SAP MM- ASAP Methodology/ Pricing Proceadure/ Few small important topics

ASAP Methodology

Concept:

ASAP stands for Accelerated SAP methodology, where it’s an important SDLC (Software development life cycle) software to be used to implement projects.

whoever is using SAP should follow the ASAP methodology process for the implementation process, it's SAP's own and the best methodology to follow to cutdown costs.

The SAP implementation process takes a long time and it requires many department manpower along with a lot of effort to understand the AS-IS and TO-BE processes to implement and satisfy the clients.

 It will be very risky if the proper plan is not determined to implement, as this purpose starting all the managers and department heads will involve making sure everything is in I proper way by following the ASAP methodology process.

ASAP methodology is a roadmap for the process, where consultants/managers should follow their guidelines as per ASAP methodology, Project management team will be taking care of the smooth functioning of the process by updating to clients. ASAP methodology consists of several phases that are included in SDLC as mentioned above, here it divides the ASAP methodology phases and marks time for each phase and it divides the work as per the modules (SD/MM/PP/QM)

Each phase will be called a Milestone and every milestone needs documents that we have done and gets that approved by clients accordingly.

ASAP methodology provides guidelines and a roadmap for implementation/Enhancement /Customization that requires as per the project support.

Phases of ASAP Methodology:

1.Project Preparation

2.Business Blueprint

3.Realization

4.Final Preparation

5.Go Live

6.Production support/Post-production

We have all the 6 phases, which are important to implement as per the process, we are discuss in detail of all the phases.

Introduction to client and bidding for project:

Before all these 6 phases, whoever is interested to move to SAP software, then they will be approaching the software company directly to buy the software.

Note: Once they have bought the software after that client use to bid for the project implementation with several companies, bidding happens in terms of price and time taking to finish the project.

Note 2: There will be one more bidding with service companies for production support, here Implementation and production support clients are different by 90%, because of some privacy and quality purpose 2 biddings and 2 clients will get selected and given the project as per that.

1. Project Preparation:

Once the client has decided on this implementation partner, this 1st phase will start and here they will decide on Landscape requirements first.

Kick of meetings, Scope, and out-of-scope modules will be discussed for implementation.

Maintain on server Information like how many servers required and how many test clients required in each server like we have unit test and integration testing.

Even in quality and production we can have different clients as per the requirements, suppose big MNC company they may have 6 production clients in production server and accordingly they will have 6 clients in development server, so that independent requirements can be enabled as per the client and no need to depend on other clients.

Project cost and resources required from how many modules are there for your requirements and each module contains members to complete the whole process.

All the above requirements will be discussed by the higher management (managers and business members) where few from client and few from organization who is implementing.

Project management team (PM) will studies the organization requirements with respect to interfaces, how many interfaces required and present process and requirement of interfaces. Here we will study all possible things and their process called as AS-IS.

Timeline will be for this process in 2-3 Months

2.Business Blueprint

This is very important phase in the business, where functional consultants will take care of gaps by finding as-is process to to-be process and complications that is possible with SAP if not interacting with ABAP to develop those configurations, so all these things are handled in this phase.

If any requirement is not possible with SAP then ABAP’er will try to do enhancement and this scenario will be in GAP analysis, same like this there will be many cases where GAP analysis will come into the picture to fill the process and mention to the client that this is the gap between your process and to-be process.

What are the integrations required with other departments like with MM-FI, MM-SD, MM-PP and MM-QM

Interfaces/what kind of interfaces is present, so as per that what methodology should be used for processing.

Functional consultants will work first with all functional requirements and once this is done then if any gaps and development are required the technical consultant will come into the picture.

The testing team will be testing all the configurations prepared.

Based on As-Is and To-be documents we will create a BBP document and get it signed by clients.

This phase will take 2-3 months.

Example: in the old process, if you are Oracle tool then there will be price indicator increase or decrease option shown by the system but in SAP we don’t have that functionality.

So, this will be maintained in as GAP and mentioned in the BBP document and gets signed that -by ABAP we will do this customization (Refer FRICWE concept)

3.Realization phase:

This is phase where all functional consultants carry out their customization and even development is also done if required for customization, so all the customizations/integrations/interfaces are completed- all back-end SPRO settings and everything will be moved to the quality server by basis team- All testing’s for the TR’s will be done in Quality server.

All the integration testing and unit testing take place in this phase.

BPP -Business process procedure has been created in this phase

UAT will be taken from the superuser with a signed.

This phase will take 2 months.

4. Final Preparation phase:

Final preparation is the phase where we will move all the TR’s will be moved to production and user manuals are created by taking UAT from super users and cut over activities like master data uploading for material and vendor and initial entry of stock in inventory.

UAT-User acceptance test- which will be done by power users like is it working, or any issues related to configuration.

Training to the end users related to the process.

After the final preparation phase, we should make sure only production activities running smoothly without major interruptions.

Testing of every phase and UAT manuals/ cut over plans needs to be approved in this phase where data uploading by using LSMW and BAPI

Knowledge transfer and documentation of all process with UAT documents.

This phase will take 2-3 months

5.Pre-Golive Phase:

Legacy system should be stopped to use in this phase

Preparing all the data and ensuring all the data has been migrated and if anything, pending from LSMW to BAPI, should be completed and inventory data and defining class/characteristics for release procedure, number ranges for the document types and everything will be done in production server.

Ensure all the TR’s are moved to production and interfaces are working properly for the monitoring purpose.

This will take 1-2 months to complete

6.Postproduction support:

In this phase we will be resolving queries related to purchasing and if required giving trainings to end users.