SAP Enterprise Support Solution Stakeholders, Roles, Responsibility And Benefits

Introduction to SAP and Its Solution for Creating an Integrated System for Businesses

Question:

Discuss about the Cross-functional project teams in functionally.

SAP is a leading organization in the enterprise application space and is the third largest software manufacturer in the world. The company that was started in 1972 by 5 German entrepreneurs and today has over 345,000 customers across globe. SAP is a software solution provider that provides solutions like CRM and ERP for enterprises. The company has developed solutions and based on the client needs, the company employs developers for customization and technical experts for configuration of the solution.

The business requirement is to create an integrated system of business which allows people to collaborate through a centralized enterprise system which would be provide by SAP as a business solution.

The Enterprise Support solution implementation project of SAP would have specific stakeholders with specific responsibilities and expectations as illustrated in the table below

A centrally managed collaboration platform would be provided across the organization which would have services for departments and support units of the company. These service would enable the users and employees of the system to collaborate and share knowledge with each other within the enterprise system. A personal space would also be provided on the cloud which can be used by the company employees to store their personal documents, blogs, and wikis following the guidelines of enterprise governance. These processes would be supported by a web-based platform that would be used for knowledge management and task collaboration. This would involve data gathering, creation of a knowledge base, organizing events, authoring and editing office documents, management of versioning of documents and delivery of information through a single reporting point.

Advantages of the centralized enterprise solution include:

• Configuration of multiple servers can be handled from a single location
• Cost of server maintenance is reduced
• Configuration of processes can be automated
• Cost of monitoring and management is reduced with centralized system
• Integration with legacy systems as well as modern ecommerce systems is possible
• The visibility in the company is high and a high level of collaboration can be achieved(Manitoba, 2017)

• High cost of implementation
• High level of customization can result into system slow down
• Migration of the legacy data from old systems to the new system can be very time consuming
• If an organization currently has decentralized systems, centralization would be very complex process
• Only experienced people are required for implementation of enterprise solutions(Markus & Tanis, 2003)

The Service Level Agreement is made for SAP Enterprise Support Solution that would be provided to the customers of the company using a service framework that would be agreed upon between SAP and its client organization.

The contract of service would be applicable till the company is using the services and has paid for the servicing of the support system

Client would be provided with the technical assistance on correction of the enterprise software provided. Additional support can be provide with the additional contracts by paying an additional fee for services like maintenance and technical support. SAP would also provide support data for updates and use of the personal data in the system. SAP would promise to protect the personal data and maintain privacy of all the users in the system.

The company would provide a first level support to its customers through an online service desk which would be operated by the service professionals who would be taking service requests and queries related to specific incidents faced in operations of the enterprise system. Customers can ask simple questions on how to use system and search for answers on the help window or by chatting with the service representatives. For specific technical problems, the service professionals would provide a remote technical assistance.

Second level support would be provided by a team of engineers who would visit the company in case the problem cannot be resolved remotely (Karmis & Fowkles, 2016).

Stakeholders and Their Roles and Responsibilities in the Enterprise Support Solution Implementation Project

A third level support would be provided in the form of training. At this level of the support, the company would be provided with the training by the technical staff on the use of enterprise solution of SAP. With this training, a customer would be able to use the system for business and personal documentation involving creation and storage of content.  At this service level, the company would also provide guidance of the company through consulting on how to make the best use of services and solutions.

Additional support would be provided based on the customer requirement if the company wants to customize the solution. Customization can include implementation of custom interface, no-coding solutions, new web based features, creation of custom content types, installation of a third party software. Any support provided at this level would be at extra charge for the development.

A central help and service desk would be taking care of all the inquiries and requests and the support would be proved immediately by the service representatives at first level through chat. Service desk can be used by the customer for asking specific questions related to the use of the system, to raise a ticket for a service malfunction, or creation of service request for other needs. Specific response time would be assigned to the engineers for technical queries or service requests.

Goals, constraints, and improvement activities are normally prioritized based on their importance. Goals are prioritized based on the level of support which can be Level 1, or 3.  40% of the problems can be solved at the Tier one support level while at the tier 2 level, all problems have to be solved so that the query doesn’t reach the third tier at which it can become critical to the organization.

Problems within the Tier 2 can further be prioritized based on the severity of the impact of the issue. At severity level 1, the problem may not have any business impact. At level 2, some network functionality would be lost. At level 3, business could be severely impacted resulting from a loss or performance degradation. Level 1 is the highest level of severity of impact at which severe business impact can be caused affecting a user segment or more.

The response time varies according to the priority which would be based on the level of support tier and severity.

Table below shows the communication methods that the SAP representatives would be using to connect with the customer from time to time.

Key roles and responsibilities that the support personnel of SAP would have are highlighted in the table below:

SAP promises to provide service professionals to help the client organization and they would have the right level of skills and experience of providing enterprise based services. SAP provides a warranty of the provision of all services, functionalities and features that would work perfect. In case, the company is unable to render the service from the enterprise solution for some reason for up to 3 months, the client would reserve the right to cancel the subscription of the SAP solution.

The exclusions of the warranty include:

• Use of the service by customers not according to the documented agreement
• Non-conformity from the customer on the use of service or product
• No free cloud service provisions

Customer would have to deploy at least one person who can speak in English who would talk to the sales people of the SAP for product enablement or to resolve queries.

The monitoring capabilities would be provided on the cloud system which would involve monitoring of the employee activities within the enterprise. Review meetings are taken to understand if the service levels are up to mark and identify problems. Following types of review meetings would be conducted by SAP as a part of the monitoring and resolution process:

If the problem of the customer is minute then it would be solved by the first level service executives. However, if it is not solved, the query would be escalated at the second level. In case, there is a need for additional service provision because of inability to solve it even at the second level, the escalation can go to the third level where the complaint would reach to the manager level who would personally intervene to solve the customer complaint.

If any change is to be made in an SLA, a review meeting is conducted between the client and the SAP project manager. In the meeting, discussions are done on the changes to be made and then change requests are discussed within the SAP team. Feasible changes would be approved and a change request would be raised and at the same time, the change would also be communicated to the customer.

IT resource requirements include:

• Funds would be needed for regular servicing through the contractual arrangements
• IT systems would be needed for the operations

IT Personnel requirements include:

• Help Desk personnel to take care of first level service calls
• Customer service personnel to resolve queries of customers at the second level
• Service manager to take the problems to technical staff for resolution
• Service engineer to resolve hard core technical issue

Conclusion

The Service Level agreement contained details of key stakeholders, solution suggested, support provisions, complaint handling, and agreement changes.

References

Bishop, S. K., 1999. Cross-functional project teams in functionally aligned organizations. Project Management Journal, 30(3), pp. 6-12.

CISCO, 2005. Service Level Management: Best Practices White Paper, s.l.: CISCO.

DUDASH, R., 2000. SOFTWARE STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT, s.l.: IQPS.

GMC, 2014. Review of Service Level Agreements, s.l.: GMC.

Karmis, D. & Fowkles, R., 2016. Purpose of Service Level Agreement, s.l.: BEN.

Manitoba, U. o., 2017. SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT , s.l.: University of Manitoba .

Markus, M. L. & Tanis, C., 2003. The Enterprise System Experience—From Adoption to Success, s.l.: UNIBIZ.

SPM, 2001. Software Development Projects and Stakeholders, s.l.: SPM.

Welsh, W. D. & Black, D., 2010. Engaging stakeholders for a software development project: River Manager model , s.l.: International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs) .

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