#Data Migration Tools SAP S4HANA Data Migration Tools Migration Tools

[saptutorials]

SAP S4HANA Data Migration Tools

One of the most important decisions you’ll make when we’re planning a data migration to the SAP S/4HANA system. which SAP S4HANA data migration tools are best for the Data migration. This article discusses the considerations to keep in mind while making this crucial selection decision because there are so many tools available and each has distinct strengths and disadvantages. Making the wrong…

[a5econsultingblog]

Benefits Of SAP In Cloud

Introduction to SAP Solutions

In the realm of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business software solutions, SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products) stands as a global leader, providing a suite of innovative tools designed to streamline and optimize diverse business processes. From managing finances and human resources to orchestrating intricate supply chains, SAP solutions have become synonymous with efficiency, integration, and strategic decision-making.

What is SAP?

Founded in 1972, SAP has evolved from a single financial accounting system to a comprehensive suite of software applications catering to various business needs. SAP's modular approach allows organizations to tailor solutions to their specific requirements, ensuring a seamless integration of disparate business functions.

In essence, SAP solutions serve as a catalyst for digital transformation, empowering businesses to adapt, innovate, and thrive in an increasingly competitive and dynamic marketplace. This introduction only scratches the surface of the vast capabilities offered by SAP, as organizations across the globe continue to harness its power to drive success and achieve strategic business objectives.

SAP Implementation in Cloud Computing

The integration of SAP solutions with cloud computing represents a transformative shift in how organizations manage and optimize their business processes. This strategic alignment offers a multitude of benefits, redefining the landscape of SAP implementation. One key advantage is the seamless integration and enhanced accessibility that the cloud provides, breaking down traditional data silos and fostering real-time collaboration. Scalability becomes a natural outcome, allowing businesses to align their infrastructure with evolving needs and optimize costs by paying for resources based on actual usage. The rapid deployment and effortless management of updates in a cloud environment ensure organizations stay at the forefront of SAP's features and security enhancements. Security and compliance concerns are addressed through the robust measures of leading cloud service providers, offering data encryption, regular audits, and adherence to regulatory standards. The SAP integration with the S4HANA public & S4HANA private cloud also opens the door to innovation, allowing businesses to leverage emerging technologies like AI and machine learning. Additionally, cloud-based SAP solutions provide a reliable foundation for disaster recovery, ensuring business continuity in the face of disruptions. This strategic fusion of SAP consulting services and cloud computing is more than a technological evolution; it's a pathway for organizations to achieve unprecedented agility, efficiency, and innovation in an increasingly dynamic business landscape.

Benefits of implementing SAP solution in cloud

SAP S4HANA migration  to the cloud, SAP digital transformation  can be a game-changer for your business. It unlocks a world of agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, propelling you into the modern era of enterprise resource planning (ERP).

1. Scalability and Flexibility

One of the primary advantages of leveraging SAP in the cloud is the scalability it provides. Cloud environments enable businesses to scale their SAP infrastructure seamlessly based on fluctuating demands. This flexibility ensures optimal resource utilization, allowing organizations to adapt swiftly to changing business requirements without the need for extensive hardware investments.

2. Cost-Efficiency and Resource Optimization

Cloud-based SAP solutions alleviate the burden of heavy upfront investments in hardware and infrastructure. With a pay-as-you-go model, businesses can optimize costs by only paying for the resources they consume. This democratization of resources makes SAP solutions accessible to businesses of all sizes, promoting cost-efficiency and effective resource allocation.

3. Rapid Deployment and Updates

Cloud-based SAP solutions streamline the deployment process, significantly reducing the time it takes to get the system up and running. Updates and patches are seamlessly managed by cloud service providers, ensuring that businesses always have access to the latest features and security enhancements without the hassle of manual updates.

4. Enhanced Collaboration and Accessibility

Cloud-based SAP solutions foster collaboration by providing anytime, anywhere access to critical business data and applications. This accessibility promotes remote work capabilities, accelerates decision-making processes, and enhances overall collaboration among teams, irrespective of geographical constraints.

