SAP implementation is the whole of processes that defines a complete method to

implement the SAP ERP enterprise resource planning software in an organization. The
SAP implementation method described in this entry is a generic method and not a
specificimplementation method as such. It is based on best practices and case
studies from various literature sources and presents a collection of processes and
products that make up a complete implementation method to allow any organization to
plan and execute the implementation of SAP software.
[edit]Introduction
The implementation of SAP software, such as SAP R/3 is almost always a massive
operation that brings a lot of changes in the organization. The whole process can take
up to several years. Virtually every person in the organization is involved, whether they
are part of the SAP technical support organization (TSO) or the actual end-users of the
SAP software. The resulting changes that the implementation of SAP generates are
intended to reach high level goals, such as improved communication and increased
return oninformation (as people will work with the same information). It is therefore very
important that the implementation process is planned and executed with the usage of a
solid method. There are various SAP implementation methods. An example of how one
company, Robert Bosch GmbH, implemented SAP R/3 over 10 years is available. This
study shows that designing IT architecture is very critical in SAP implementation
practices.
IEEE scholar journal reports an industrial case in which the senior management
successfully dealt with a troubled SAP R/3 implementation in an international fast
moving consumer goods (FMCG) company during 2001 and 2002. (Lui 2008)
[edit]Overview

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[edit]Table of concepts
The data table below provides a summary of all the concepts addressed in the process-
data diagram.
Concept Definition
CHANGE
MANAGEMENT
***Activities involved in (1) defining and installing new values,
attitudes, norms, and behaviors within an organization that
support new ways of doing work and overcome resistance to
change; (2) building consensus among customers and
stakeholders on specific changes designed to better meet their
needs; and (3) planning, testing, and implementing all aspects
of the transition from one organizational structure or business
process to another. (www.gao.gov)
CHANGE
MANAGEMENT
DOCUMENTATION.
All documentation that is required and being delivered whilst
performing change management, e.g. the functional test cases
and all the other documents a new end-user of SAP requires
and the various tools and approaches used to manage change
by the TSO. (Anderson, 2003)
COST OF
OWNERSHIP
ANALYSIS
Determination of where and when the costs are inquired within
the context of the SAP solution stack and ongoing operations.
The analysis addresses all internal and external costs, both
one-time as well as recurring (Anderson, 2003)
CUTOVER
The process of transitioning from one system to a new one
(Anderson, 2004)
CUTOVER PLAN
All documentation related to planning, preparing and executing
cutover, describing how to lock down the system from a
technical change management perspective, preparing the TSO
for its new role and rolling out the SAP graphical user interface
to all future end users. (Anderson, 2003)
DATA CENTER
A data center is a facility used for housing a large amount of
electronic equipment, typically computers and communications
equipment. (www.wikipedia.org)
DATA CENTER
REQUIREMENT
A requirement for the SAP data center, i.e. a physical
requirement like power requirements, a rack requirement, a
network infrastructure requirement or a requirement to the
network server. (Anderson, 2003)
DISASTER
RECOVERY (DR)
REQUIREMENT
Requirement that focuses on downtime that lasts many hours
to days or even weeks (Anderson, 2003)
FUNCTIONAL TEST
CASE
A set of conditions or variables under which a tester will
determine if a certain business process works
(www.wikipedia.org)
HIGH AVAILABILITY
(HA) REQUIREMENT
Requirements that describes the amount of time that the
system needs to be available to satisfy the needs of the users.
(Anderson, 2003)
INSTALLATION
DOCUMENTATION
All documentation related to the installation of an end-to-end
SAP solution (Anderson, 2003)
OPERATIONS
MANUAL
The collection of current state system documentation, day-to-
day and other regularly scheduled operations tasks, various
installation and operations checklists and how-to process
documents. (Anderson, 2003)
SAP
SAP AG is the name of the biggest European software
company. The head office is in Walldorf, Germany. SAP was
founded in 1972 as Systemanalyse and Programmentwicklung
("Systems Analysis and Product") by five former IBM
employees in Mannheim, Germany. (www.wikipedia.org)
SAP
IMPLEMENTATION
PROJECT PLAN
A comprehensive project plan that contains all products that
are delivered whilst performing an SAPimplementation project
(Anderson, 2003)
SOLUTION STACK
Set of software subsystems or components needed to deliver
a fully functional solution, e.g. a product or service.
