Introduction to SAP Solution Manager

Why Solution Manager?

There are several reasons to implement SAP Solution Manager. First, SAP Solution Manager enables the customer to have a faster implementation of SAP solutions and helps optimize operations once implementation is complete. Second, implementing SAP Solution Manager gives the customer access to all available implementation and upgrade content. Third, customers have easy access to all support services that are relevant to operations, maintenance, and improvement activities. This leads to faster issue resolution through close collaboration with Active Global Support.

Solution Manager Usage Scenarios

There are many scenarios in which SAP Solution Manager can be used. Each scenario occurs in one of the three life cycle phases, implementation, operations, and optimization. This is also known as the cycle of continuous improvement. There are six common scenarios for Solution Manager. They are: Implement SAP Solutions Monitor SAP Solutions Manage the Service Desk Link to SAP Services Manage Change Requests Upgrade SAP Solutions

Benefits of SAP Solution Manager: 1

Solution Manager provides many benefits for the customer. One of the benefits is more reliable IT solutions. With SAP Solution Manager, companies can minimize risk during implementation and operation. They can avoid inconsistencies in heterogeneous environments by performing crosscomponent consistency checks. With the SAP Solution Manager Service Desk, customers can resolve issues quickly. The result is better IT service and less down time. The tools and content provided by SAP Solution Manager make implementation and change management projects more efficient. Companies can reduce the cost of process design, technical setup, business setup, support and operations, testing, and knowledge transfer. Centralized project handling, blueprinting, configuration, and testing ensure consistency and avoid redundancies, which reduces the cost of implementation projects in multicomponent environments. SAP Solution Manager provides a framework for consistent solution documentation and preserves documents for later use, which reduces the costs of upgrades or continuous improvement projects.

Benefits of Solution Manager: 2

Another benefit of SAP Solution Manager is faster return on investment. SAP Solution Manager accelerates implementation and continuous improvement. It provides implementation accelerators and a library of preconfigured business processes as a starting point for projects. This means that companies don't need to begin from scratch, and can benefit from SAPs business process experience. Content and services available through SAP Solution Manager such as implementation road maps, best-practice documents, and SAP solution management services, speed learning and accelerate projects. Using Solution Manager can also reduce the cost of operation by providing a central point of control for multi-component environments. In heterogeneous environments, SAP Solution Manager facilitates technical and application integration. Finally, Solution Manager gives the customer more leverage from their IT investments. SAP Solution Manager and integrates with IT landscapes that include both SAP and non-SAP applications. Companies can use it to reduce their total cost of ownership without making major changes to their IT environments.

Standard ASAP Roadmaps

ASAP roadmaps outline the activities involved in implementing, upgrading, or enhancing SAP solutions. Each roadmap has a set of deliverables, accelerators, role descriptions and additional guides. The five standard roadmaps are listed on this screen. The Implementation Roadmap for SAP Solutions provide the methodological framework for the project team during the implementation of an SAP solution. The Solution Management Roadmap provides a methodology for the implementation of the technical infrastructure and its operation. The Global Template Roadmap describes how to organize and run a project where a corporate template is developed. The Upgrade Roadmap is designed to help you carry out the customizing activities required for an upgrade. There are also other roadmaps, such as the Enterprise Portal and Exchange Infrastructure roadmaps, but we do not go into detail on these here.. To learn more about the each roadmap, move your pointer over the name of the item you want to learn more about.

Five Phases of the Implementation Roadmap

The implementation roadmap consists of five phases. The first phase is Project Preparation. This is the initial planning for the customers' SAP project. The activities include general project management requirements, an issues management plan, an organizational change management plan, and the establishment of other policies and procedures for running the project. This phase must be completed before the next phase begins. The next phase, the business blueprint phase, comprises activities for aligning the customers business and technical requirements to the SAP standard software. Just as a blueprint of a house is a plan by which an architect conveys the building requirements to the contractor, so the business blueprint in ASAP becomes the plan for the eventual configuration of a customers SAP software solution. This phase concludes with the approval of a business blueprint document. The realization phase comprises the building and testing of the solution as prescribed by the business blueprint document. Activities in this phase include customizing in the Implementation Guide of the associated development systems. The realization phase also includes software enhancements, special progamming, building and executing test plans, and finally, signing-off the configured system. During the final preparation phase many crucial tasks remain, such as acceptance testing of the production system hardware, the completion of end-user training, and plans for transfer to the production system. The final phase is Go Live and Support. During this phase, items such as service level agreements and helpdesk procedures are established and tested. The conclusion of this phase is the hand-over to the operations and monitoring staff.

Elements of the Implementation Roadmap

This screen describes the various elements of the Implementation Roadmap. These elements are the roadmap structure, the viewing area and the attachment area. As the graphic illustrates, the Roadmap Structure is located on the lefthand side of the screen and gives the project a list of items that outlines what to do and when to do it. The viewing/text area, on the upper right side of the screen, displays procedural guides, prerequisite information, and deliverables of the highlighted structure items. Finally, the attachments area on the lower right-side of the screen displays various items, such as accelarators, issues, supplemental documentation, and project team members responsible for the tasks listed in the roadmap structure.

Business Blueprint Features

The Business Blueprint Structure is displayed on the left side of the screen. This structure is developed in the business process workshops. All requirements are recorded and associated with a structure item. The content used to establish the structure is found in the Business Process Repository. The business structure displayed on this screen is based on Business Scenarios. The business scenarios are defined first. Then, supporting business process groups are chosen from the Business Process Repository, based on those scenarios. On the right side of the screen, associated items are available to support the line-items in the structure on the left. Additional features, such as project documentation, transaction assignments and graphical flow of processes are also available. Once the blueprint structure is finalized, the blueprint document can be generated and becomes the master plan for the realization phase of the project.

Configuration Testing Features: 2

Let's walk through the test workflow outlined on this screen. First, a project structure is created and test cases are collected. In the second step, the collected test cases are assigned to different test packages in the project structure. Then, the test packages are given to the assigned testers the project. The test packages are executed and then the test results are analyzed. The benefits of this systems are: Fast test preparation and execution A single point of access to the complete system landscape Central storage of testing material and test results and Re-use of existing testing material

SAP Solution Manager During Productive Operations

Once we have a live production system, Solution Manager takes on the role of a central system that integrates tools such as system monitoring, business process monitoring and the help desk. Solution Manager is a powerful tool because it is your gateway to SAP Support. Based on your solution configuration, Solution Manager automatically triggers recommendations for services such as remote consulting, self-services, and best practice documents. We'll examine these features in more detail.

Solution Monitoring

The increasing number of IT solutions is a growing challenge for the administration team in a computer center. As a result, computer center managers demand a monitoring method that is centralized (with all information in one tool), yet can be extended to cover new components. Instead of classic system monitoring of individual system components, we now talk about solution monitoring, where entire business processes can be monitored across multiple components. This concept is realized through the following three monitoring sections within the SAP Solution Manager: Business Process Monitoring, Central System Monitoring, and Service Level Management.

Service Desk Features

The service desk offers a complete infrastructure for running a solutionwide support organization at your site. Features of the service desk include: a Message handling process a Customer solution database SAP Notes Management Solution Manager Diagnostics