Get Started with SAP

Plan Your Implementation

Get Enabled

Prepare to Go Live

Understanding Your Onboarding Journey

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe the onboarding journey concept

Customer Onboarding Journey

The Customer Onboarding Journey is designed to guide you from contract start to first value realization. You will receive proactive guidance, a clear road map, and access to relevant resources and services throughout your onboarding experience.

With this structured approach, you can realize value faster and set the foundation for long-term success.

We do it through a structured onboarding journey that guides customers step by step, from getting started, to implementation, enablement, and go-live preparation. This ensures an exceptional first experience, accelerate first value realization, early guidance and empowerment and rapid solution adoption.

The Customer Onboarding Journey consists of four phases:

Get started with SAP: This initial phase is about creating the foundation for a successful project. Customers are introduced to the essential SAP tools and assets needed to access their SAP solution.
Plan your implementation: Understand SAP Best Practices and the methodologies that you can leverage to launch your project. We offer services and assets to form your project team and give it a strong start.
Get enabled: Once your project is underway, the team may need support gaining the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively use your SAP solutions. The goal is to ensure that the team is confident and capable of leveraging SAP to its full potential.
Prepare to go live: Time to make sure that all systems are ready and that the team is ready to start using SAP. In this final phase, we show you how to prepare for a seamless transition and provide the resources you should use to run the day-to-day operations of your SAP solution.

Digital Experience Offerings

The Onboarding Digital Experience is formed by four main components that together form the foundation of the SAP Onboarding Experience for all our customers.

1. Welcome E-mail:

Sent on the contract start date to the Technical Administrator (IT Contact) specified in the contract, this initial communication helps new customers understand how to get started with SAP.

2. Onboarding Resource Center:

Provides easy to consume, ungated enablement resources, ensuring easy access to the basic resources as part of your onboarding journey. To see the coverage for your solution, please visit the Onboarding Resource Center.

Onboarding Resource Center

3. Customer Onboarding Webcasts:

Visit the Onboarding webcast page and select your solution of interest to access live and on-demand webcasts tailored to simplify your journey with SAP.

Customer Onboarding Webcasts (sap.com)

4. Cloud Onboarding Courses:

Beginner-friendly courses with guided learning paths that help you build the knowledge needed for successful cloud adoption.

Cloud Onboarding Courses (learning.sap.com)

The digital foundation is the core of our onboarding strategy. It includes things like onboarding resource centers, learning journeys, automated communications, and 1-to-many sessions. The goal here is simple: give every customer easy access to the right information at the right time, without barriers.

Initial System Overview

The final landscape for an SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition subscription consists of development, test, and productive systems. However, the initial system landscape includes the starter system, central business configuration, the SAP Cloud ALM tenant, and an Identification Authorization System tenant for test systems and productive systems.

Target landscape of an SAP S/4HANA Cloud, full installation.

In addition, the tenant information e-mail received by the IT admin contains details related to getting started with the additional entitlements included in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition subscription.

Before beginning system provisioning, you must familiarize yourself with some key concepts prior to initiating the process from the SAP for Me dashboard. These settings are critical, as incorrect inputs may lead to delays in the project due to necessary system reprovisioning.

Key Areas:

- Scoping

- Organizational structure

- Primary Finance settings: Ledger, Group Currency, Fiscal Year Variant

SAP Cloud ALM

SAP Cloud ALM is a comprehensive solution designed to assist in the implementation and operation of intelligent cloud and hybrid business solutions. It offers the benefit of an out-of-the-box, native cloud platform that serves as the central entry point for managing the SAP landscape. With content-driven guided implementation processes and highly automated operations, SAP Cloud ALM enhances efficiency and streamlines business workflows.

SAP Central Business Configuration

SAP Central Business Configuration is a tool that allows users to configure business processes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition subscription. It supports the scoping and implementation of end-to-end business processes, ensuring streamlined and efficient workflows.

Starter System – Customizing

This system comes equipped with a predefined set of master data and includes over 225 SAP Best Practice scopes. These resources are designed to help users explore system capabilities and effectively conduct the Fit-to-Standard Workshop.

Starter System – Development

This system supports the Fit-to-Standard workshops and aims to test the capabilities of the Development Extensibility Tenant.

For more detailed guidance on setting up a Starter System in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition refer to this comprehensive blog: Getting Started Blog.

Key Settings for System Provision

A set of key settings is essential for a smooth implementation start, making a thorough assessment of them crucial. Changes to these settings can lead to a complete system reprovisioning, potentially causing significant impacts on project timelines.

Scoping

Define your business scope by selecting countries and scope items for each solution package to meet your specific business needs

Organizational structure

Model the organizational structure using predefined entities and templates.

Financial Settings

Fiscal Year Variant (FYV): The FYV specifies the number of posting periods and special periods within your fiscal year. If you require a FYV other than the default variant K4 (January to December), you can choose a suitable one when setting up your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition full installation system. For more information, visit the Fiscal Year and Fiscal Year Variant | SAP Help Portal.
Group Currency: The group currency enables a unified currency comparison across amounts. For guidance, refer to the Setting Your Group Currency | SAP Help Portal.
Ledger Scenarios: The ledger determines whether financial statements are reported solely according to local legal requirements or if they also cater to group-level statements through parallel accounting. Additional details can be found in the Ledger | SAP Help Portal.

For further guidance, see the roadmap viewer.

Triggering System Provision

System provisioning is initiated from SAP for Me. SAP for Me will be covered in the next lesson, as your personalized touchpoint, providing comprehensive transparency about your SAP product portfolio, including various dashboards that will be explored further. For now, the focus is on the "Systems & Provisioning" tab, where the provisioning system wizard begins.

In the screenshots above, you can see an example of where to trigger the provisioning of the starter system, alongside Central Business Configuration and Cloud ALM.

Please note that once the productive system becomes available, the starter system will be decommissioned within 30 days.

Initial User Creation

Getting Started with User Creation

In addition to the S-user, which will be covered in the next section, the following users also need to be created:

User in Cloud ALM: Necessary for accessing the Application Lifecycle Management functionalities in the cloud.
User in Starter System: Required for interacting with the initial SAP system setup for testing and development purposes.
User in Central Business Configuration (CBC): Needed for managing configuration settings centrally across your SAP environment.

For a detailed step-by-step guide on how to manually create and authorize these additional users, explore the Prepare Phase of Identity and Access Management.

An example of a flow for creating users in the Starter System and Central Business Configuration with the Identity Authentication test tenant. Note that users for Cloud ALM work with the Identity Authentication productive tenant.

Initial E-Mail Communication

System access information sent to IT contact

One single e-mail with access to four (4) systems.
Contains system URL.
Initial user name.

Above is an example of a system access e-mail sent after the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system has been provisioned. Ensure that you have received the following e-mails sent to the IT contact in the sales order:

Welcome E-Mail: An introductory message that provides key resources to begin your onboarding journey.
Tenant Information E-Mail: Guides you on how to access the entitlements within your subscription.
System Access E-Mail: Dispatched post-provisioning, this e-mail provides user credentials and system access details in a single consolidated message.

Conclusion

After receiving the welcome e-mail, you can begin setting up your initial access to start using SAP. Utilize the resources available at our Onboarding Resource Center to efficiently kickstart your project. Additionally, take advantage of the webcasts, which offer structured guidance on various topics aligned with the implementation timeline.

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