(www.wikipedia.org)
SOLUTION STACK
PARTNERS LIST
A list of all vendors that deliver the products that make up the
SAP solution stack (Anderson, 2003)
SOLUTION VISION
A vision of the future-state of the SAP solution (Anderson,
2003)
STRESS TEST PLAN
A test plan that is focused at determining the stability of a
given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal
operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to
observe the results. (www.wikipedia.org)
TEST PLAN
A detail of how the test will proceed, who will do the testing,
what will be tested, in how much time the test will take place,
and to what quality level the test will be performed. (IEEE 829)
TRAINING
The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes as a result
of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge
that relates to specific useful skills (www.wikipedia.org)
TRAINING PLAN
Consisting of training units, a training plan is the result of
hierarchical decompositions of a training goal, tailored
according to the learning preferences and prior knowledge of
the trainee. A plan is the means by which the trainee satisfies
the goal. (www.ece.eps.hw.ac.uk/)
TSO
Technical Support Organization. The people that are
committed to implementation and management of SAP.
(Anderson, 2003)
TSO CHART A chart that depicts the structure of the TSO. (Anderson, 2003)
[edit]Activity table
The following table provides a summary of all of the activities that form the SAP
implementation process. These activities will be described with more detail and
elaborated with examples in the rest of this entry.
Activity Sub-Activity Description
Project
preparation
Craft solution vision
Refine and communicate a SOLUTION VISION
of the future-state of the SAP solution, to sketch
a design that meets both business and financial
requirements. The focus should be on the
companys core business and how the SAP
solution will better enable that core business to
be successful. Some of the guidance and key
requirements for how to put together an ERP
and SAP business case for ROI, business
benefit, and success includes focusing on
competitive pressures, value propositions, and
how the solution enables success.
Design and initially staff
the SAP TSO
Design and staff the key positions of the SAP
Technical Support Organization (TSO), the
organization that is charged with addressing,
designing, implementing and supporting the
SAP solution.
Sizing and
blueprinting
Perform cost of
ownershipanalysis
Perform a COST OF OWNERSHIP ANALYSIS
to determine how to get the best business
solution for the least money i.e. to determine
where and when the costs are incurred within
the context of the SAPsolution stack.
Identify high
availabilityand disaster
recoveryrequirements
Determine all HIGH AVAILABILITY and
DISASTER RECOVERY REQUIREMENTS, to
plan what to do with later downtime of the SAP
system
Engage SAPsolution
stackvendors
Select the best
SAP hardware and software technology partners
for all layers and components of the SAP
SOLUTION STACK, based on a side-by-side
sizing comparison
Staff TSO
Staff the bulk of the TSO, i.e. fill the positions
that directly support the near-term objectives of
the implementation, which are to develop and
begin installation/implementation of the
SAP data center.
Executetraining
Train the various members of the SAP TSO,
like data center specialists, high
availability specialist and network specialists and
train the end-users to give all the required
SAP knowledge and skills
Setup SAP DATA
CENTER
Build a new SAP DATA CENTER facility or
transform the current data center into a
foundation capable of supporting the SAP
SOLUTION STACK
Perform installations
Install the (My)SAP components and
technological foundations like a web
application server or enterprise portal.
Round out support for
SAP
Identify and staff the remaining TSO roles, e.g.
roles that relate to help desk work and other
such support providing work.
SAP
functional
development
AddressChange
Management
Develop a planned approach to the changes in
the organization. The objective is to maximize
the collective efforts of all people involved in the
change and minimize the risk of failure of
implementing the changes related to the
SAP implementation.
Address SAP systems
and operations
management
Create a foundation for the SAP
systems management and SAP computer
operations, by creating a SAP OPERATIONS
MANUAL and by evaluating SAP management
applications.
Perform functional, Test the SAP business processes, by executing
integration and
regression tests
functional tests to ensure that business
processes work, integration tests to ensure that
the organizations business processes work
together with other business processes and
regression tests to prove that a specific set of
data and processes yield consistent and
repeatable results.
Final
Preparation
Perform systems and
stress tests
Plan, script, execute and monitor SAP STRESS
TESTS, to see if the expectations of the end
users, defined in service level agreements, will
be met.
Prepare for cutover
Plan, prepare and execute the CUTOVER, by
creating a CUTOVER PLAN that describes all
cutover tasks that have to be performed before
the actual go-live
Go Live Turn on the SAP system for the end-users
[edit]Implementation processes
[edit]Project preparation
The project preparation phase, depicted below, focuses at two main activities, i.e. to
make a setup for the TSO and to define a solutionvision. These activities allow
an organization to put in on the right track towards implementation.

Design and initially staff the SAP TSO
The first major step of the project preparation phase is to design and initially staff an
SAP technical support organization (TSO), which is the organization that is charged with
addressing, designing, implementing and supporting the SAP solution. This can be
programmers, project management, database administrators, test teams, etc. At this
point, the focus should be at staffing the key positions of the TSO, e.g. the high-level
project team and SAP professionals like the senior database administrator and the
solution architect. Next to that, this is the time to make decisions about choosing for
internal staff members or external consultants.
