Product Description

SAP Implementation Unleashed

A Business and Technical Roadmap to Deploying SAP

 

George W. Anderson

Charles D. Nilson

Tim Rhodes

 

SAP can help you capture better information and deliver it more quickly, allowing you to make better decisions and maximize the business value of everything you do. However, SAP implementations require massive effort, total buy-in, and significant change throughout the organization. In SAP Implementation Unleashed, 10 expert SAP project managers, functional consultants, and technologists guide you through the entire journey, helping you avoid pain and pitfalls and gain all the benefits of SAP.

 

The authors introduce start-to-finish business, technical, and project management roadmaps for successful SAP implementation. Then, drawing on their immense experience, they walk you through the entire process of planning and deployment—addressing make-or-break issues and hidden gaps that other guidebooks ignore. You’ll discover how to employ processes, models, and toolsets that help you achieve implementation excellence while systematically reducing cost and business risk. Along the way, you’ll find actionable advice and real-world insight into innovative project management, best-suited leadership, effective load testing, contemporary infrastructure implementation, and more.

 

George W. Anderson is responsible for providing enterprise applications thought leadership for the EDS/HP office of the CTO. A long-time SAP consultant and PMI-certified project manager, George has authored several best-selling books and enjoys new challenges.

 

Charles D. Nilson is a senior program manager for EDS/HP and has led many successful SAP implementation teams over the years. He is a PMI PMP and is SAP Partner Academy certified in MM and PP.

 

Tim Rhodes is a senior SAP technical consultant for EDS/HP and a Basis/infrastructure veteran focused on implementing, migrating, and upgrading SAP Business Suite and NetWeaver solutions. Tim is also an SAP-certified technical consultant, OCP, MCSE, and HP Master ASE.

 

Detailed Information on How To...

• Define the business vision driving your implementation, and use it to design your solution
• Use TCO techniques to fully understand SAP’s financial impact in your organization
• Structure your SAP project management office, business teams, technical support organization, and overall project team
• Size, plan, and test your SAP infrastructure to deliver the best performance and availability at the best cost
• Integrate SAP into an SOA environment
• Install and configure SAP Business Suite and NetWeaver components
• Perform basic functional configuration, testing, and change management activities
• Enable a smooth transition by successfully performing the critical tasks that immediately precede
• SAP Go-Live
• Choose the right mix of tools and applications to test, manage, and monitor SAP
• Prepare your SAP Operations team for its post-implementation responsibilities

 

Category: Databases

Covers: SAP

User Level: Beginner–Intermediate–Advanced

 

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218021 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 888 pages

About the Author

George W. Anderson is the Chief Strategist for EDS, an HP Company, providing enterprise applications, thought leadership, and strategic direction on behalf of the Office of the CTO. An avid writer, technologist, student, and speaker, George lives near Houston, Texas, with his wife and three children. George is a certified SAP Technical Consultant, PMI PMP, HP Master ASE, and more, and holds one of several technical editor positions for SAP Professional Journal. An SAP consultant for 12 years and IT professional for more than two decades, George has had the privilege of working on numerous implementations, upgrades, computing platform migrations, infrastructure refresh and performance optimization projects, and other enterprise consulting engagements. You can reach him at george.anderson@hp.com.

 

Charles D. Nilson, Jr., is a Senior Program Manager for EDS, an HP Company. Charles lives near Chicago, Illinois, with his family and has held various SAP project management, program management, and consulting roles. Across a 14-year SAP career, Charles has had the pleasure of working on numerous projects and programs, managing multicultural teams and supporting scores of successful SAP implementations across four continents. With industry knowledge spanning electronics, consumer products, pharmaceutical, and discrete manufacturing companies, Charles is a PMI PMP and is SAP Partner Academy certified in MM and PP. He also holds a Certificate in Integrated Supply Chain Management from MIT and a bachelor’s of science in business administration from Elmhurst College in Illinois. An avid sportsman (favorites include kayaking, golfing, hunting, and camping), you can contact Charles at charles.nilson@hp.com.

 

Tim Rhodesis a Senior Technical Consultant for EDS, an HP Company. He resides in Houston, Texas, with his wife and three children and enjoys reading and conquering steep learning curves. Tim is an eight-year Basis and SAP infrastructure veteran focused on implementing, migrating, and upgrading SAP components and has been working in the information technology field for more than 17 years. An SAP-certified Technical Consultant, Oracle Certified Professional, Microsoft MCSE, and HP Master ASE, Tim recently received his MBA and is a coauthor of the popular Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours, Third Edition. You can reach him at tim.rhodes@hp.com.

