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For CIOs, a good night’s sleep is highly elusive. As the business continues to evolve, IT leaders are confronted with questions that are impossible to answer without the right visibility, knowledge, and support. Is the IT infrastructure ready to bring the digital strategy to reality? Are there any technology options being missed that can help operations better than anyone could have imagined? Is existing technology optimized and secure enough to protect the company’s data and reputation?

Very rarely is an IT leader concerned about optimizing their support agreements. But perhaps they should if they want to answer these questions with a resounding “Yes!” – and finally sleep restfully again.

 

The right mix of just-in-time and forward-looking support – all under one contract 

When it comes to support and service offerings, their value is grossly underestimated. Many organizations that are still opting for the traditional cost-per-contact model of limited interactions with agents to fix on-demand technical problems. Although a helpful safety net, this approach only gives users a sliver of the full potential that support and services offerings can accomplish.

At SAP, we believe that our customers are entitled to so much more than ticket and incident management. When customers sign a support contract with us, they receive on-demand troubleshooting of isolated issues in addition to proactive support including:

  • Latest updates, upgrades and enhancements made to their chosen software

  • Related innovations that can be added to the existing IT infrastructure

  • Ongoing monitoring of the performance of their SAP software investment to help identify business process and technology improvements


With support and service offerings from SAP, CIOs can deliver an IT landscape that is continuously evolving along with the business – reliably, flexibly, and quickly.

 

6 services and tools every CIO needs to identify value opportunities

The first step to realizing the full benefits of support and services is understanding how to provide value to every line of business through optimized IT operations and innovativeness. Sifting through thousands of offerings, the SAP Innovation and Optimization Pathfinder for SAP ERP provides a tailor-made report based on the customer’s use of SAP ERP and process performance. IT leaders receive personalized recommendations and industry benchmarks on SAP innovations, business process improvements, and IT optimization opportunities.

While this high-level overview can point IT leaders towards the right direction, we also offer five additional services and tools that can help executives dig deeper to chart a well-defined digital strategy:

 

  • SAP Solution Manager: Streamline processes and proactively address improvement options, increase efficiency and decrease risk. Included within the existing maintenance agreement, this application lifecycle solution helps customers implement, maintain, run, and adopt SAP and third-party enterprise applications on premise and in the cloud, while identifying and supporting advanced business continuity, innovation, and operations. With a transparent and consistent view, IT leaders can predict whether the existing IT landscape can handle current and future business needs. (Please note that the entire portfolio of support offerings is not available under every support model.)


 

  • Business Scenario Recommendations for SAP S/4HANA: Get guidance from a tailored report generated from your customer’s current SAP software usage to start driving innovation adoption and consume support services. The personalized report shows how SAP S/4HANA adds value to SAP Business Suite solutions based upon real system usage and how associated support offerings can further advance digital transformation.


 

  • SAP Fiori Apps Library and Recommendations: Provide clear guidance to help customers enhance the user experience of their technology with SAP Fiori. The apps library allows customers to discover, plan, and implement the right SAP Fiori apps for their workforce and based on their usage of SAP software.


 

  • Innovation Discovery: Evaluate and discuss innovations and features with having both operational and technical information at a glance. By simplifying the search for functionalities currently available or scheduled to be delivered in the near future, customers can cut through thousands of possibilities to find the right set of technology best suited to their unique business requirements, visionary capabilities, and expected outcomes.


 

  • Enterprise Support value maps: Maximize the adoption of SAP solutions with goal-based guidance and access to knowledge, skills, and services needed to address business challenges. The social media-based empowerment and support program provides simplification and acceleration of learning and use of support offerings. For customers, all required efforts to bring their defined goals to life are transparent enough to give IT leaders a realistic path to build up digital proficient and preparing the landscape for innovation.


 

With this set of services and tools from SAP, our customers gain the always-on, proactive, and end-to-end support foundation they need to succeed in digital transformation. All with one support contract, they can access live expert channels, context-sensitive help, built-in support, and self-service access to our extensive knowledge base and user community. Most important, CIOs can rest well every night knowing that they are unlocking the door to the Holy Grail of digital transformation: a range of digital capabilities and opportunities that transform the business model into an industry-disruptive force.