The new friends of the SolMan

Many colleagues still wince when they hear the name Solution Manager. They equate it to the historical ankle bracelet with heavy iron ball. A necessary evil next to the otherwise so important SAP core systems - but now that we see the end of support (2027) slowly looming on the horizon, bright voices are sounding for deeper use from a new direction.

One important aspect is the positioning of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) in the context of Rise with SAP. However, it is also a wake-up call to the strengths of actively lived ALM - the path from business process design to implementation, testing, documentation and operation. Basically, these are all areas that Solution Manager has already mastered, but now with a focus on integrating additional products and technologies. This with the aim of meeting the requirements of the complex product portfolios and creating a transformation suite in which companies with a larger non-SAP part can also find themselves. 

In a new guise

With the introduction of the Business Transformation Suite, the question rightly arises as to where this strategic change and repositioning are coming from. Is it a quiet admission that the Solution Manager may not be able to deliver on its promises after all? 

No, it is rather the insight on the part of SAP that there are excellent products on the market that go beyond classic SAP products and thus better integrate third-party products into a central ALM methodology. It makes no sense to introduce in-house competing solutions here. This realization is certainly also a driving force behind the recent strategic partnership with Tricentis or the billion-dollar acquisition of Signavio. The interplay of these new friends of SolMan and the stroke of genius to position them as a holistic solution makes sense to SAP customers and creates a clear benefit: If you break the ALM cycle down into its seven steps, you find that each tool brings benefits in exactly its niche that cannot be explained away. We create unprecedented transparency in operations by breaking down the silos between business and IT in a targeted way. ALM forces everyone to sit down at the same table and encourages discussion and solution finding, because the transparency we gain means we can finally talk about the same things.

ALM as a basis

If you look a little deeper, the benefits in the area of implementation and operation crystallize even more precisely: Anyone operating an IT landscape today can no longer afford to view projects separately from operations. The interrelationships and dependencies of processes, departments and systems are becoming visibly more complex, and this in times of ever shorter change intervals. The vaunted single source of truth is more important than ever for implementing changes efficiently. The issue of audit-proof, centralized documentation is becoming increasingly important, whether end-to-end process documentation, technical specifications or test cases. Each of these documents is an integral part and the prerequisite for stable operations and follow-up projects. To be successful here, the tools must be harmoniously integrated with each other without weakening the benefits at the expense of the user experience.

And it is precisely here at this sweet spot that BTS builds a bridge between the products in use, the requirements of business and IT, and user acceptance - driven by the Powerhouse Solution Manager.