Simplify and refine SAP

A good and proven IT craft in the SAP community is called customizing. From the very beginning, the idea was that an SAP system was a semi-finished product that had to be customized using Abap tables. The plan-build-run project approach also fits in with these beginnings forty years ago - but IT life is also change.

"Plan, Build and Run was established at a time when the effort required to communicate and collaborate was significantly higher than it is today", describes Tobias Moosherr, CEO at Solutive, and he specifies in the E-3 interview: "Quickly agreeing on new things with those involved, a web session here, quickly sending a message via instant messenger to contribute new ideas and needs: This is a reality today."

Just as there are no longer any backup windows in modern data centers or in the cloud because 24/7 operation is the norm, the starting point for customizing an SAP system has also changed. "Months of design phases in order to realize things in a protected environment whose requirements had perhaps already become obsolete was the norm for a long time", Tobias Moosherr knows from his own experience.

"After acceptance, the software was then practically brought to a wall separating development and operation, thrown over it and forgotten. On the other hand, it was put into operation completely decoupled and operated as an abstract part of an IT system."

Overcome walls

The picture Moosherr paints here is typical of the early days of the SAP community and a user will probably still see meters of "Aris wallpaper" for Business Process Management on this wall in their mind's eye. But Plan-Build-Run and Professor Scheer's Aris are a thing of the past.

"To be competitive, the time to market must be shortened", postulates Tobias Moosherr. "Every wall, every silo is a major obstacle. However, in addition to the increasing possibility of communication, the working method has also changed - and this opens up completely new possibilities." Solutive has also developed the right tools for this.

For existing SAP customers, on the other hand, it is important to take a close look and work with partners such as Solutive to select not only the right approach, but also the right IT tools, see Aris. "The impression that traditional technology such as SAP NetWeaver cannot keep up is only partially correct. This part of the engine room can also pick up speed with the right fine-tuning. Today, plan-build-run should simply be part of an iterative application lifecycle." To put it in more modern terms: Pimp my SAP system!

But for some years now, operational SAP operations seem to have been stuck in a rut: Are these manifestations of a dynamic economy, complex organizational structures and processes or simply the result of poor planning? In other words, incorrect plan-build-run project management?

"Both and", says Solutive board colleague Christian Steiger. "In my opinion, there has been a failure to understand that the innovations that come from business operations must increasingly be implemented through the ever-increasing and central role of IT."

Christian Steiger argues a little against the spirit of the times and against a decentralized IT organization where the specialist departments book their cloud apps. "Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, IT is a significant driver of innovation and as such must also experience the necessary added value," says Christian Steiger, who knows from many successful Solutive projects.

Centralized or decentralized IT, cloud or on-prem, plan-build-run or DevOps? The digital challenges are now so wide-ranging that there can hardly be one answer to all questions. "Over the past few years, I have repeatedly encountered both one and the other with clients. The important first step is to take an honest look at yourself and the organization without being afraid that your own hunting grounds will change. The second step is to want to hear the answers and to be 'blameless' about them", explains Christian Steiger in the E-3 interview and adds: "However, this perceived unrest is often simply a question of how things are done. The first steps in the digitalization of a business can also lead to a great deal of unrest in the company if everything is simply thrown over the magic wall without announcing and involving the important stakeholders in the departments."

As already mentioned, IT life is also changing, which is particularly true for the SAP community at the moment and is rapidly increasing the demand for Solutive's expertise and tools. There is currently a generational change on the SAP Executive Board and in the community: is this also taking place in IT? So Hana and S/4 innovation versus R/3 tradition? Abap versus Java? NetWeaver versus containers, Kafka, etc.?

Christian Steiger answers: "Yes, it's a trend that could have been predicted in recent years. When I took part in the SAP Train Race from Paris to Madrid to TechEd in 2011, the topic of SAP gateways and the hybrid world was already in focus. At the moment, it is becoming increasingly popular with the community and there is no longer any doubt that we will increasingly see a merging of worlds in the future. This also gives the SAP community more and more leeway and sovereignty when choosing their solutions and is aimed at a best-of-breed approach, among other things."

Fellow Executive Board member Tobias Moosherr says that this generational change is not only taking place in the community, on the SAP Executive Board or in IT. "The main driver of this upheaval is the end customer", emphasizes Moosherr. This raises the question: How can an SAP partner like Solutive respond to the needs of existing SAP customers? And what should the focus be on - apart from the necessary technology?

"Back in 2016, I noted the following at a forum on digital transformation: 'In a world of digital interactions, organizations will deliver their innovative business models through software. Every company will become a software company"Tobias Moosherr defines the insight from the past.

"I think this digital disruption is now very present in the SAP environment in particular. And companies are looking for answers to these challenges, explicitly with the existing systems and technologies in combination and not replaced by completely different technologies."

"We are software"

The digital disruption in the SAP community has many manifestations and the agility it demands also requires many previously manual steps to be automated. The roll-out of an SAP system must be increasingly simplified using suitable tools and automation.

As a result, some existing SAP customers were able to go live with SAP systems globally despite travel bans and distance customizing. Change management has obviously shifted the focus of deployment: What is the importance of test management, for example?

