Preparing for Fit-to-Standard Workshops

The Fit-to-Standard Analysis workshops are an essential part of making sure the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system fits the customer's needs. In these workshops, the partner line of business (LoB) configuration experts demonstrate the SAP standard business processes the customer executive sponsors have selected on the Digital Discovery Assessment to customer LoB experts who are responsible for the job tasks covered in each business process.

"Fit-to-Standard" means "fitting" or teaching the customer LoB experts how the standard business processes work in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system. The customer LoB experts are in the best position to identify small changes that may be necessary to make the system work for their requirements. We are not rebuilding entire business processes here, but we can make small changes to tailor the standard processes to what the customer requires.

It's important to remind the customer LoB experts that any change to a standard process is going to create more maintenance work for the organization through future release upgrades, so we are only looking for critical requirements that are absolutely necessary for the customer LoB experts to be able to accomplish their job tasks in SAP S/4HANA Cloud after go-live.

The Business Driven Configuration Questionnaires (BDCQ) are used by the partner line of business (LoB) configuration experts to gather configuration values that will ultimately be entered in SAP Central Business Configuration to configure the customer's SAP S/4HANA Cloud development system tenants.

To identify which business processes you need to look up configuration values for, partner LoB configuration experts check the processes that were selected for their LoB on the Digital Discovery Assessment (DDA) and filter the BDCQ relevant for their LoB by those processes.

In the BDCQ, there are two levels of information - Level 2 (L2) values that should be gathered in the Prepare phaseprior to Fit-to-Standard workshop delivery, and Level 3 (L3) values that should be gathered in the Explore phaseduringFit-to-Standard workshops.

The L2 values in the BDCQ are meant as a secondary check to absolutely make sure there are no customer requirements for functionality that aren't available in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system. The DDA completed by the customer executive sponsor(s) in the Discover phase is designed to ask very detailed questions for business processes that have different functionality/capabilities between the public and private cloud deployments of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Based on the responses to these questions, the DDA will recommend only the solution that fits the customer's needs.

For example, the DDA could have initially proposed public cloud after the quick qualification, but when the detailed discovery is completed, the DDA may change it's recommendation to private cloud. This is likely because of responses to the detailed qualification scope-relevant questions. Even though the DDA is designed to catch these small details, we use the L2 questions on the BDCQ to double-check that public cloud is still the right fit for the customer. Instead of asking the L2 questions to the executive sponsor(s) who completed the DDA, we ask customer LoB experts who work closely with the data and/or functionality to get a different perspective.

You can access the Business Driven Configuration Questionnaires (BDCQs) through two methods:

• SAP Signavio Process Navigator → SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition solution scenario → Accelerators tab → General Documents tab → Business Driven Configuration Questionnaires → this sends you to the Business Driven Configuration Assessment task in the SAP Roadmap Viewer.
• SAP Roadmap Viewer → SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (3-system landscape) methodology → Prepare Phase → Business Driven Configuration Assessment task → Perform Initial Business Process Assessment for SAP S/4HANA Cloud → download relevant Excel spreadsheet for your line of business area.

Note

Some BDCQs don't fit into a typical line of business. The implementation team should meet together and verify all business processes selected on the Digital Discovery Assessment are being covered across the different BDCQs, and if there are outstanding processes (e.g. in Human Resources or Two Tier ERP), divvy up the work amongst themselves based on who has transferable expertise and/or availability.

Steps to prepare the Business Driven Configuration Assessment (BDCQ) and identify customer LoB experts:

1. Partner LoB configuration experts download the relevant BDCQ Excel spreadsheet for their LoB.
2. Filter the Scope Ref. column to only include the business processes that have been selected on the DDA.
3. Filter the Level column to only include L2 questions.
4. Look up each in-scope business process in SAP Signavio Process Navigator to determine which business roles are most involved in the tasks completed for each process.
5. Make a list of the business roles most involved in the tasks for each business process.
6. Contact the customer project manager and ask for support in identifying 2-4 customer experts who can "represent" the business roles you've identified.
7. Set up meetings (virtual or on-site) with these experts and explain what's in the Topic Definition column of the BDCQ, then ask what's in the Question column.
8. Enter the customer responses in the Customer's Response column.

Another benefit of the BDCQ is to help the partner LoB configuration experts build relationships with customer LoB experts and to introduce these customer experts to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Ideally, the same customer LoB experts who provide the L2 BDCQ information about specific business processes would participate in the Fit-to-Standard workshop(s) covering those same processes, and finally complete the user acceptance testing of the configured and customized processes before go-live.

If you imagine this happening across all lines of business being implemented, you end up with a group of customers who already know how to use SAP S/4HANA Cloud to complete the business processes relevant for their job tasks before go-live. They can then help communicate information across their teams about which business processes are relevant for their job responsibilities, and where to access the documentation/tutorials for a process (Process Navigator and the in-app support). This is a subtle, but important part of overall change management communication - the communication between employees about how to use the new software.