Craft solution vision
The second project preparation job is to define a so-called solution vision, i.e. a vision of
the future-state of the SAP solution, where it is important to address both business and
financial requirements (budgets). The main focus within the vision should be on
the companyscore business and how the SAP solution will better enable that core
business to be successful. Next to that, the shortcomings of the current systems should
be described and short but clear requirements should be provided regarding availability
(uptime), security, manageability and scalability of the SAP system.
[edit]Sizing and blueprinting
The next phase is often referred to as the sizing and blueprinting phase and forms the
main chunk of the implementation process. The phase is illustrated below.
Perform cost of ownership analysis
This phase starts with performing a total cost of ownership analysis (TCO analysis) to
determine how to get the best business solution at the lowest costs. This means to
compare SAP solution stack options and alternatives and then determine what costs
each part of the stack will bring and when these costs will be incurred. Parts of the stack
are for example the hardware, operating system anddatabase, which form the
acquisition costs. Next to that, there should be taken a look at recurring costs like
maintenance costs anddowntime costs. Instead of performing a complete TCO analysis
for various solution stack alternatives that would like to compare, it can be wise just to
do a so-called delta analysis, where only the differences between solutions (stacks) are
identified and analyzed. The image at the right depicts the essence of a delta analysis.
Identify high availability and disaster recovery requirements
The next step is identifying the high availability requirements and the more
serious disaster recovery requirements. This is to plan what to do with later downtime of
the SAP system, caused by e.g. hardware failures, application failures or power
outages. It should be noted that it is very important to calculate the cost of downtime, so
that an organization has a good idea of its actual availability requirements.
Engage SAP solution stack vendors
A true sizing process is to engage the SAP solution stack vendors, which is the next
step. This means selecting the best SAPhardware and software technology partners for
all layers and components of the solution stack, based on a side-by-side sizing
comparison. The most important factors that are of influence here are the estimated
numbers of (concurrent) users and batch sizes. A wise thing to do is to involve SAP AG
itself to let them create a sizing proposal stating the advised solution stack, before
moving to SAPs technology partners/SAP vendors, like Accenture, HP and IBM. A
simplified solution stack is depicted at the right, showing the many layers for which
software and hardware has to be acquired. Note the overlap with the OSI model.
Staff TSO
The TSO (Technical Support Organisation) is the most important resource for an
organization that is implementing SAP, so staffing the TSO is a vital job which can
consume a lot of time. In a previous phase, the organization should already have staffed
the most vital positions. At this point the organization should staff the bulk of the TSO,
i.e. fill the positions that directly support the near-termobjectives of the implementation,
which are to develop and begin the installation/implementation of the SAP data center.
Examples are: data center experts, network infrastructure experts, security specialists
and database administration experts.
There are many ways to find the right people within or outside the organization for all of
the TSO positions and it depends on the organization how much time it wants to spend
on staffing.
Training
One of the most vital stages of the implementation process is training. Very few people
within an organization are SAP experts or even have worked with SAP software. It is
therefore very important to train the end users but especially the SAP TSO: the people
who design and implement the solution. Many people within the TSO need all kinds of
training. Some examples of these positions:
SAP Network Specialists
SAP Database Administrators
SAP Security specialists
Documentation specialists
Et cetera
All of these people need to acquire the required SAP knowledge and skills or even
SAP certifications through training. Moreover, people need to learn to do business in a
totally new way. To define how much SAP training every person needs, a company can
make use of a skillset matrix. With this matrix, a manager can identify who possesses
what knowledge, to manage and plan training, by defining the height of expertise with a
number between e.g. 1 and 4 for each skill for each employee.
Setup SAP data center
The next step is to set up the SAP data center. This means either building a new data
center facility or transforming the current data center into a foundation capable of
supporting the SAP solution stack, i.e. all of the technology layers and components
(SAP software products) in a productive SAP installation. The most important factor
when designing the data center is availability. The high availability and disaster recovery
requirements which should have been defined earlier, give a good idea of the required
data center requirements to host the SAP software. Data center requirements can be a:
Physical requirement like power requirements
Rack requirement
Network infrastructure requirement or
Requirement to the network server.
Perform installations
The following step is to install the required SAP software parts which are called
components and technological foundations like a web application server or enterprise
portals, to a state ready for business process configuration. The most vital sub steps are
to prepare your OS, prepare the database server and then start installing SAP software.
Here it is very important to use installation guides, which are published for each SAP
component or technology solution by SAP AG. Examples of SAP components are:
R/3 Enterprise Transaction Processing
mySAP BI Business Information Warehouse
mySAP CRM Customer Relationship Management
mySAP KW Knowledge Warehouse
mySAP PLM Product Lifecycle Management
mySAP SCM Supply Chain Management
mySAP SEM Strategic Enterprise Management
mySAP SRM Supplier Relationship Management
mySAP HCM Human Capital Management
Round out support for SAP
Before moving into the functional development phase, the organization should identify
and staff the remaining TSO roles, e.g. roles that relate to helpdesk work and other
such support providing work.
