SAP Rapid Deployment Solution implementation – Few things to know

Recently, I implemented a SAP Rapid Deployment Solution (RDS) for a

public sector government organization. This particular rapid-deployment

solution helps in setting up a citizen help desk – allowing citizens to easily

contact this government organization.

The DISCOVER phase –

This implementation was different from the other RDS projects I have been

involved with because this CRM based RDS that was identified – SAP Citizen

Contact Centre rapid-deployment solution had not been implemented before.

Based on previous experiences, I wanted to make sure that the preparation

before the project started was thorough. So I reached out to the concerned

people involved in packaging this RDS through the contact details given in

the service catalogue. This helped me in getting a good understanding of the

solution and the details such WBS, scope and software requirements to be

put together in the proposal to the customer.

In any RDS implementation, it is very important for the consultants to use the

service catalogue and the step by step guide for gathering the accelerators

and give them a good study. This helped SAP win this project.

The START phase – 

This implementation was delivered on an onsite and offshore model. In the

onsite activities scoping workshops and key users training was performed.

The offshore activities consist of the solution activation and change requests.
The key users were taken through a demo during the scoping workshops where

the scope of the solution was provided to the key users in a prescriptive model.

Based on their understanding of the business processes few change requests

were identified and discussions started on which of these changes are must

haves and good to haves for the users.

This exercise helped in preparing a second SOW in agreement with the customer.
While the scope workshops were being conducted onsite, the Basis consultant

performed an installation check of the system to ensure all required components

are available for activating an RDS solution. This activity is very important for all

RDS implementations at the start of the project.

The DEPLOY Phase –

Solution builder is an add-on tool that is installed on the CRM system during the

installation check activity. This tool was used to activate the solution. Once the

solution activation was completed the work on change requests identified during

the scope workshops was started.

These included configuration changes to the status profiles in the service requests,

various action profiles created to include actions which trigger e-mails to be sent

to the customer and employee responsible. Also, in the changes was creating

categorization schema which helps the users identify the problem reported by a

citizen in a more detailed manner.

An important aspect to be considered while implementing a RDS project along

with additional delta requirements is that while performing unit testing we have

to modify the test scripts provided as RDS accelerators. This helps in including

the change request functionalities during integration testing.

Towards the end of the Deploy phase, key user training sessions were conducted

followed by user acceptance testing. This helped us in enabling the customer key

users with the functionalities of the Citizen Contact Centre RDS.

The RUN phase –

After the go-live, post go live support was provided to the customer to ensure smooth signoff.

Summary –

This RDS delivery was completed in about 10 weeks and has enabled the usage

of the system for 200 users. This experience has given the customer quick

return of investment compared to traditional SAP implementations. With this

point of view there is a very good possibility that more SAP projects might be

delivered in this methodology in future helping both customers and SAP in

increasing business sustainability.