 

Andreas Jenzer is a Principal Consultant with 11 years of SAP experience spanning the entire SAP systems lifecycle. A proud recent father of twins, Andreas consults to executivelevel technology leaders on behalf of HP. He currently focuses on Business Technology Optimization solutions for SAP environments. Andreas is a graduate engineer in information technology and holds a master’s degree in service management. Andreas and his family reside in Boulder, Colorado; he may be reached at andreas.jenzer@hp.com.

 

Sachin Kakade is a Senior Solution Architect and Functional Consultant for HP specializing in enterprise applications such as SAP. He has 17 years of total experience with the manufacturing industry and with SAP implementations, specializing in Supply Chain Management, Business Intelligence, and ERP solutions. Sachin is a certified SAP PP and SAP APO Demand and Supply Planning consultant, and he has provided application configuration, business process reengineering, and architectural solutions for more than a dozen customers. He holds a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pune and a diploma in Business Management. Sachin is an outdoor enthusiast and engages in a variety of activities, such as painting acrylic landscapes, playing soccer, and hiking with his family. He can be contacted at sachin.kakade@hp.com.

 

Jeff Davis is an Independent Enterprise IT Architect and SAP Basis Consultant who lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife and son. With 15 years in information technology and more than 10 years specializing in SAP, Jeff has worked as a Senior Basis/NetWeaver Architect on large SAP implementations throughout the United States, including international and public sector projects. While SAP consulting is his career, Jeff will tell you that his real passions are knowing Christ more and enjoying time with his family. You can reach Jeff at jeff.davis2@hp.com.

 

Dr. Parag Doshi, Heather Hillary, Veeru Mehta, and Bryan King contributed significantly to SAP Implementation Unleashedas well, sharing their unique expertise and experience in SAP-related fields as diverse as SOA, project leadership, functional configuration, sizing/architecture, enterprise applications implementation preparation, achieving operational excellence, and more. As seasoned consultants, practice principals, and project managers, their real-world implementation lessons learned added a valuable “in the trenches” dimension to SAP Implementation Unleashed.

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Implementing SAP has always been about transformation, or letting go of old ways of doing things in favor of something newer and better. Transformation goes beyond the incremental changes an organization might adopt as it seeks to change. Instead, transformational change is synonymous with revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, change. It’s about turning the corner, getting over the hump, or making the leap to a better place. Is it painful? Nearly always. Is it worth it? With a number of exceptions, the answer is nearly always yes. Implementing SAP is one of the few broad transformations that can take not only a business unit but an entire company to the next level, to a place where better information is delivered more quickly, better decisions are made, and ultimately an increased return on information (an old SAP adage that continues to be validated by thousands of SAP’s customers) is realized. The trick is doing it right.

Doing It Right

The pain associated with an SAP implementation comes from several different places. End users will be changing both their tools and the way they work. Managers and other decision makers will be changing processes with which they’ve grown comfortable over the years. Better information will drive these new processes faster, too, bringing with them a different set of issues. And behind all of this, IT organizations will find themselves deploying and managing the most critical suite of companywide business applications they’ve ever seen. All this change is akin to growth; awkward crawling and hesitant walking at first, followed by a bit of stumbling and a certain amount of falling and getting back up again. Like learning to walk, implementing SAP comes with its share of bruises. Persistent organizations will get through this and see themselves grow more resilient, more self-aware, and ultimately less like the old organization. There’s almost no way around all of this; transformational change has great upside down the road but is painful nonetheless.

What if you had a guide, though? Someone who had already navigated these waters and walked these paths? Wouldn’t such a thing be worthwhile? Wouldn’t a book authored by 10 SAP project managers, functional consultants, and technologists with more than a century of combined experience go a long way toward giving you the peace of mind you need on this journey?

That’s where we come in. Our goal is to outline the business, technical, and project management roadmaps necessary to successfully plan for and complete an SAP implementation, and then fill in all the important gaps. We want you to be able to draw upon a deep pool of experience and lessons learned, comfortable in the knowledge that you not only are in good hands, but are also obviously not the first to attempt an SAP implementation. Through this book, you will crawl, walk, and run in record time. You’ll make fewer missteps and ultimately cross the finish line closer to budget and your timelines than you ever could have solo. There will still be the underlying discomfort of change, but in retrospect you’ll find that your journey has been a whole lot less painful than it might have been. And you’ll find that you not only did more with less, but did better (than your competitors!) with less, as explained next.