[edit]Functional development
The next phase is the functional development phase, where it is all about change
management and testing. This phase is depicted below.

Address change management
The next challenge for an organization is all about change management / change
control, which means to develop a planned approach to the changes the organization
faces. The objective here is to maximize the collective efforts of all people involved in
the change and to minimize the risk of failure of implementing the changes related to
the SAP implementation.
The implementation of SAP software will most surely come with many changes and an
organization can expect many natural reactions, i.e. denial, to these changes. To fight
this, it is most important to create a solid project team dedicated to change
management and to communicate the solution vision and goals of this team. This team
should be prepared to handle the many change issues that come from various sources
like:
End-user requests
End-User regular activities
Operations
Data center team
DBA group
Systems management
SAP systems and operations management
Next thing is to create a foundation for the SAP systems management and SAP
computer operations, by creating a SAP operations manual and by evaluating SAP
management applications. The manual is a collection of current state system
documentation, day-to-day and other regularly scheduled operations tasks, various
installation and operations checklists and how-to process documents.
Functional, integration and regression testing
Testing is very important before going live with any system. Before going live with a
SAP system, it is vital to do many different kinds of testing, since there is often a large,
complex infrastructure of hardware and software involved. Both requirements as well as
quality parameters are to be tested. Important types of testing are:
Functional testing: to test using functional use cases, i.e. a set of conditions or
variables under which a tester will determine if a certain business process works
Integration testing
Regression testing
All tests should be preceded by creating solid test plans.
Agreements will be met. This can be done with SAPs standard application benchmarks,
to benchmark the organizations configurations against configurations that have been
tested by SAPs hardware technology partners. Again, a test plan should be created at
first.
[edit]Final preparation
Prepare for cutover
The final phase before going live with SAP is often referred to as the cutover phase,
which is the process of transitioning from one system to a new one.
The organization needs to plan, prepare and execute the cutover, by creating a cutover
plan that describes all cutover tasks that have to be performed before the actual go-live.
Examples of cutover tasks are:
Review and update all systems-related operations procedures like backup policies
and system monitoring
Assign ownership of SAPs functional processes to individuals
Let SAP AG do a GoingLive check, to get their blessing to go live with the system
Lock down the system, i.e. do not make any more changes to the SAP system
[edit]Go live
All of the previously described phases all lead towards this final moment: the go-live.
Go-live means to turn on the SAP system for the end-users and to obtain feedback on
the solution and to monitor the solution. It is also the moment where product software
adoption comes into play. More information on this topic:
Product Software Adoption: Big Bang Adoption
Product Software Adoption: Parallel Adoption
Product Software Adoption: Phased Adoption
[edit]Critical success factors
In order to successfully implement SAP in an organization, there are several things that
are of great importance:
1) Choose the correct SAP Consultants to have the correct blueprint. An SAP
Consultant is a professional who has the skills to speak to the managers of a company
and help them creating the blueprint. For this the SAP Consultant has the business
skills of the business area he/she is working with, and also masters this area on SAP.
For example, if this is SAP FI (accountancy) Consultant, this person is an expert on
accountancy and payments, gained through experience or by the corresponding studies
at the University. Also this person knows SAP FI because has gained by the
corresponding training, or the course on the SAP Partner Academy or similar. Benefits:
As this person knows about Accountancy he or she will understand the needs of the
business and will bring it into reality.
2) SAP R/3 implementation is not an IT project, in fact is an Organization Project
impacting all levels of a company. So it is very important to get the support from all the
people that are involved in implementing SAP, but more important the participation and
commitment of all levels, specially managers, of the company.
3) The Blueprint is the keystone used as the lighthouse who must guide the whole
project. A blueprint should never be a merely mapping of IT systems. In fact a blueprint
is bringing the strategy of a company into execution through defining its processes
across all business areas. Many projects have failed because the focus was on having
people with SAP knowledge, but with no business skills and so defining something that
works...wrongly. Just remember, processes must change across time, and a manual
error automated could be repeated infinitely.
4) Always consider changing the way things have been done before implementing
SAP. "This has always been done like this and the Consultant should replicate it on
SAP" is the start of a big problem. SAP many times could save you time and money as
it allows your organization to automate many processes.
5) Test the SAP hardware and software rigorously by testing your business
processes, and to ensure that the end-users are ready to use SAP before going live,
because there are many known projects that failed because of a lack of support and
SAP knowledge.
6) Design and execute a Change Management Program by communicating as early
as needed all the information that end users should have to accept the new technology
and designing and executing a training plan in order to reassure a knowledge base
within the organizations.