ASAP Phase 5: Go Live and Support

Now you are ready to go live with your productive system! Afterwards, the project team focuses on supporting the end users, for which training may not be completed. It is also necessary to establish procedures and measurements to review the benefits of your investment in R/3 on an ongoing basis. Key SAP Services to support you in this phase include

• The Online Service System (OSS)
• Remote Consulting
• EarlyWatch® Services

These services encompass a series of remote analyses of specific R/3 System settings, with recommendations for improving system performance.

Fig. Xx: Post go-live activities during productive operation

The last phase of the implementation project is concerned with supporting and optimizing the operative R/3 System, both the technical infrastructure and load distribution as well as the business processes. Activities such as the following are carried out:

• Production support facilities are defined, for example, checking system performance on a daily basis
• Validation of business processes and their configuration
• Follow-up training for users
• Signoffs, etc.

This phase can also include a series of follow-up projects for adding new application components or automating and improving business processes, such as with SAP Business Workflow. The project manager monitors the fulfillment of the enterprise goals and the return on investment.

During Phase 5, the first EarlyWatch® session should be held, where experts from SAP analyze the system’s technical infrastructure. The aim is to ensure that the system functions as smoothly as possible. The purpose of SAP's EarlyWatch® Service is to improve the performance of your live R/3 System by preventing system bottlenecks. The underlying concept of SAP EarlyWatch® Service is prevention: taking appropriate action before a problem situation develops.

Regular analysis of live R/3 Systems by teams of experts ensures that potential problems can be recognized and remedied at an early stage. This maintains system availability and performance at a high level. SAP EarlyWatch® measures the server, database, applications, configuration and system load. The results are recorded in a status report with recommendations for system tuning.

From early productive operation onwards, SAP EarlyWatch® provides regular performance and error analyses by evaluating statistical data on the various system components.

System and Release Upgrade

As part of R/3 system maintenance, new releases of the software, including new and enhanced application components and corrections, are shipped at regular intervals. You will normally need to verify or reconfigure some of the settings in order to use them.

AcceleratedSAP offers two kinds of roadmaps for moving the software forward to new releases or versions. One is the Continuous Change Roadmap, which provides ongoing support and assistance for the post go-live phase, and is described below. The second is the Upgrade Roadmap, which you can use to plan and carry out an upgrade to your R/3 System.

Special Release IMGs specific to your system configuration are available. You can read the online documentation for a new release directly from the IMG.

Fig. 31 (3-7): Generating a Release IMG

Upgrade and Release Changes

When you implement a new release, you can decide whether you want to keep working with the same functions within the selected components (Upgrade Customizing) or whether you want to implement the new functionality supplied for the existing release (Delta Customizing).

For legal changes affecting some country versions, in particular for the HR component, you can now see which legal changes have taken effect in your country and carry out the corresponding Customizing activities to have your system include these changes.

One of the strengths of the R/3 System is its ability to grow with the enterprise. Imagine you have to set up a new organizational unit, or a new plant, for example. The IMG can help, using preconfigured or existing organizational units as a basis. All you need to do is adjust the configuration until it matches your exact requirements, verifying the mandatory activities – to get a new, fully functional organizational unit, ready for accounting, purchasing, sales or warehousing, for example.

ASAP for Upgrades

AcceleratedSAP provides an Upgrade Roadmap and upgrade manuals to facilitate release changes and upgrade projects. The Upgrade Roadmap enables you to take a systematic approach to release changes and complements the available technical documentation.

Although implementing new versions of R/3 is carried out in the form of a new project, the project team will profit from their experiences during initial implementation. Many documents already exist and only need to be verified or extended.

Fig. 32: Phases in an upgrade project

In order to systematically carry out an upgrade project, the ASAP Upgrade Roadmap will generate a project plan with only the activities required. All other activities have either already been carried out or they are not relevant. As with the Roadmap for the initial implementation, there are descriptions of the individual tasks, and wherever possible, additional accelerators in the form of checklists, templates or examples. The technical documentation of the upgrades is extended via ASAP to include release-specific project management.

Release 4.0 of AcceleratedSAP contains the Continuous Change Roadmap, with standard activities necessary after the initial implementation. In this way, SAP provides ongoing support and assistance for post go-live activities. The tasks in that structure provide solutions for all known types of continuous change: Business changes, technology changes or changes in the user community.