The SAP consultant is a relatively recent emergence in the business world, born in conjunction with the arrival of the most advanced business technologies on the market. But what exactly does the SAP consultant do and why rely on this figure?
SAP stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing, and is the name of the European multinational company founded in 1972 that provides software solutions for managing business operations and customer relations. SAP is best known for its ERP system, Enterprise Resource Planning, which is considered the best on the market . Remember. We have talked about SAP S/4HANA here.
Most interestingly, SAP management software is fully customizable to the specific needs of companies. Therefore, the main task of SAP consultants is to listen to management and fully understand their needs.
The SAP consultant generally has a technical, economic, and engineering background, training that makes him or her able to analyze the current business situation and offer a suitable solution to achieve the desired improvements.
What are the phases of the ASAP methodology?
The SAP methodology consists of 5 stages. ASAP is defined as the part of the Software Development Life Cycle used to plan SAP projects.
Let’s look at the 5 steps in detail:
- Project preparation: it is absolutely unthinkable to be able to implement such complex software in the enterprise without a proper preparatory phase. Phase 1 has the delicate task of gathering information and resources. Information, in the sense of clarifying goals and needs; resources, in the sense of creating a team within the company that can spread the change.
- Business Blueprint: The purpose of this phase is to achieve a common understanding of how the company intends to run its business within the SAP system. The result is the Business Blueprint, the act that focuses on understanding, documenting and authenticating project specifications.
- Implementation: phase three aims to implement all business process requirements. The system configuration methodology is provided in two work packages:
- Baseline or basic configuration: includes the company’s priority requirements, ensuring that they can be implemented quickly.
- Final Configuration or optimization configuration: is an iterative process in which business requirements are set and confirmed to be met in the R/3 system. The final configuration is a transformation process that expands the Baseline solution, defined in the BluePrint.
- Final preparation: in this penultimate phase, the goal is to complete the final preparation (including testing, end-user training, system management, and cut-over activities) to make sure everything is ready for go-live. The final preparation stage also serves to resolve any critical issues found in the previous stages.
- Go-live and support: the purpose of this phase is to move from a project-oriented pre-production environment to a live production operation.
Why rely on an SAP consultant?
In this article we looked at who the SAP consultant, an indispensable figure for implementing the software in the most conducive way for your company and preparing your employees to use it to the fullest. The consultant ensures that the system runs smoothly and the business flow is complete and correct. What makes a SAP consultant an outstanding guide is his or her sensitivity and understanding; his or her goal is to transfer his or her know-how to the client .
If you need SAP consulting for your organization, rely on F1 Consulting & Services: our Business Unit dedicated to the SAP world, which has been actively operating since 2008, has excellent functional, technical and systems expertise. Contact us for an interview .