"In order to keep up with the speed of the market and IT-supported innovations, it is essential to establish a well-functioning test management system", Christian Steiger specifies this very important step towards a successful system for existing SAP customers. "Because if you want to stay ahead in the future, there is no getting around new methods and faster software deliveries."

According to Solutive board members Christian Steiger and Tobias Moosherr, the next step is also required to ensure quality, maintainability and stability in operation: automatic testing. "Here, however, I am explicitly not talking about the previously known means such as eCatts and various robotic testing approaches", is how Christian Steiger describes the situation.

"As Solutive, we have brought a partner on board who has been successfully developing its own AI engine since 2009. In future, we will also map automated testing in SAP using an AI-supported solution." It's no longer a question of if, but only of when.

Fail fast, fail often

It is not only the tools and the type of project management that are currently changing in the SAP community, the mental attitude towards progress, success, experimentation and failure is also being reassessed. "Thanks to the massive successes of SpaceX and Tesla, 'fail fast, fail often' is on everyone's lips and seemingly socially acceptable," notes Tobias Moosherr with satisfaction. "You could get the impression that test management and its motivation - finding errors with as little effort as possible - are becoming obsolete as a result and that errors are even desirable."

Tobias Moosherr thinks back to the origins of this approach: "The motto comes from Silicon Valley and the start-up swarms based there and is often misunderstood. The goal is not to 'fail', but to iterate. To be successful, there must be a culture of openly dealing with mistakes."

But the goal is clearly to learn from mistakes and make adjustments, make adjustments or perhaps even redesign. This is precisely where structured and integrated test management should come in, says Moosherr. "Today, with the help of our AI agents or testing tools, the first errors can be found early on in the development process and iteration can begin earlier", explains the Solutive board member.

Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement sounds logical, but continuous change also means continuous learning, training and testing - right? Are DevOps, Scrum etc. a sustainable challenge or IT fashion trends? "Of course, these approaches are currently on everyone's lips", Christian Steiger knows from his own observations.

"Our ESM Suite is also a tool that allows all of this. However, the working method must also adapt to this in order to exploit the full potential. Hybrid approaches should therefore not be shied away from. I would like to mention this at this point because it is often mistakenly lumped together: Flexibility has absolutely nothing to do with agility! You shouldn't confuse the two!" (See also the technical article by Christian Steiger and Tobias Moosherr on the following pages).

These approaches are then turned into sustainable challenges purely as an end in themselves at management level or because it is the current trend. But Tobias Moosherr corrects: "A different perspective is very important here. Since the dawn of time, people have been exposed to a constantly changing environment and continuous learning has been the key to adaptation. This also applies to companies; the use of agile methods in conjunction with lean techniques, Lean Startup, has made it possible to adapt quickly to change."

SolMan's limits

Where does SolMan reach its limits in release management, continuous improvement, testing and transport management? "SolMan knows hardly any limits - and therein lies the problem", is Christian Steiger's diplomatic way of describing the topic.

"The level of expertise and specialist knowledge that SolMan requires in depth is immense and often exceeds the capabilities of the developers and, above all, the usefulness for smooth operation. The effort required by IT to master this tool - which should really only be a tool - is enormous. We have concentrated on the essential aspects - release management, continuous improvement and testing as well as transport management - and combined all these functions securely, controllably and efficiently in one solution."

Fellow board member Tobias Moosherr also shares this opinion: "When we look at the SolMan, we only see a few limits - and that is precisely the problem. Because with limitless possibilities comes the problem of responsible use. Especially as the question of meaningfulness must be asked if the tool, which was actually designed to make things easier, works according to the classic plan-build-run approach. We have developed our ESM suite based on the best-of-breed approach, creating an innovative standard software that controls and manages the software life cycle."

In the past R/3 era, transport management was a central component of the IT architecture. Does this still apply to a DevOps environment? "Transport management is and remains a significant part of SAP. New challenges, such as DevOps, are bringing transports back into focus - as dependencies in delivery can no longer be ruled out", Christian Steiger knows from many successful Solutive projects.

His colleague Tobias Moosherr adds: "Yes, transports will still be a fundamental part of the SAP architecture in the future. However, in an organization optimized for adaptation and reduced time to cash, this is precisely where the bottleneck must not arise and work must not be carried out on a small scale at individual transport level and/or manually. There is often still great potential for optimization here, which we address with the transport and simulation solutions in our ESM suite."

Universal answer: Templates

Templates were once a universal answer: Where does Solutive currently position IT management using templates? Christian Steiger: "Templates and template management are effective and add value in many use cases. But even this is not a fire-and-forget solution. Nowadays, a template must have a certain degree of flexibility, even if the deviations are only a few percent in some cases. It is also important to protect this template or high-risk components against unwanted changes after deployment. A flexible design with reduced effort and full control over all changes is an effective approach to significantly reduce costs during operation. We support this approach very successfully with our solutions, especially in the corporate environment."

When it comes to dynamics, change and agility, dreams and reality come into conflict with compliance, risk management and governance. Ongoing change versus stability? Existing SAP customers are challenged when it comes to safeguarding stable operations against SAP's innovations.

