SAP applications are the foundation of any business. As a result, CIOs and owners make every effort to ensure the success of SAP implementation. Despite all of the steps and challenges, many SAP implementations fail. The chances of success with SAP are said to be 50-50, and it is because many businesses fail to get off to a good start.
Christopher Salis believes all critical stages of SAP implementation must be considered, planned, and followed for a successful SAP implementation. It doesn’t matter if it’s SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP, or another SAP system; these stages are common to all SAP implementations.
Critical Stages of your SAP Implementation Journey by Christopher Salis
Here are the critical stages in SAP implementation explained by Christopher Salis:
Project Planning
It’s the start phase, which leads to the failure of the SAP implementation project. It entails planning the entire project, which can be difficult due to the vast landscape. That’s why selecting one of the best SAP implementation partners, or MSPs, is critical, and they can help you develop the most efficient SAP roadmap.
Business Blueprint
Before implementation, it is critical to understand and underline your future business processes. Differences or gaps will always exist between your current and future business processes, and developing a blueprint document will aid in bridging these gaps and ensuring a smooth SAP implementation.
Implementation
After the gap analysis, your SAP implementation member will configure your baseline system, known as the baseline configuration. The implementation team will fine-tune the system to meet your business and process requirements and close any gaps identified in the business blueprint to ensure a smooth SAP implementation. The SAP implementation team handles any required customizations during this phase.
Integration Tests
Testing will begin concurrently with the migration and implementation (it goes hand-in-hand with the Realization phase). The testing team will run various tests (Unit and Integration tests) to evaluate how well the implementation is progressing and ensure that the SAP systems produce results.
Final Preparation
The final preparation phase, as the name implies, includes activities needed to prepare both systems and your employees before going live. An SAP implementation member will make any changes necessary for a complete migration to SAP systems based on the results of the Realization and testing phases.
Go-Live
During this phase, you transition from pre-production to a live environment and migrate all data to the SAP systems of the production environment. When all data has been successfully migrated to the new SAP systems, the old systems are no longer used. Along with data migration and new applications, project managers will ensure that frequent tests are run to ensure everything works as expected.
The Final Word
You can optimize SAP implementation and lower the total cost of implementation by following these critical stages explained by Christopher Salis. Better quality management and governance can help you achieve all of your business goals.
