People Who Need IT People: Solutions for Addressing Hard-to-Find SAP® Support
What keeps IT executives up at night? Surprisingly, the answer is not budget, infrastructure, or security concerns. While all of these are critical factors, the answer is something much harder to get a fix on – people.
In this dynamic market, finding and retaining skilled SAP® support resources to ensure successful post-go-live support is a primary concern for IT executives. We hear from our customers every day how hard it is to find skilled SAP support specialists. And once you have them, keeping them engaged and retained is a challenge. They know they are in demand and can easily jump ship. As a result, IT executives worry about whether or not they have the right people to ensure proper support for the users of their mission-critical applications.
Do you have one or more of the following challenges?
- Implementing a full suite of SAP applications with limited resources
- Deploying SAP applications, such as the SAP Customer Relationship Management application, with hard-to-find support skill sets
- Not having adequately planned or staffed for post-go-live support
- Experiencing high turnover in your project team members
- Having IT staff and a user base with limited SAP experience
- Needing to deploy support models across multiple time zones
- Struggling to attract skilled SAP resources in a tight regional market
These challenges prevent IT organizations from delivering their line-of-business peers the support and consistency needed for their mission-critical applications, let alone driving the business innovation CEOs today are demanding of their IT executives.
Focus on Driving Business Innovation Without Worrying About the Day-to-Day Operations
While there is no silver bullet, the SAP Application Management service establishes a long-term relationship delivering post-implementation application support, maintenance, and improvement for a customer’s SAP applications. This assures the availability and optimal performance of the key business processes within a customer’s SAP solution. SAP Application Management provides the following services:
- First-, second-, and third-level support
- First-level support (typically by key users) – handling issues such as “How can I reprint a delivery note?” “Is there a list available with the open items per receivables sorted by currencies?” and resetting passwords and unlocking users
- Second-level support – addressing problems that could not be solved in first-level support, such as checking and adjusting data, customizing, and programming; and adjusting the error constellation in the QA system
- Third-level support – tracking open source software (OSS) requests
- Break/Fix
- Custom application configuration and development
- Problem management
- Application monitoring
- Interface and performance monitoring
- Proactive and reactive application support
- Support and completion of periodic activities
- Continuous maintenance
- Electronic data interchange (EDI)/interface monitoring
- Correction services, such as implementing OSS notes and following OSS messages
- Authorization services, such as maintaining existing roles, profiles, and users
- Forms modifications, such as a change in president
- Continuous improvement
- Adoption and optimization of implemented applications without changes to essential functionality
- Creation of new forms and reports
- Optimization of existing business processes in the system
The Consistent Delivery of Your Support Services
SAP Application Management includes dedicated account management, providing customers a single point of contact and accountability, as well as guaranteed service-level management and reporting, to ensure continual delivery of support services. In addition, SAP Application Management can contribute to the design and development of new support structures and processes, optimize existing structures and processes, and serve as a trusted advisor to your IT organization.
Many IT executives are choosing to outsource the support of their SAP solutions to SAP Application Management to benefit in the following ways:
- Free IT resources to focus on projects that can help drive business innovation
- Increase service levels and quality
- Reduce costs by leveraging SAP people and skills, processes, and standards
- Stop worrying about finding and retaining skilled SAP resources
- Achieve predictable monthly results – operationally and financially
And last, but certainly not least – you will gain peace of mind, knowing that a team of SAP Application Management experts is ensuring the optimal support of your SAP solutions.
To register for SAP Insider’s June 13, 2007 Web conference on SAP Application Management,
click here.
To learn more about SAP Application Management,
click here.
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