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Former Member


In today's world of technology, it is critical that the Center of Expertise (COE) is at least on par with their support of the business.

 

Of course many people think of a COE being the "Fixer" of incidents, or the people that can make changes to configuration, or reports...

Well this may have been true in the past - but the days of the traditional COE are behind us.

 

As the Digital Transformation takes hold, it is critical that our COE's not only keep up with the transformation, but they also are the innovators and bring about the transformation!

 

What does all this have to do with Solution Manager?

In this blog, I am going to highlight some of the key areas, where SAP Solution Manager provides End-to-End Application Lifecycle Management for your SAP Solution, and also Application Operations, that can proactively monitor your systems.

 

SAP Solution Manager is the core to our lifecycle management and support structure - it is the heartbeat of our overall SAP landscape, with full End-to-End transparency:

  • Business Process Modeling

  • Process Documentation

  • IT Portfolio and Project Management

  • IT Service Management (Incidents, change requests for example)

  • Change and Release Management (including transport management)

  • Custom Code Lifecycle Management (key for customers moving from ECC to S4/Hana to help eliminate redundant custom code!)

  • Technical / System monitoring

  • Business and Interface Monitoring


 

Solution Manager 7.2 is the perfect fit to support your S4/Hana implementation, and also to provide the tools to better manage the standard COE activities, whilst providing your COE with information at their fingertips to be able to move from service provider to innovator.

 

 



 

So now to the subject at hand - What is the commonality between Solution Manager and your SAP COE?

 

A Center of Excellence requires tools to provide services to the business in various areas and SAP Solution Manager can provide you with those tools.

In addition, a COE needs to be able to measure the value they provide - Solution Manager can also do this!

 

So let's look at some of the key areas where using Solution Manager can aid your COE - let us start with a couple of key areas in the Application Lifecycle Management area.

 

Traditional COE's are all about fixing issues -

SAP Solution Manager ITSM (IT Service Management) can be used for the creation of an incident, right from the source - capturing all relevant information, without the user having to remember / take the details.

If your COE uses another Incident Management (Ticketing) tool, Solution Manager can be integrated to this.

 



 

There are a number of different integration scenarios, the picture above is showing a two-way scenario,

  • Solution Manager receives incidents from SAP Solution

  • Solution Manager forwards incidents to 3rd party Service Desk

  • Updates/ Progress is synchronized automatically to via Solution Manager

  • Incidents can be forwarded directly to SAP should the need arise - with full end-to-end visibility


 

Beyond the incident, we can also utilize the SAP Solution Manager analytics - and with SAP Solution Manager 7.2 being run on Hana, reporting / analytics and dashboards have never looked better - and with the SAP Fiori launchpad, you can customize to suit your needs



 

In many cases, an incident results in the need for a change to the SAP Solution - and of course SAP Solution Manager can take care of this.

Providing end-to-end visibility from the incident, to a request for change, to the change, testing and deployment of the change - SAP Solution Manager is the Single Source of Truth!

 

SAP ITSM can easily create your request for change - right from the incident itself, and thus keeps track of the originating incident!

 

Once the request for change has been approved, it then becomes a "Change" - either a normal change (moving through a standard maintenance cycle), or an urgent change (being deployed ahead of normal changes) - all of this is done using SAP Solution Manager ChaRM (Change and Release Management).

 

In addition, SAP Solution Manager has a testing functionality, that is connected with ChaRM, and keeps all relevant testing documentation aligned with the change documents within SAP Solution Manager.

Of course, SAP recognizes that there are other products available for testing, and as with ITSM, there is integration available for these.

 

One of the key features of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 that has changed/improved is around documentation.  Documentation is key to any COE, to help understand such things as:

  • End-to-End business process - including interfaces

  • Configuration details

  • Testing information

  • Reuse of data

  • Understanding impact of changes


 

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 now makes it simpler to build a reusable business process model.

Documenting Business Processes within SAP Solution Manager can aid the business, COE and IT operations.

 

In Process Management we have 3 key areas that we build upon:

 

  • System


Logical Component Groups are groups of Logical Components. Logical components point to actual technical systems.


 

  • Process


A process executes functions in systems to achieve a business goal.


 

  • Version


Each solution documentation version is a BRANCH, for example


    • Productive Branch

    • Maintenance Branch

    • Development Branch





Each branch can use / reuse the same information - providing you with a Single Source across your entire landscape.

 

For the business, it can be used to help define a simple process flow - and identify key/critical processes that may need to be monitored

IT Operations (and your Operations Control Center - OCC) can utilize the same flow to ensure that monitoring and alerting is set up - and help with proactive monitoring of said key processes / process steps.

To be able to proactively monitor these key processes / process steps can save time, effort (and of course $$), should there be some kind of issue that occurs.

  • Within IT Service Management, the COE team can review the processes, and be able to identify the root cause through the documented flows, potentially saving extended (or any) downtime within the business

  • Within Change Management, the COE team can look at the processes to identify where there are bottlenecks or redundant processes/process steps, and help provide the business with a simpler and better model

  • Within IT Operations, the COE - OCC can proactively monitor and control the alerts, which can send information to the COE / Business, and avert major issues (Business / IT Application Process Monitoring)

  • Interface Monitoring can help identify where data and files are failing - before it becomes an issue with the business


 

SAP Solution Manager Process Management helps you RUN SIMPLE!

 

Other areas that SAP Solution Manager can help you RUN SIMPLE:

 

  • Custom Code Management

    • Utilizing the documented process flows, collecting data information into SAP Solution Manager, helping understand which custom code is being utilized

    • Custom Code Lifecycle Management can ensure your code is to the required standards, and also identify potential areas of redundancy, with the possibility of utilizing standard SAP Code, thus making your upgrades simpler!




 

  • Data Volume Management

    • Through the IT Operations we can review the volume throughput, identify bottlenecks and provide information back to the COE / Business

    • Through the IT Operations we can look at the growth rates, and set up an archiving strategy that aligns with the business requirements - resulting in better performance of the systems




 

  • Project Management

    • SAP Solution Manager PPM can be used to document and track all your IT projects, utilizing the Solutions, process flows and executable libraries - Single Source of Truth




 

In Summary:

 

  • SAP Solution Manager can be utilized as your Single Source of Truth for the business, COE and IT Operations

  • Your COE can utilize the functionality within SAP Solution Manager to help your business RUN SIMPLE

  • Your IT Operations can utilize SAP Solution Manager providing reporting and analytics to help your IT RUN SIMPLE


 

SAP Solution Manager is delivered as part of your SAP overall experience - no additional cost to you - so why wouldn't you take advantage of what it has to offer?

 

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 is powered by Hana - no additional costs for licenses - a win-win for your COE!


 

For more information on how we at SAP can help you make your COE better click on this link -

Customer Center of Expertise | SAP Support Portal