SAP Learning Journey

Handling Customer Projects

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Identify different roles during implementation projects
  • Manage configuration projects using best practices

Introduction

This course introduces you to the configuration elements required to implement a customer. Before we dive in to the system training, let's take a look at the general process that you will go through to implement a customer. The overall understanding of the project flow will help to orient you to "why" and "when" configuration come in to the process and get you ready to kickoff a customer project.

In this lesson, you will be taken through a customer implementation scenario to give you an idea of what a customer project process might look like. You'll be guided by a consultant persona with several connecting interactions to see a customer project from start to finish. When you have completed each interaction, a check mark will appear on the screen.

Implementation Team Overview

A typical implementation project involves interaction between different resources and roles. To facilitate a rapid implementation, you will require the coordination of several resources.

One way to ensure quick implementations is to assemble only the resources required to accomplish the tasks and make decisions, and to clearly define their individual accountabilities.

Note

The time required is an estimate. It will vary based on project deliverables and timelines.

Kickoff Meeting with your Customer to Gather Requirements

Preparing for the Project Kickoff

It is good practice and recommended that a project begins with a project kickoff meeting. This meeting should aim to bring together the different project resources/roles to discuss the project goals, deliverables and timelines. The meeting agenda and details should be modified based on specific the project needs.

Best Practices for Configuration

Throughout this course, you'll learn how to configure important aspects of the SAP SuccessFactors solution. Here are some best practices to help you be successful:

  • Start with pre-configuration in the customer’s staging environment to accelerate customer understanding of the tool

  • Approach decisions as "fit-to-standard" with gap-fit analysis instead of pure discovery and ground-up business process design

  • Change only what must be changed in order to bridge perceived gaps

  • Leverage iterations which include gap-fit (evaluation), design, documentation, configuration, testing and validation

  • Coordinate gap-fit solution design, configuration and testing across workstreams to identify potential integration impacts within the suite

  • Create, maintain and share effective project- and configuration-related documentation

  • Provide the customer with system administrator training as early in the project as possible and assign the customer the system administrator-level configuration responsibilities to accelerate knowledge transfer

  • Prepare and distribute highly detailed cutover to production documentation that is customer-specific, assigning customers the responsibility for system administrator-level tasks (resource dependent – consultant may act as staff augmentation during cutover)

  • Save and share all project and configuration documentation on the customer’s Jam site before the project is closed so that Customer Support will be able to access those documents after go live (This is relevant only for SAP Internal Consultants).

Now that you know the basics of how your project will run, we will dive into the technical aspects of implementing SAP SuccessFactors.

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