Application Management Services to support support teams

At special times, such as after the summer vacation or at the beginning of the year, a significantly higher volume is generated, which often leads to a heavy workload for departments. This is precisely where Application Management Services - AM Services for short - offer external support to professionally assist the internal team during "hot phases" or when staff shortages occur.

Resetting a user, creating a new user or generating a password in SAP is usually done with two or three clicks. What takes a lot of time, however, are the processes that the request itself generates: a ticket has to be read and answered. Replies are often delayed and setting the status takes additional time.

If an employee does not receive a new authorization even after days, this has a negative effect on the work itself. Because without authorization, there is no access to the system. At the same time, dissatisfaction arises, both for the employee who makes the request and has to "sit out" the long waiting times, and for the support employee who is overwhelmed by the double workload.

Added to this are the rapid changes at SAP itself. As SAP continues to evolve, support staff are confronted with new requests almost every day that did not even exist in this form yesterday. This in turn means additional training time in the subject matter. This time is then lost elsewhere.

As an external service, AM Services can provide significant relief for employees and SAP teams in the base or in specialist departments.

With standardized AM services, external specialists take over user and authorization management in SAP and professionally respond to tickets remotely - full-time. The experts are up to date with the latest SAP developments and can respond competently to new problems and ticket inquiries. Outsourcing allows companies to significantly reduce the workload of support staff, who can then concentrate on key projects in their specialist areas, which is more important than ever given the current shortage of skilled workers. As with all company processes, AM services must also be integrated into the company using a suitable methodology.

Analysis phase: The first step is an analysis phase, which records the requirements and defines the basic framework conditions. This raises questions such as: Which SAP modules are involved? What is the scope? What is the timeframe?

Transition phase: In the transition phase, the focus is on getting to know the system. An on-site consultant analyzes the system environment, takes a close look at the SAP landscape, obtains an overview of roles and contacts and prepares comprehensive documentation. This also includes technical preparation for operation.

Implementation phase: In the implementation phase, the designated specialists now take over 1st and 2nd level support for the company to the extent previously defined. Incidents are accepted and processed, change requests are identified. Regular feedback, reporting and time feedback are provided to the customer.

Evaluation phase: With regular monitoring, the external service providers work together with the companies to ensure target-oriented cooperation and can evaluate how the AM services are developing and how high the current demand is.

In the process, it often becomes apparent at certain points where there are particular problems in the SAP system. Here it can be checked whether the use of software solutions, such as an "Identity Manager", is suitable to permanently relieve the support team. With this module, all SAP system access and authorizations are managed electronically and documented centrally. The "Role Manager" can also reduce the workload by centrally managing all roles in an SAP system landscape, meaning that the number of tickets relating to authorizations and users can be reduced in the long term.

The need for external solutions will continue to increase in the coming years. AM Services provide fundamental support for the support team in many respects and relieve the burden on day-to-day work. As highly specialized specialists take care of the ticket volume full-time, the service is not only significantly improved in terms of quantity but also quality.

In view of the ever-increasing workload and simultaneous shortage of skilled workers, it is essential that the employees of existing SAP customers focus their limited capacities on essential work and projects.