Doing It Better

One of the obvious facts about implementing SAP nowadays is that you’re not alone. Upward of 95% of Fortune 500 companies have introduced SAP into their enterprises, as have more than 47,000 other businesses. SAP is everywhere, helping companies change the way they do business, essentially changing their world. Additionally, the information technology underpinning SAP has transitioned from a supporting role (1980s) to something that provides competitive advantage (in the 1990s), to something that also extends where and how business is conducted (2000s). Today, our information technologies are taking us to yet another place, a place where IT and the business are so intertwined and interconnected that IT is the business, and the business is IT.

None of this is a big secret. Truth be told, in such a me-too world, the increased innovation you might have been sold on relative to adopting SAP might turn out to be less of a competitive advantage than you thought. More likely, bringing in SAP and other enterprise applications nowadays will only bring you up to par with the bulk of your competitors. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions in particular are less often the innovative game-changers of years past but rather, for many, have become the required investment necessary to merely re-level the playing field.

So, to be most effective, and to really raise the bar compared to your competitors who have already introduced SAP into their environments, you will need to do it better than them. You’ll need to innovate beyond the business innovation that comes with implementing SAP’s business scenarios and well-integrated applications. Through the very way you deploy SAP and prepare your teams to manage, use, and maintain SAP post go-live, you must find ways to innovate. You’ll need to innovate on all fronts, from the way you conduct business, to technical and technology matters, process matters, and even project management approaches and methodologies; it’s these innovations that together will fuel your ascent a rung or two higher than your competition.

Implementing SAP is a ton of work, to be sure. We’ll help you consider and explore potential innovations at every step along the way. We’ll teach you how to boldly sidestep incremental change in favor of strategic revolution—where it makes sense. We’ll tell you what your competitors have already done and explain how you can do the same thing better, faster, and cheaper. Beyond this, we’ll show you how to gain a competitive edge in the process—how to leapfrog your competitors in ways that really make a difference. They might talk of one day achieving operational excellence, but you’ll implement processes, models, and toolsets that set the stage for not only achieving it today but reducing ongoing costs and risks in the process. They will speak of creating a custom application that somehow differentiates their business from others, but you will transform your business by adopting best and common business practices to deploy an integrated and accessible set of systems that capitalizes on your unique intellectual property.

Furthering our efforts to help you leapfrog your competitors, we will give you actionable advice and real-world insight spanning everything from project management methodologies to leadership styles, the pending impact of “mega trends” such as green IT, service-oriented architectures (SOAs), virtualization strategies, automated systems management approaches, compelling computing platform refresh strategies, social networking leverage, and more.

How will you innovate? The answer depends on the role you play in your SAP implementation. No role is without opportunity for innovation. For example:

• IT architects will be called upon to design systems and solutions that meet business and IT agility needs at a reasonable total cost of ownership (TCO).
• Business process owners need to rethink how the company does business, leveraging best and common practices, templates, and approaches in the process.
• Developers and functional experts must deliver innovative solutions and approaches, creating an agile enterprise based on a balance of both new and time-tested tool sets.
• Organization designers need to work with management and delivery teams to design a purposeful post-go-live organization enabled through automation, creating lean, dynamic, and well-communicating organizations capable of rapidly achieving incremental operational excellence.
• Infrastructure teams need to deploy SAP’s business applications and underlying NetWeaver technologies in such a way as to pull costs out of IT, thus freeing budgets enough to become nearly self-funding.
• Desktop support teams need to quickly assess their current state of affairs and innovate through streamlined SAPGUI deployment along with incorporating Citrix-based or SAP’s WebGUI-based user interfaces.
• Existing IT shops may find it necessary to innovate in terms of the very platforms deployed for mission-critical enterprise applications, leveraging platform migrations and new technologies to transition to more strategic or cost-effective platforms.
• Job scheduling teams might find it necessary to innovate how batch processing is conducted, pulling in third-party scheduling tools that represent yet another way to innovate and create a more agile business solution.
• IT operations teams must draw upon tools they have and new SAP-aware systems management applications to create an automated just-in-time monitoring system capable of truly delivering on a single-pane-of-glass, management-by-exception vision, stabilizing headcount while simultaneously freeing up employee bandwidth in the process.
• Executive leadership and first-line management must actively and broadly encourage behaviors that build a work culture that’s effective, rewarding, and “contagious.”

To this last point, contagious cultures and organizations share a number of attributes. They’re seen as outstanding places to work, and therefore draw in talent from the company’s in...