November 2017
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1802 February 2018
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1805 May 2018
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 August 2018
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1811 November 2018
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1902 February 2019
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1908 August 2019
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1911 November 2019
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 January 2020
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2005 April 2020
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 July 2020
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2011 November 2020
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2102 February 2021
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105 May 2021
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 August 2021
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 November 2021
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202 February 2022

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Note:
In this document we have added as per our knowledge and also data
may vary.
We are not responsible if anything you find problem after referring this
document.

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Disclaimer: SAP AG is a German multinational software corporation based on Walldorf

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