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SAP Active Global Support Hot Topics focus on the many dynamics of the business unit. I interview a subject matter expert on a variety of high level topics about the offering and report on them in this column. Among the topics we have covered so far include the importance of Remote Access & Supportability and SAP's approach to their maintenance strategy. Some future topics might include the Customer Center of Expertise, Application Life-Cycle Management, End-to-End Operations, and many more.

 

On the next episode of SAP Active Global Support Hot Topics I discuss the SAP Enterprise Support Report. I spoke with With Joyce Delany, Senior Director, SAP Active Global Support and Lisa Jasper Smith, Team Lead for SAP Enterprise Support Report Back Office, Active Global Support, about how the SAP Enterprise Support Report helps customers protect their investment, maintain business continuity and improve thier business processes.

 

Want to read more about the previous episodes of SAP Active Global Support Hot Topics?  Find them here.

 

So, what's the lowdown on the SAP Enterprise Support Report (ESR)?

The SAP Support Advisory experts deliver this yearly report upon customer request that provides an up-to-date overview of the customer's complete SAP software environment from a lifecycle management point of view.


Through the SAP Enterprise Support Report, open issues, optimization potential and possible risks are identified which might have a negative impact on the operations of the installed application or business solutions. The data shown in the ESR is based on the information available in the customer's SAP Solution Manager or SAP Global Support Backbone and is measured against the SAP E2E standards.

 

What benefits do customers gain from the SAP Enterprise Support Report?

The SAP Enterprise Support Report forms a platform for active discussion and planning between the customer and the SAP Support Advisory Center.

Customer-specific findings and recommendations are provided in the following areas:

Protection of Investment and Accelerated Innovation provides an overview of the innovation potential of the landscape and possible activities to protect investments.  In this chapter customers find a comprehensive section about maintenance status, conflict avoidance, current projects and more.

Business Continuity covers topics like critical alerts that have occurred in customer systems, planned and unplanned downtime events, provides a software change management analysis, and covers incident management, data volume management, and security topics.

Business Process Improvements customers can find information about business process exceptions (e.g. document backlog, faulty transactional data, etc.) that were found in core business processes.

Total Cost of Operations (as related to SAP) customers will be presented with an overview of the status of end-to-end solution operations and about readiness for the operation of your mission-critical business processes according to SAP's Application Lifecycle Management standard. 

An Executive Summary cites any major risks detected, followed by your Balanced Scorecard with details of all ratings assigned to the 4 major chapters of the report.

 

How does this report compare to what the competition has in the competitive landscape?

There is no other report of its kind in the competitive landscape.  The SAP Enterprise Support Report is unique in that it is customer-specific; created from information that is drawn right out from customer's systems.   The report satisfies a broad audience, having appeal for the executive leadership yet also has the details that the basis team needs to know.

 

Is the report one of the selling points of SAP Enterprise Support?

You bet!  If a customer does not know where to start in reaping the benefits of SAP Enterprise Support, this report is a great place to start.  It will give the customer an up-to-date overview of the complete SAP software environment from a lifecycle management point of view.  We have found the SAP Enterprise Support Report to be a very, very good tool to generate conversations about how drive more value into their organization with SAP Enterprise Support.  

 

Can you give me an example of how the report has saved the day?

It's a bit hard to say that a status report can "save the day", but the SAP Enterprise Support Report can definitely show the customer trends and hard facts that if no action is taken to address the situation, some disastrous results could occur.  Example: a series of critical alerts have been triggered and gone unnoted for one or more productive installations.  It could mean a negative trend that ends up causing a continual degradation of performance for business users or even a production down for a critical process of the business.    Or say there are critical security-related notes missing from your productive installations and there are far too many users with critical authorizations, leaving your systems vulnerable.  The Enterprise Support Report can bring all this data together and make it into actionable information for the customer.

 

What are some future developments planned for the SAP Enterprise Support Report?

We expect additional report content to become available by Q3 2010 and we are increasing the automation capability of the actual report generation.  Customers will need to stay up to date with their SAP Solution Manager support pack levels to benefit by these improvements.

 

What would you say is the major takeaway to the inquiring audience out there?

The SAP Enterprise Support Report makes the customer's data digestible.  Customers landscapes have become more and more complex in recent years, and managing them to their optimal level has become more and more challenging.   With SAP Enterprise Support, we consolidate for the customer a holistic overview and actual status of the SAP Application Lifecycle management of the business-critical operations, highlighting where areas of concern and room for improvement might exist and also, the areas that are running well.  A lot of times customers don't have that view even within their own company.

 

For more information on the SAP Enterprise Support report, SAP Enterprise Support and many other SAP Active Global Support offerings, visit:     http://service.sap.com/enterprisesupport