The basis must be right
With the motto, "It's all going well," medium-sized companies in particular often handle their IT quite carelessly. On the one hand, this is due to their day-to-day business, which hardly leaves them enough time for it, and on the other hand, SMEs usually do not have enough staff for system administration. And even when a system house is available as a long-term partner, it is often only commissioned when a task arises; permanent maintenance at flat rates is often dispensed with. Of course, this makes it almost impossible to comply with any security or compliance guidelines.
SMEs that take their IT foundation lightly can be shipwrecked on the road to digital transformation. Should Cloud-experience shows that the first aches and pains appear when applications or S/4 Hana are introduced into the company.
In some cases, the Master data not, the Processes do not run optimally or the Database is not properly maintained. When we get involved in such a project with our Basis and Technology team, it usually means that we first have to do our homework, i.e. put the basic installation on a secure footing. We see this particularly with support customers whose SAP implementation we have not accompanied.
We first raise their basic installation to our qualitative service level before we think about future technologies. After all, without a secure basis, we cannot Cloud successfully. Our existing customers do not have this worry; they are on the safe side when it comes to the gradual cloud transition or Big Data.Implementation goes. We are usually familiar with their system landscapes from the initial implementation over many years and also maintain the systems permanently.
Nevertheless, we are brought on board by customers when it comes to questions about newer technologies and digitization. Why are we getting involved here? There are two reasons: No one knows the SAP installations better than our Basis team and, detached from the project business, our SAP Services & Information Technology department can also deal much more intensively with technology and basic application topics.
The main task of my team is to ensure the day-to-day business of the customers, i.e. to keep their SAP systems running. This also includes preparing for necessary changes such as updates and then implementing them at the application companies. In the logistics environment in particular, many customers also expect a high-availability solution.
To ensure this, there is direct access and remote support to every SAP system. And with over 125 SAP installations, this must of course be effectively manageable, which is why we have been using SAP Solution Manager since 2008.
Support with ticket and system
Especially today, when more and more new technologies like Hana, Cloud and mobile apps are making their way into companies, a "healthy" foundation is a prerequisite for this. For example, if you want to set up an e-commerce and omnichannel platform, you should look at the ERP, in the CRM, in the Master data have cleaned up. Also the Processes at ERP should run optimally and without errors, otherwise the e-commerce project can sometimes stand on rather shaky ground.
Solution Manager is a "software toolbox" that can be used to consolidate and centrally administer system landscapes. Among other things, we make intensive use of system monitoring, change request management and the service desk. The solution helps us manage the tickets we receive - more than 3,000 per year, all of which are processed within an average of 30 minutes. Our customers use the integrated service desk to report their incidents and inquiries, and the recorded tickets then pass through predefined escalation levels.
To facilitate problem resolution, a ticket contains additional technical information, such as the corresponding Support Package level. Thus, the User not enter this yourself or ask our service team about it.
In-memory becomes routine
The digital transformation entails profound changes in business processes. It is therefore necessary that we as ERP-In addition to industry knowledge, our partners also bring technology expertise to the table. After all, no two SMEs are the same. That's why we use in-memory technology to develop innovative, customer-specific applications based on it.
Our goal is to provide all Processes without media discontinuities across all areas in Real-time network. With SAP S/4 Hana Finance as a business process platform, we are already involved in a number of projects, both on-premise and in the Cloud. And as can be seen with the Users shows, the platform accelerates the Processes and also simplifies them. In addition, a modern user interface enhances user comfort and increases productivity.
The purely technical conversion from a relational database system to an in-memoryDatabase is less of a problem; after numerous database portings, we are now professionals in this area. The real challenge lies in the applications and processes. Our industry solutions were completely based on Hana with not inconsiderable development effort in some cases. SAP itself provides various tools for the migration, but these do not apply to our own developments in the industry solutions.
And we test in house, of course, all Processes of industry solutions comprehensively under the in-memoryDatabasebefore we deliver them to the customers. Because of our extensive experience with in-memory technology, we can offer broad support for the transition, even for non-existing customers, we are very open in this direction. So we are opening up in this direction to the whole SAP market and offer the Hana-database migration or other technology and basic services also on demand.
One question that comes up again and again from customers with regard to in-memory is: What actually happens when the in-memoryDatabase should crash once. The data is of course restored to the hard drive, and the recovery can be set to the minute (point-in-time recovery), so that hardly anything is lost in the event of a crash.
Managed Services
In IT, too, increasing importance is being attached to predictive support. In industry, we talk about predictive maintenance, and we see it in a similar way. We see when something might fail and intervene in good time, and that's what the User more and more. That's why we are now offering a managed service as an all-round carefree package. The advantage for the user company is that it receives the complete basic support from a single source. We thus relieve customers of tasks that are not part of their core business.
Start with a cloud
As part of this service, we also support the gradual switch to the Cloud. However, medium-sized businesses in particular want to be convinced by mobile solutions. There are fears of data loss when hosting in the data center. If DAX-Corporations Cloud services, I think they have checked whether these services are secure, if only for compliance reasons.
I myself have several years of experience with AWS, Amazon Web services. If a customer is overly skeptical, I take them to Frankfurt to the high-security data center of Amazon. There, we jointly load his data from the USB stick into his cloud at AWS. If for some reason a rollback is desired later, for example if all systems are to be operated on premise again, then that is no problem at all: simply roll backwards, remove the USB stick with the data from the Cloud-fill the container and you're done.
Ultimately, this means that we show customers possible ways into the Cloud up, but also the ways back. This is the only way we can achieve the necessary trust.
We then start in very small steps so that the User with Cloud-applications. For example, if an automotive parts dealer wants to manage its affiliated repair store via the Cloud would like to integrate, we help him do so. We can handle the workshop completely from within the Cloud and also offer our new app solution for assembly planning via Cloud make available on mobile devices.
The advantage: The dealer would not need any additional networking in the workshop, but only a WLAN-network. He then doesn't have to worry about the ongoing operation of the solution either; we take care of that. Typical examples of first steps into the cloud are also the SAP Cloud for Customer for mobile support of customer management or SAP BusinessObjects to generate reports from the Cloud to receive. Very topical is the shipment tracking via the Cloud-solution Shipcloud.