5. Data Security and Compliance

Leading cloud service providers invest heavily in robust security measures. By migrating SAP to the cloud, businesses can benefit from state-of-the-art security protocols, data encryption, and regular audits. This not only enhances data security but also ensures compliance with industry regulations, giving businesses peace of mind in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.

6. Innovative Technologies Integration

The cloud facilitates the integration of emerging technologies with SAP, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics. This integration empowers businesses to extract valuable insights from their data, automate processes, and stay at the forefront of technological innovation in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

7. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Cloud-based SAP solutions provide robust disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring that critical business data is backed up and can be swiftly recovered in the event of a disruption. This contributes to enhanced business continuity, minimizing downtime and potential data loss.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the benefits of deploying SAP in the cloud are transformative for businesses seeking to optimize operations, reduce costs, and stay agile in a competitive market. The scalability, flexibility, and innovative potential offered by this integration position businesses to thrive in an era where digital transformation is not just a choice but a strategic imperative. As organizations continue to embrace cloud technologies, the marriage of SAP and the cloud emerges as a powerful catalyst for business excellence. Embrace the future of enterprise technology by harnessing the full potential of SAP in the cloud.

[pavelseoblog]

         Detailed list of the best data migration tools available for SAP S4HANA

          https://www.cbs-consulting.com/us/sap-data-migration-tools/

[applexustechnologies]

S/4HANA Migration Cockpit, the go-to conversion tool for financial master and transactional data in S/4HANA, provides pre-built migration objects that can be customized and enhanced with the ultimate goal of making data migration to S/4HANA as easy as possible.

Read more as Sreeregha R explores more on creating migration projects using SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit to identify and transfer the relevant data from the source system to SAP S/4HANA.

https://www.applexus.com/blogs/sap-s4hana-migration-cockpit

[craigbrownphd-blog-blog]