"This challenge should not be an optional extra, but a duty"Christian Steiger emphasizes emphatically in the interview. "Time and again, I hear from our customers that there are two processes: the designed process and the actual process. This is inefficient and unsafe and also tramples on compliance."

The Solutive Executive Board is therefore convinced that processes must be established in accordance with compliance and audit security in order to avoid a workaround. This requires end-to-end processes in order to have an uninterrupted audit trail and provide complete transparency.

Best practice and agility

"We already support our customers with process definition, whether SOX, GAMP, FDA, GDPR - we have developed best practices in all areas, including some with the major auditing firms", says Christian Steiger about his day-to-day work. "We also provide recommendations on which tools are then used for implementation. Essentially, it no longer has to be a compromise, because dynamism, agility and hybrid development can go hand in hand with risk management and governance. We are also in the process of establishing a Digital CoWorker in the field of AI, which will serve as a watchdog for auditing, governance and compliance."

And fellow board member Moosherr adds: "That's right, because in my experience, end-to-end transparency is important. By breaking down isolated processes and information silos and broadly distributing knowledge about compliance and risk management, it is possible to create a shared picture of what makes sense."

Compliance and SolMan

The topic of documentation and compliance is therefore the next logical step in the E-3 conversation: ongoing changes do not make it easier to maintain precise IT documentation, do they? Do we need SolMan for this? "Here I take up the audit trail again", explains Christian Steiger. "Established digital end-to-end processes are the most important step for compliance. The documentation is therefore automatically on board and absolutely reliable. SolMan is also an established tool for documentation."

For Solutive CEO Steiger, it is important that the corporate vision is provided with a strategy that is integrated into the familiar working environment. From Solutive's point of view, there is hardly a greater challenge in day-to-day operations than having to implement change management for compliance reasons.

IT Service Management, ITSM, appears to be a universal problem solver: Is that true? IT service management, provided it is properly and appropriately established, has the ability to act as an accelerator on many levels. This applies in particular to processes that are initiated in the operational business and has an impact right through to deployment. But this takes us somewhat out of the SAP environment, says Christian Steiger: "But in my opinion, ITSM can basically act as a turbo. ITSM processes require acceptance and foresight in order to be implemented sensibly."

SAP deadline

All existing SAP customers should be converted to Hana and S/4 by 2027/2030: From Solutive's perspective, what are the challenges regarding change management, ITSM, testing and transportation? "In recent months, we have added significant details to our ESM Suite to make migration easier for companies"Christian Steiger describes the situation.

The changeover also brings opportunities for leaner processes and a standard based on best practice. It is not only the S/4 project that needs to be considered and calculated, but also the operation afterwards. However, Christian Steiger also knows that the good approaches often do not correspond to the real working environment and that users are left to their own devices after the changeover.

One example is the requirement-to-deploy process, as Christian Steiger explains: "If this does not fit in with the current processes, it is difficult to adapt. We have a sustainable solution in our portfolio that maintains a high degree of flexibility, takes care of operations afterwards and thus accompanies the life cycle in the long term. Coupled with efficient and simplified processes, this kills two birds with one stone: the S/4 project and operations afterwards."

Due to the high costs of an S/4 landscape, consolidation is often undertaken. But what is often not talked about, says Tobias Moosherr, is the danger of a single point of failure.

"If, in a worst-case scenario, a system was previously unavailable for a country, for example, the other systems could continue to run and the other locations were able to operate. But what happens if there is only one One SAP?", Moosherr wonders. "Without rethinking the way of working and adapting the tool set, the increased need for protection can quickly result in a slowdown in the organization's ability to adapt. The paradoxical situation - gaining insights in real time but only being able to react to them at a snail's pace - who would want to imagine that?"

Digital transformation, right?

To conclude the E-3 interview, the inevitable assessment of the overall picture: from Solutive's perspective, where does the SAP community stand on the topic of digital transformation? "We all live and love the digital transformation", answers Christian Steiger spontaneously and explains: "I have to admit, I can't help but be a little ironic about it. I think we now know both the advantages and the disadvantages. One thing must always be clear: no digitization works if the IT manager has to listen to the fact that he has to cut budgets in the same breath. Digitization means investing in the future, namely in IT! For me, IT is a clear driver of innovation and as such should be valued and not in the engine room, but right at the top next to the captain."

Fellow board member Tobias Moosherr jumps to Christian Steiger's side and reports: "The following has just hit the press: Eppelheim Capri-Sun boss - Hans-Peter Wild's yacht crashed into harbor jetty on Caribbean island of St. Martin. The accident was apparently caused by a malfunction in the computer control system. The captain speaks of a miscommunication between the bridge, which is equipped with 14 computers, and the engine room. This impression may also apply to the SAP community in some places. It must not be an end in itself that produces statements such as: We need to become more agile. We're not lean enough. I want to see our culture shift to fail fast, fail often. In my opinion, it's more important for everyone involved to have a common understanding of what digital transformation actually means for the company and to understand the need to use SAP software to build an organization that can react quickly to requirements. IT must and should be a driver of innovation and not just a cost factor."

Thank you for the interview.

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