As a line of business (LoB) configuration expert, your goal is to make each Fit-to-Standard workshop as realistic to what the customer would actually experience in an SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system. For this reason, you need to prepare the starter system by creating "test users" to use when demonstrating the procedures of each test script. Each test user should only have two business roles assigned to their user:

1. Employee
2. Primary business role (e.g. Project Manager - Professional Services)

Consider naming your test users close to their primary business role so you can follow the test script from SAP Signavio Process Navigator as closely as possible during the demonstration. For example, as you work through the test script, Customer Project Management, when the instructions say to log in as the "Project Manager - Professional Services", you log in with the test user called, "Project Manager (first name) Professional Services (last name)".

During the workshop delivery, bring attention to the role being demonstrated and which customer expert(s) it's relevant for. For example, Kerry - the "Project Manager - Professional Services" most aligns with your role, so this is what you would see when logging into the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

Another reason we create these test users is to provide the login information for each test user to the customers who participated in the workshop. After the workshop has completed and they've seen one or more business processes demonstrated, we give the customers the opportunity to work through the test script on their own in the starter system.

This is part of the process of teaching each group of customers how to use the system - first they see a process demonstrated, then have the opportunity to test it out themselves in the starter system, and finally participate in the user acceptance testing of the configured and customized system.

Partner LoB configuration experts create test users in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud starter system through the Manage Workforce app. If you do not have access to this app, ask the customer IT Contact to assign you the Administrator business role.

1. Select the Administration space and choose the Workforce Master Data page.
2. Select the Manage Workforce app.
3. Select Import → Worker.
4. Set the delimiter to Comma (,) and choose Download Templates.
5. Save the template to your desktop and open the CSV file in Microsoft Excel.
6. Enter the following information for each test user:
   • WorkerID
   • UserName
   • WorkerType (BUP003)
   • FirstName (e.g. Project Manager)
   • LastName (e.g. Professional Services)
   • Email (your email)
   • Language
   • Start Date (today's date in YYYMMDD format)
   • End Date (99991231)
7. Save the file (keep in CSV format) and Import into the Manage Workforce app.
8. Use the newly created test users and follow each test script from start to finish and make a note of approximately how long it takes you to work through the test procedures. You will use this information when organizing the business processes into workshops.

Fit-to-Standard Analysis workshops are time consuming, because partner LoB configuration experts need to demonstrate an entire test script from start to finish (skip the "preliminary steps" section, just the "test procedures"), and gather the following information from their customer LoB experts:

• Configuration values for business process (Validate existing L2 BDCQ responses, gather L3 responses)
• Business role and corresponding space/page customizations
• Key user in-app extensions
• Output forms/email customizations (if relevant)
• Analytical app customizations (if relevant)
• Values for data migration or a contact who will be able to pull relevant data from the legacy system(s)
• Additional integration requirements
• Perceived change impact (to be shared with Change Management Team)

Use the length of the test script (number of pages in the Test Procedures section) as a gauge to estimate approximately how long it will take to cover the business process with your customers. For example, the Customer Project Management (J11) test procedures cover approximately 40 pages. This is in stark contrast to the Resource Management for Projects (6JO) test script, which is only 10 pages. It's going to take much more time to work through J11 than 6JO with a customer expert. It would be realistic to cover 1-2 business processes for a half day (4 hours) workshop and 2-3 business processes for a full day workshop (you can define your own time estimates, these are just examples to get you started).

You also want to keep your workshop participants engaged during the entire workshop, which means stacking processes together where there are similar business roles completing the majority of the activities. Here's an example of how to organize business processes into workshops:

1. Look at the process flow diagrams for all business processes you need to cover in your workshops in SAP Signavio Process Navigator and write down the business roles involved in the majority of the tasks for each process.
2. Group together processes that have the same roles completing the majority of the tasks.
3. Check the number of pages in the test procedures for the processes you have grouped together and refer back to approximately how long it took you to work through each test script after creating your test users.
4. Use this information to fine-tune each workshop by adding/removing processes to fit into half-day or full-day workshops.

Generally, we recommend running the Chart of Accounts and Organizational Structure workshops first; the remaining line of business workshops can take place in parallel, in any sequence. If you are onsite, make a schedule and identify and book available meeting rooms. If you are offsite, make a schedule and set up virtual meeting rooms. This schedule will likely need to change depending on your customer experts' availability. Finally, reach out to the customer LoB experts you worked with for the Business Driven Configuration Questionnaire responses and invite them to the relevant workshops. There should be minimum 2 people representing each business role covered in a workshop, and no more than 4, because this can lead to discussions getting side-tracked with "too many cooks in the kitchen". Adjust your original schedule and onsite/virtual meeting rooms as-needed.

Note

If you are having an exceptionally difficult time getting your customer LoB experts to find time to participate in your workshops, talk to your other team members to see if they are having the same experience. If it seems to be an issue for everyone, bring it up to your partner project manager, who can further escalate this to the customer project manager and customer executive sponsors.

Essentially, we need the executive sponsors to communicate to the people managers in the organization that employee participation in the Fit-to-Standard workshops is the number one priority during this time. If the people managers are aware of this priority change, they will understand the need to free-up the schedules of any direct reports who are asked to participate in the workshops. Remember that you're working with employees of an organization who already have full-time responsibilities, and their managers will not know these workshops need to be a priority unless the message is communicated from the executive sponsor level.