Managing Risks in ACTIVATE Methodology

My first SAP implementation as a Project Manager was back in 2002 when I had just 6 years of IT experience. Before that, I had worked as a developer, Oracle DBA, SAP BW Consultant and SAP PP Consultant. Till now, I don’t know if that was a fortunate event or an unfortunate one; However, my then Project Manager resigned and my employer forced me to take over as the Project Manager for that implementation. I was happy in my own small world of Production Planning, MRP, Bills of Material and surrounding integrated processes; I was reluctant to take over the role of Project Manager. As a novice and “forced” PM, I was not very much aware of many aspects of the project management. Even today, I have seen many experienced consultants and senior resources think that, Project Management is just about coordinating timesheet, billing and work as a messenger – passing the information from/to client to/from our team – without adding any value to the message. In any way, at that time I knew few things about Scope Management, Requirement Analysis and have no idea about cost management, resource management, time management and risk management. To date, I firmly believe that Risk management is the most critical part of project management. To my advantage, I learned that lesson on my first project when I was forced to work as the Project Manager. One fine day, when we were discussing upcoming work, I informed my client that a particular functionality about MRP is not available in the current SAP version. To my surprise (or maybe not), I inherited a commitment that the specific functionality in question is supposedly available in that SAP release. Suddenly, it poses considerable risks to the fate of the project. It not only will affect the scope, timeline, and cost but it also affected the organizational reputation. Personally, my leadership ability was at test in my first project as project manager. Recently, I attended a discovery session with a prospective client and SAP. The prospective client has an outdated 3rd party ERP system and they want to retire that system to replace with S4HANA on the cloud. One functionality, for discussion purpose, let’s say capacity planning, is critical for the client to decide in favor of S4HC. The capacity planning is neither the part of current functionalities nor it is in the S4HC roadmap. It is the exact same situation – I faced in 2002 – I was facing in early 2017. The only difference was, now I know how to handle those situations. To manage the risk at any project implementation, we need to know * The implementation methodology – in our case we will talk about ACTIVATE methodology * The tool/software – S4HANA Cloud in our case * Business Knowledge – in our example, let us consider the project is to implement “Streamlined Procure to Pay” and “Accelerated Plan to Product”. This article is not focusing on ACTIVATE, S4HANA Cloud or any functional area. It is assumed that you are well aware of these topics. We will focus on managing the risks and the types of risks that we may encounter. The S4HC implementation follows SAP Activate methodology. The methodology has Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy and Run phase. At every phase of the project, a new risk will inject and existing risks will close. Obviously, this is not new to any of us. Let us start looking into certain risks during a different phase of the project and from a different category. Phase Risks Risk Category Discover System Understanding Scope Infrastructure Requirements Requirement Prepare Process and fitment with “what we do” Scope Availability of the given functionalities Scope Columnar Database related risks Architecture Deployment over Cloud Architecture Mobility Related risks Architecture Explore Best Practice fitment into their current business processes Scope Data Migration methodology Data Migration Lack of understanding of ACTIVATE Methodology Implementation Data Security Security Ineffective Fit-to-Standard meetings Scope Ineffective / Lack of participation in Fit-to-Standard Communication Realize Changes in Scope Scope Deploy Lack of training, learning or participation from End Users Learning Run Lack of Continuous Support Reputational   Risk management will start from Discovery phase of the project. Even though we are far from implementation, we need to create the risk register. You may encounter the maximum amount of risks during the Prepare & Explore phase of the project. The risk management will follow the following steps: * Risk Planning – During the planning process, you identify * Risks, * Risk Owners, * Risk Tolerances, and * Risk Processes * Risk Assessment – During the assessment phase of risk management, you will * Assign probability, impact, importance & timing, * Interdependencies and confidence limits, * Prioritize risks, and * Analyze risk trends * Risk Response – Finally, in this part of risk management, you will * Monitor & communicate the status and trends of risks * Balance the project, and * Manage the investment choices Risk Planning It is a process of identifying risks and others factors associated with the risk management. Risk Planning is carried out during the defining phase of the project management. It is during this phase where we create the Risk Management Plan. Here are the four major activities that we perform during Risk Planning. Identify Risks Imagine what can happen if you miss identifying a critical risk, positive or negative. It will impact the financial benefits of the project. A strong risk identification process is critical to the success of risk management which in turn, is critical for the successful outcome of the project. During this process, we prepare many documents such as Risk Register, Opportunity/Threat Matrix, Risk Breakdown structure and few others. All the identified risks must be noted down in Risk Register. Here are few of the sources from where we can identify a risk. * Look at the Assumptions – We make lots of assumptions while building the project plan, defining the scope, deciding the schedule and milestone, estimating costs, and during several other key process & steps. Assumptions are the first place to start with to identify the risks. It is also important to note that the quality of risks or the number of risks identified from this section is limited and directly proportional to the assumptions listed. During the discovery phase of the ACTIVATE Methodology, many of these risks can be identified. Any sessions, meetings with the prospective client will help you identify a risk. * Historical Information – Look at the historical information to identify the type of risks and issues that a similar project faced. There may not be a lot of historical information available. For example, if you are a manufacturing client and in the process of implementing S4HC manufacturing, you will not have any historical information available to you to assess the risks. In this case, SAP and the vendor team will come into play. They can provide you with their experience in implementing S4HC Manufacturing for some other clients, ensuring the confidentiality and other legal agreements are followed. * Prior Experience – Organize brainstorming sessions with peer managers and business leads to discuss their prior experience in similar projects. The discussion must remain within the context of risk management. It will give you a good amount of risks, however, as the Project Manager, you must validate those risks in the context of the current project you are working on. * Expert Judgement – Include Subject Matter Experts in those brainstorming sessions. It will help you identify risks that are relevant to the functional areas. * Use tools such as Checklist, Risk Breakdown Structure – It will also give you a substantial amount of valid risks. Identify Risks Owners Every risk must have an owner identified. A risk owner is the team member, responsible for the management, monitoring, and control of an identified risk, including the implementation of the selected responses. A risk owner is identified based on the risks and the knowledge requires carrying out the activities related to that risk. The responsibilities of the risk owner include but not limited to * Manage, monitor, and control the risks. * Implement the selected response strategy of the risks * Share the status updates with risk response board, Project Manager and PMO * Owner may provide an input, suggestions for improvement to risk framework * Risk Owner may play a decisive role in setting up risk policy, tolerances, and processes Identify Risk Tolerances Risk tolerance is the degree of variability in investment returns that an organization is willing to withstand. As a Client Project Manager, it is critical for you to understand the organizational risk tolerance. Furthermore, if the tolerance level at the Project level may different than organizational tolerance then you need to have the buy-in from organization management and executives. Identify Risk Processes As a part of Risk Management Planning, it is important for you to know and understand the risk processes. Additionally, not all the processes will be utilized for your project. Identify those processes that you think will need for the Project, ensure that the process work for your organization, have complete documentation and your team is educated about the process. Risk Assessment Risk assessment is to analyze a given risk, qualitatively or quantitatively, to estimate the threat related to a well-defined situation. Based on the assessment, a risk can be handled in many possible ways. These are identified in section “Risk Response”. Assign Probability, Impact, Importance & Timing As an important part of Risk Management, the risk owner assigns the probability of occurrence and the impact of the risk in case the risk does occur. We all know that for each risk, we identify and assign a category for that risk. The “importance” defines the importance of that category. There are certain categories that are more important for the project than others. One such example is the “Financial Risk”. For a certain project, “Financial Risk” will have more importance than “Timeline” related risks. However for a Product launch, competing against a similar launch from a competition, “Timeline” related risks would be more important than “Financial”. Additionally, a scope related risk occurring at the beginning of the implementation will have less impact as compared to the same risk occurring at the middle or end of the implementation. So it is important to identify the timing of the risk. What it also means is that we need to assess the risks at a given frequency and assign the probability, impact, importance, and timing of each risk. Analyze Interdependencies and identify confidence limits Interdependency is the relationship between a risk and the type of the risk. Type of risk is also known as risk category. In general, these are the types of risks * Strategic Risks * Compliance Risks * Operational Risks * Financial Risks * Reputational Risks Confidence limit is the assurance level of the risk and performance measure. Prioritize Risk The risks are recorded in risk register according to their priority. In general, the risks are prioritized within the given category. In some instances, you can also prioritize the risks across the implementation. However, the risks are always prioritized based on the probability of occurrence and the impact of that risk. Analyze Risk Trends As a part of the continuous analysis, we analyze the risks at a regular frequency; if needed we re-assign the probability, impact, importance, timing, category, confidence limit, priority or any other parameters. Risk Response So far, we have identified and prioritize the risks. However, that’s not enough. We need to know exactly what to do in case of the risk being real. We need to detail the response strategies for each risk. There are several ways to respond to a risk. They are * Avoidance – is a way to eliminate the activity that can expose the organizational asset to negative impact. * Prevention – is to apply the process and techniques that will prevent the risk of * Mitigation – involve creating a plan that will help to reduce, eliminate or manage the risk within an acceptable limit. * Retention – is a strategy to retain the risk where the cost of the risk is less compared to the cost of mitigating the risk. * Transfer – is a strategy to pass the risk to the third party. The detail for the above-mentioned strategies is beyond the purview of this blog however it is important for you to know the definition of these. Monitor the status and trends As a part of risk response strategy, you need to monitor the status and trends of performance data. It compares the data for past performance and current performance, recent trends, and compares recent changes in the project. As a project manager, you need to understand these trends to identify the trigger point for a given implementation. This status and trends must be communicated to risks owners so that they can further the analysis. Balancing the project In case of any deviation due to risk management or in any other scenario, rebalancing methods are utilized to bring the project realigned with organizational strategies. Manage the investment choices There are several investment choices tools, some of them are * Trade-off analysis – will determine the effect of changing one or more parameters of the project. * Market-payoff variability – analyzes the effect of a change in pricing & sales forecast on the project itself. * Budget variability – analyzes the effect of changing the project itself. * Performance variability – analyzes the performance of the project. * Market requirement variability – analyzes the change in the market requirement in relation to the project. * Time-to-market variability – it determines the effect of project velocity. http://bit.ly/2nBR2uN #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

[jobsaggregationco]

Need - SAP PP Lead

Role: SAP PP Lead Location: KOP,PA Duration: 6 months JD:- OOver 12 Years of data migration experience in Global SAP implementation ·         Functional Experience in the area of Manufacturing and Procurement processes (PTI ? Plan To Inventory & STP ? Source To Pay) ·         Hands on experience in following master data objects migration using various methods? ·         PP-PI è master data objects ( Material Master, Resources, BOMs, Recipe, Prod Version, Batch Search, Batch Derivation etc.) ·         PP-PI è Transaction Data Objects ( Process Orders, Planned Orders etc.) ·         MM è Purchasing, Pricing Conditions ·         Prior experience of Data migration for SAP S4HANA deployments for Pharma / GxP Industry preferred ·         Deep and hands-on expertise with defining / delivering LSMW, other data migration methods/tool ·         Excellent communication including documentation skills is required    Reference : Need - SAP PP Lead jobs source http://jobsaggregation.com/jobs/technology/need-sap-pp-lead_i2103

[jobrealtimeco]

Need - SAP PP Lead

Role: SAP PP Lead Location: KOP,PA Duration: 6 months JD:- OOver 12 Years of data migration experience in Global SAP implementation ·         Functional Experience in the area of Manufacturing and Procurement processes (PTI ? Plan To Inventory & STP ? Source To Pay) ·         Hands on experience in following master data objects migration using various methods? ·         PP-PI è master data objects ( Material Master, Resources, BOMs, Recipe, Prod Version, Batch Search, Batch Derivation etc.) ·         PP-PI è Transaction Data Objects ( Process Orders, Planned Orders etc.) ·         MM è Purchasing, Pricing Conditions ·         Prior experience of Data migration for SAP S4HANA deployments for Pharma / GxP Industry preferred ·         Deep and hands-on expertise with defining / delivering LSMW, other data migration methods/tool ·         Excellent communication including documentation skills is required    Reference : Need - SAP PP Lead jobs source http://jobrealtime.com/jobs/technology/need-sap-pp-lead_i2103

[qoholiccom]

Need - SAP PP Lead

Role: SAP PP Lead Location: KOP,PA Duration: 6 months JD:- OOver 12 Years of data migration experience in Global SAP implementation ·         Functional Experience in the area of Manufacturing and Procurement processes (PTI ? Plan To Inventory & STP ? Source To Pay) ·         Hands on experience in following master data objects migration using various methods? ·         PP-PI è master data objects ( Material Master, Resources, BOMs, Recipe, Prod Version, Batch Search, Batch Derivation etc.) ·         PP-PI è Transaction Data Objects ( Process Orders, Planned Orders etc.) ·         MM è Purchasing, Pricing Conditions ·         Prior experience of Data migration for SAP S4HANA deployments for Pharma / GxP Industry preferred ·         Deep and hands-on expertise with defining / delivering LSMW, other data migration methods/tool ·         Excellent communication including documentation skills is required    Reference : Need - SAP PP Lead jobs source http://www.qoholic.com/index.php?page=item&id=2577

[pavelseoblog]

         Detailed list of the best data migration tools available for SAP S4HANA

https://www.cbs-consulting.com/us/sap-data-migration-tools/

[applexustechnologies]

SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions provide you with a process framework and the tools, methods, and templates needed to execute complex migration tasks quickly, easily, and cost-effectively.

