Making Your SAP Hybris C4C Deployments Successful

In order to make your C4C projects go well, I’d like to share, what has worked for our teams in delivering Cloud for Customer implementations in a hybrid environment. The intention is to keep the project focused on meeting business outcomes by having trust in the SAP Launch methodology, keeping your teams in constant sync, and making sure your users are set up for success.  Here we go….

• Trust in the SAP Activate Methodology and  consistently message all project efforts toward meeting outcomes (deliverables)
  • Q-Gates are guard rails designed to lower project risk and to increase the project’s success. Use them effectively to guide your project team and your steering committee.
  • During weekly status meeting, consistently remind the extended project team of the timing and purpose of the quality gates

• For projects within an Hybrid environment (CRM, ERP to C4C), make sure that you are keeping both technical teams in sync on the deliverables within each checkpoint.
  • Project managers need to work closely with the SAP integration architect / lead to convey the functional requirements and details of both the master and transactional data integration.   Design decisions involving integration should be locked down with customer commitment and communicated clearly to everyone.  For example, is integration only sending sold-to accounts or all types of accounts.
  • Project managers need to understand and closely monitor the integration checklists that the cloud solution architect is driving .Ensure everyone has quick and easy access to all technical documentation and the checklists being managed by your technical lead.
  • Since the SAP integration lead will have regular Integration working meetings, be sure to attend occasionally to understand the
    issues.
  • Consistently monitor the customer ownership of the deliverables and escalate their PM as needed.  Sometimes it is a simple solution where the customer team member needs more time allocated or transfer to another colleague with the right skills.
  • Prepare your customers resources (technical/functional or combination of both) in understanding and executing the Code list Mappings so that initial data load can get good jump start.
  • Every environment is different in terms of how customers configure their ECC, CRM, and PI so there may errors in any of the three systems.  One example is Reliable Messaging errors  which may indicate that issue has more to with PI setup then C4C web services operating correctly.
  • For tickets that have been created for technical issues, I can provide the following advice to speed the issue towards resolutions 
    • Submit incident in the system error occurred and
      wait for External ID to be created.
    • Tell the story.  What is the issue, how can it be repeated
    • Call the Cloud Support Hotline and kindly ask the Tier-1 rep to please assign processor ASAP.  Sometimes, as much as a week can pass without an incident processor.

• People make the project a Success

As each hybrid landscape will be different for deployments, the project resources are guaranteed to be different. In order to ensure success here are some pointers to help ensure that your people are enabled and know how to use the project’s tools.

• Get users hooked early on watching YouTube videos. It can be done anywhere.
• Getting the users, and especially your project manager, using JAM as the central project repository and have them subscribe to immediate updates.
• Establish a productive and open environment with team members on both customer and SAP side.  While project timelines can be aggressive, a professional yet personal approach with team members can spur even more productivity.
• If you can get the team using the forums and getting them out of using email strings, then you’re ahead of the game.
• Check out the new training available for C4C implementation. (https://training.sap.com/us/en/curriculum/c4c-sap-cloud-for-customer-g-en)