Six Steps to Deploy SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP Act...

janmusil · ‎01-10-2019

Happy New Year to all of our customers, partners and colleagues.

In this post I want to share an update about the recently recorded demo videos providing overview of the key capabilities in SAP Activate powered by SAP Cloud ALM application of Implementation Portal. It shows how the combination of prescriptive guidance, rich business process content and powerful tools work together to guide customers in deployment of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Few notes before we dive into the details:

The demo is showing example on one scope item (J60 - Finance: Account Payable) for simplicity. In real deployment project customer project team would execute these steps on number of scope items and backlog items that reflect the scope of their project.

Demo refers to different personas like Project Lead, Configurator, etc. to distinguish between the different roles participating in the project.

The videos are shortened to provide an overview of the key capabilities, they are not intended to be full click-though and show of all the tool capabilities.

The demo script follows closely the phases of SAP Activate and focuses on key steps in the deployment of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The overview videoprovides introduction into the demo that then follows the six steps shown in the image below.

Now let’s briefly discuss the key activities that are shown in each of the six steps:

(Step 1) Setup and Enablement - this demo shows the steps project lead takes to setup the project, define key milestones, set the initial project scope and invite the team members into the project using Implementation Portal for SAP S/4HANA Cloud (that is part of SAP Cloud ALM).

(Step 2) Fit-to-Standard Analysis - in this video you will see how the configuration expert (or alternatively business process expert) sets the detailed scope for specific business area and company by selecting scope items to be in/out of scope for the deployment project. The demo then continues with the explanation of capabilities for reviewing the rich business process content, including displaying the business process models and documentation of the pre-delivered business processes. At the end of the demo, the team captures a requirement into the backlog using the “notes” functionality in the Implementation Portal.

While the demo shows this process in a straight sequence, in reality the project teams will iterate on various scope items and will refine the scope based on the results of the fit-to-standard workshop. Proper execution of fit-to-standard workshops is critical for projects to finalize the business scope, define the configuration values, define the scope of integrations, define output management and analytics needs and more. I do recommend you to take a look at the fit-to-standard guide accelerator we provide in SAP Activate that guides you through all the steps in detail.

(Step 3) System Provisioning - in this step, the team takes the results of the fit-to-standard workshops to set the scope for provisioning, maintain key values like chart of accounts and then trigged the Q-system provisioning process. The Q-system is provisioned with customer specific scope activated and the team can start configuration activities.

(Step 4) Configuration - in this step the project team takes the backlog and uses iterative agile approach to configure the solution. The demo shows how the backlog item gets implemented into a configuration in the system. It shows the configuration expert navigating to the Manage Your SolutionApp and then using Self-Service Configuration UIs to record the desired configuration values in the Q-system.

(Step 5) Testing - in this step the configuration expert runs the pre-delivered test script with appropriate values to confirm that the configuration in the system works as desired. The pre-delivered test scripts are useful not only during the initial configuration, but also and more importantly play critical role during the regression testing after each release upgrade. SAP S/4HANA Cloud comes pre-delivered with test scripts covering the scope of the solution, which is a significant saving of effort and cost.

(Step 6) Data Migration - the last demo shows the activities project team executes to load data into the new system. The data load tool simulates the load into the system, user can check the results, make adjustments if needed, and then complete the load activities. This process is tested in Q-system and then repeated in the production environment prior to the production cutover.

I hope that this blog provides you with better understanding of the available capabilities in SAP Activate and show you how SAP Cloud ALM supports the project team in execution of the project following the SAP Activate guidance.

If you have questions or want to engage with the SAP Activate team, please post your comment either directly on this blog post or join us in the SAP Activate Jam Group where you can find more information about SAP Activate.

Reference links

To save you time, in case you wanted to keep list of these videos, below are direct links to each step of the demo: