“What? The SAP Product Support changed the priority of my incident! Why? Why? Why?
I should be the guy who knows the urgency best!” Simon stared at the computer screen, said
angrily.
“What’s up?” Catherine, who is sitting behind him asked.
Catherine works in this team for years, and has more experience of working with SAP Product
Support.
“I can’t work out this posting, I don’t know what happened, it was no problem before. I need the
solution as soon as possible.” Simon said.
“Um... So is the problem in our production system or development system?” Catherine asked.
“D system.” Simon answered.
“Okay, so the priority of the SAP Incident is?”
“Very High, is that wrong?” Simon got a little bit confused with these questions.
“Oh my god Simon! You should listen carefully when the SAP Product Support call you.”
Catherine laughed.
Right on cue, the phone rang…
Simon finally realized that the priority of an incident depends on the impact to system data
and business operation. In other words, we should judge the urgency per the business impact,
instead of user's subjective feelings.
For example, an incident should be categorized with the priority "very high" if the problem
has very serious consequences for normal business processes or IT processes related to core business.
Urgent work cannot be performed. The incident requires immediate and continuous processing because
the malfunction may cause serious losses. This is generally caused by the following circumstances:
- A productive system is completely down.
- The imminent system go-live or upgrade of a production system cannot be completed.
- The customer's core business processes are seriously affected.
- And for each circumstance, a workaround is not available.
More details are documented in SAP Note 67739. With reading it, customer will understand that one
cannot raise Very High incident simply because he/she is eager to know the solution. If every customer
raises Very High incident just because ‘I want the solution now’, they will preempt support resources and
the real emergency may be delayed.
Therefore, in order to provide better service and solve problems more efficiently, SAP Product Support
will process the incidents in accordance with the priority strictly. For the incidents, which the priority cannot
reflect the real business impact, SAP Product Support will communicate with customer timely and ensure
the information is accurate. This is also to safeguard the interests of every customer.
Selecting suitable priority, maintaining the sound development of incident handling process, this is the
responsibility for both SAP Product Support and the customer.
If you got a problem, which fits the description in SAP Note 67739 and need SAP’s help on priority, please
do provide the details in the following “Business Impact” section when raising incident:
