How to Avoid Enterprise Software Implementation Meltdowns

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 can help your company achieve its ambitions quickly and cost effectively.

In Major League Baseball, batting .400 will put you in the Hall of Fame. In IT project management, succeeding 4 out of 10 times will put you in the hot seat with executive leadership.

Alas, far too many CIOs feel the heat every year. For many, the fire comes often from enterprise software projects, which succeed less than one-third of the time, according to the Standish Group, a research advisory organization based in Boston. What is more, fewer than half of enterprise software projects result in “high value” for organizations that undertake them.

No wonder the tenure for global CIOs is less than five years, according to market researcher Gartner.

If you wonder why so many organizations burn through so much talent and money, The Project Management Institute (PMI), a research company based in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, has your answer: poor execution. But PMI’s historical findings indicate a relative few smart companies “…waste 28 times less money because more of their strategic initiatives are completed successfully.”

What do they know that others don’t? They understand the wisdom of leveraging proven project management best practices — the kind that new software makes much easier to embrace. Here’s some information on Application Lifecycle Management software that could save you time, money and, quite possibly, your job.

Application Lifecycle Management software is a category of software that helps organizations get the most from enterprise software investments. SAP Solution Manager, for example, is a platform that provides customers integrated content, tools and methodologies for succeeding with SAP software. Solman, as the software is known for short, helps customers implement, support, operate and monitor their SAP enterprise solutions. What is more, Solman comes free with SAP S4/HANA licenses.

Despite its undisputed benefits, Solman is not as widely used within the SAP community as it should be. We at Projexia would like to see that change, especially now that the software has been upgraded to version 7.2. Among other things, Solman 7.2 has been given a facelift and now offers complete application lifecycle management of all your IT solutions, regardless of whether they are SAP branded or not. What is more, Solman supports software in the cloud, on-premise or some hybrid thereof.

Solman 7.2 is a big deal, in other words.

So why don’t more customers avail themselves of this technology? It’s a good question and one we ask ourselves a lot. What we have found is customers tend to cling to their old processes even when implementing new enterprise software. But this can be costly and counter-productive, especially when an organization wants to embrace new agile software development techniques that depend on superior coordination and precise documentation.

These practices were difficult enough to master when IT professionals all worked together in-person in an office but have since been made more difficult now that the pandemic has dispersed workers everywhere. (Many have since found Solman 7.2 to be blessing.)

Among other things, Solman 7.2 includes “Focused Build” project management tools, a library of solutions documentation and a test suite of software that supports SAP standard business process workflows including transactions. Thanks to this, Solman can support almost any software initiative a customer desires. Take the embrace of agile software development techniques.

Using agile methodologies which have proven successful for thousands of global corporations, often requires a daily “stand-up” meeting of software developers, project managers and corporate sponsors. During these meetings, progress is reviewed, tasks are assigned, and problems are discussed. Because agile approach demands that these meetings be held daily and follow a specific script, documentation is critical.

Solman 7.2 makes this a snap. But home-grown packages and/or unproven methodologies? They can lead an organization astray by missing something small such as a rudimentary assumption or a problem with a cross-system object lock. (This occurs when two engineers try to make a software change at the same time without coordinating their actions together.) As many CIOs can attest, a small oversight can grow into something ruinous over the course of several months if not caught in time.

“Solman can tell you where you need to go, what you need to validate and what you need to test,” says Ashley Villeneuve, an SAP team lead consultant with Projexia. “It’s an invaluable platform that was built to help you achieve the results you seek from your investment in SAP.”

We at Projexia are big believers in Solman because we have found that it works time and again, and with a wide variety of customers regardless of their size, industry or level of sophistication. The benefits are many:

• Solman doesn’t cost any more than standard S/4HANA licenses
• Solman comes with documented and proven best practices
• Solman can reduce the time to successfully implement SAP S/4HANA

Please connect with us if you are interested in learning more about Solman 7.2 and its many uses. It may not help you get to first base at your weekend softball game, but it can spell the difference between success and failure at the office, regardless if that’s now at home on a dining room table or inside your corporate IT operations hub.

No matter where you work, promise yourself you will do it with the proper tools, methodologies and partner to get the job done right the first time.

Projexia

Projexia

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Exciting news!

We’re thrilled to announce that our journey has taken an exciting new turn. Our company has merged with a larger, innovative partner and as a part of this new chapter, we’ve changed our name to Talan! 

While our website remains active for you, we invite you to explore a world of new possibilities on the Talan website. Discover fresh content, groundbreaking services, and more!