Dubai Go Live eXperience
23rd to 26th October 2017
As we roll into Q4 I was fortunate enough to find my self hosting another SAP Business ByDesign Go Live eXperience. This time for new partners in the MENA region. The session was organised by Nadar Najai, who did a great job in getting all of the partners to commit to this 4-day enablement session.
The aim of these enablement sessions is to accelerate partners’ ability to execute customer projects for Business ByDesign. Over these 4 Days the partner experiences a real-life scenario, of taking a blank customer tenant to a fully configured go-Live ready ByDesign system.
We cover
- Project Scope Definition
- Business-based System configuration
- Data Migration Principles
- Solution Testing
- Project Go-Live
- Live system change Process.
This is a packed agenda for sure, but ensures that partners have experience across an entire project. Just like in real life, we had to keep on track, and achieve our milestones. For ByDesign SAP uses the SAP Launch methodology, which has four key milestones.
- Project Verification
- Design Acceptance
- Solution Configuration
- Go Live
Using the Akron customer business case document, attendees were asked to look for challenges facing a growing business, and for ways that ByDesign could help the customer grow and bring some process management to this growth. We also looked at the KPI measurements we could take from ByD to prove the success of our project.
The same document provided the basis for the project scoping and configuration exercise, again carried out on a ByD system. Where partners saw the inter-dependency between the different scope options and configuration elements (i.e. some elements were added by the system, and couldn’t be removed).
This exercise completed the “Project Verification” Milestone.
We then divided into 6 groups, performed some fine tuning in these functional areas (FIN, SRM, HRM, SCM, PRO and CRM) and once we had sign off from the nominated PM (Wasil) we set about migrating test data into the system. This was completed in record time, with only one or two technical issues, which all the teams handled in their stride. Data migration was executed in two ways, by manually creating data directly in the system (banks directory entries for instance) however most data is migrated using the supplier XML templates and the built in data migration tool. Using this meant data can be cleaned and corrected “on the fly” and the cleaned data is then downloaded into production ready templates.
With data migrated teams were able to follow the SAP provided test scenarios and confirm that the system was performing as expected and providing consistent results in each exercise.
We achieved our 3rd Milestone “Solution Configuration” and we were able to then perform our End-2-End testing.
Unusually for a GLX, we had attendees who had little experience of ByDesign so we spent more time than usual looking at the ByD product and talking about related topics, such as Localisation, Cloud Application Studio development and core product functionality. The attendees were pleasantly surprised to hear how well specified the solution was for professional Services and manufacturing based customers.
To provide back up to these discussions our End-2-End scenario consisted of a single process that touched all areas of the system.
As October is also the start of the November upgrade cycle, I was able to share with the participants some of the latest innovations being deployed to all customer and partner tenants during November. For anyone doubting SAP’s continuing support for ByD then this upgrade more than any other should dismiss these thoughts.
In one release, we have
- Provided support for the UAE Sales Tax being introduced in 2018
- Provided New country support for Israel and South Korea
- Enabled Right to Left rendering for languages
- Enabled IFRS 15 reporting for eligible customers/partners
- Enabled GDPR compliance updates into ByD
We all left this GLX with great plans for project execution in the Gulf Region, Dr Shadi promoted the Solution Center resources. Partners were already coming up with ideas on how to package ByD for their market, whether was a starter pack (fixed scope, fixed price, rapid time to value) or some industry vertical (real estate was mentioned, and Professional Services)
All in all a productive week. The ByD machine rolls onward and upward.
Next Stop …Barcelona.
