Newer SAP Implementation Tools and Methodologies

Because it has proven itself effective, many SAP implementation partners continue to embrace ASAP or a customized version of it. At the turn of the century, in response to the need to more rapidly and completely deploy R/3 and a host of growing solutions offered by SAP AG, though, ASAP evolved into GlobalSAP and later ValueSAP. ASAP was always limited in that it assumed a very rigid phased approach; the fact that implementation phases often overlapped, or that businesses found themselves in the midst of multiple ASAP phases as a result of a geographically phased rollout, was contrary to ASAP. The new SAP deployment methodologies therefore added Evaluation and Continuous Business Improvement to their core focus on implementation. These changes help overcome some of the previous shortfalls, although not all of them. During this time, the roadmap changed a bit as well, shrinking from five to four phases.

In 2001, SAP AG released an improved delivery vehicle—SAP Solution Manager, or SolMan—when it introduced Web Application Server (WebAS) 6.10. By the end of 2002, Solution Manager had matured considerably, offering not only multiple roadmaps to implementation but also improved content. Some of this content included sample documents, new templates, a repository for canned business processes, and better project-management tools.

SAP Solution Manager has built upon the groundwork created by ASAP. Robust project monitoring and reporting capabilities have been recently augmented with Learning Maps, which are role-specific Internet-enabled training tools featuring online tutoring and virtual classrooms. In this way, the Project Team can more quickly get up to speed. With training and related support of the ASAP and ValueSAP methodologies replaced by SolMan, Project Teams do well to transition from ASAP-based and other methodologies to those facilitated by SAP Solution Manager.

It’s important to remember, though, that at the end of the day these approaches all amount to little more than frameworks or methodologies with supporting templates. Even SolMan only facilitates an implementation—there’s still much real work that needs to be done. But if you are seeking to deploy well-known and mature SAP functionality, and are focused on avoiding too much custom development, SolMan is a wonderful tool in your implementation arsenal.