Against All Odds, SAP SolMan and Cloud ALM Persist

If the backlog isn’t clearly defined and prioritized at the beginning of the requirements-to-deploy process, the project risk already increases: Lack of transparency can lead to delays and additional costs. Efficient change management requires precise planning and controlling to avoid necessary reworks. SAP has reacted to these challenges and offers customers various solutions in SolMan, like Cloud ALM or the preconfigured best-practice solution Focused Build. In doing so, it has simultaneously made the existing SolMan solution more agile, user friendly and transparent through complete integration.

SAP ALM, Focused Build, and more

SAP ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) methodologies offer clear benefits in project planning. On the one hand, they are based on the wishes and needs of user companies—in past years, the SAP Customer Connect program has allowed customer feedback to be directly incorporated into the product. On the other hand, best practices based on the experience of various SAP implementation projects are also available.

In the area of run and operations, SAP has enhanced diagnostic, monitoring and analyses functionalities with Focused Run. Focused Run not only warns of problems early on, but also expands system monitoring in a way that allows companies to leverage machine learning, pattern matching, cluster analyses and different visualizations.

All the invaluable experience stemming from on-prem products now culminates in SAP’s newest product SAP Cloud ALM. Since 2018, SAP has been enhancing the Cloud ALM portfolio and is now able to optimally support cloud-centric projects from planning to implementation. More new functionalities are yet to come—from 2022 onward, Cloud ALM will also have operations functionalities.

The goal is therefore to offer customers – even those with few on-prem solutions—an optimal ALM solution. The products are comprehensive and durable because the solutions are integrated. Individual components do not reside in isolated silos but are rather structured in a value chain, which makes it possible to combine their different benefits. Consequently, the solutions become more than just mere monitoring tools. The products are able to support entire scenarios like requirements to deploy or detect and correct.

Solutions that aren’t integrated are predestined to cause problems. Up-to-date documentation is usually not available and changes that affect each other or overlap cannot be tested. If they are implemented and leveraged correctly, SAP’s ALM solutions can reduce risk, costs and effort.

At the same time, business processes and changes in the system become verifiable which finally makes audits unproblematic and the system landscape transparent. This focus on transparency is supported by Focused Insights which easily and quickly visualizes connections and links in dashboards.

SolMan and others help customers to be successful

Focused Build helps continuously plan every release, including all developments and changes in the SAP system landscape, from start to finish. This results in an incredibly powerful ALM tool. While management by Office means sending each other Excel spreadsheets, and searching for documentations and connections becomes impossible, Focused Build visualizes and manages all process steps.

Processes and systems consequently remain up to date, transparent, and manageable. Test scenarios are optimally integrated and supported. Tests can be repeated automatically and are controlled in real time through dashboards. Because SAP projects have to become more efficient for SAP user companies to tackle impending big and small changes in their complex system landscapes, all of these factors help them to succeed. Professional ALM with the Solution Manager and Focused Build lays the foundation of reliable and cost-efficient project success.

PDF in English