Read more in our latest blog as Kavinraj Marimuthu explains how we can replace excel workbooks/templates with direct ECC tables in RDS by default excel workbooks used as the source. https://www.applexus.com/blogs/replace-excel-templates-with-direct-ecc-tables-for-s4hana-data-migration

[craigbrownphd-blog-blog]

Managing Risks in ACTIVATE Methodology

My first SAP implementation as a Project Manager was back in 2002 when I had just 6 years of IT experience. Before that, I had worked as a developer, Oracle DBA, SAP BW Consultant and SAP PP Consultant. Till now, I don’t know if that was a fortunate event or an unfortunate one; However, my then Project Manager resigned and my employer forced me to take over as the Project Manager for that implementation. I was happy in my own small world of Production Planning, MRP, Bills of Material and surrounding integrated processes; I was reluctant to take over the role of Project Manager. As a novice and “forced” PM, I was not very much aware of many aspects of the project management. Even today, I have seen many experienced consultants and senior resources think that, Project Management is just about coordinating timesheet, billing and work as a messenger – passing the information from/to client to/from our team – without adding any value to the message. In any way, at that time I knew few things about Scope Management, Requirement Analysis and have no idea about cost management, resource management, time management and risk management. To date, I firmly believe that Risk management is the most critical part of project management. To my advantage, I learned that lesson on my first project when I was forced to work as the Project Manager. One fine day, when we were discussing upcoming work, I informed my client that a particular functionality about MRP is not available in the current SAP version. To my surprise (or maybe not), I inherited a commitment that the specific functionality in question is supposedly available in that SAP release. Suddenly, it poses considerable risks to the fate of the project. It not only will affect the scope, timeline, and cost but it also affected the organizational reputation. Personally, my leadership ability was at test in my first project as project manager. Recently, I attended a discovery session with a prospective client and SAP. The prospective client has an outdated 3rd party ERP system and they want to retire that system to replace with S4HANA on the cloud. One functionality, for discussion purpose, let’s say capacity planning, is critical for the client to decide in favor of S4HC. The capacity planning is neither the part of current functionalities nor it is in the S4HC roadmap. It is the exact same situation – I faced in 2002 – I was facing in early 2017. The only difference was, now I know how to handle those situations. To manage the risk at any project implementation, we need to know * The implementation methodology – in our case we will talk about ACTIVATE methodology * The tool/software – S4HANA Cloud in our case * Business Knowledge – in our example, let us consider the project is to implement “Streamlined Procure to Pay” and “Accelerated Plan to Product”. This article is not focusing on ACTIVATE, S4HANA Cloud or any functional area. It is assumed that you are well aware of these topics. We will focus on managing the risks and the types of risks that we may encounter. The S4HC implementation follows SAP Activate methodology. The methodology has Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy and Run phase. At every phase of the project, a new risk will inject and existing risks will close. Obviously, this is not new to any of us. Let us start looking into certain risks during a different phase of the project and from a different category. Phase Risks Risk Category Discover System Understanding Scope Infrastructure Requirements Requirement Prepare Process and fitment with “what we do” Scope Availability of the given functionalities Scope Columnar Database related risks Architecture Deployment over Cloud Architecture Mobility Related risks Architecture Explore Best Practice fitment into their current business processes Scope Data Migration methodology Data Migration Lack of understanding of ACTIVATE Methodology Implementation Data Security Security Ineffective Fit-to-Standard meetings Scope Ineffective / Lack of participation in Fit-to-Standard Communication Realize Changes in Scope Scope Deploy Lack of training, learning or participation from End Users Learning Run Lack of Continuous Support Reputational   Risk management will start from Discovery phase of the project. Even though we are far from implementation, we need to create the risk register. You may encounter the maximum amount of risks during the Prepare & Explore phase of the project. The risk management will follow the following steps: * Risk Planning – During the planning process, you identify * Risks, * Risk Owners, * Risk Tolerances, and * Risk Processes * Risk Assessment – During the assessment phase of risk management, you will * Assign probability, impact, importance & timing, * Interdependencies and confidence limits, * Prioritize risks, and * Analyze risk trends * Risk Response – Finally, in this part of risk management, you will * Monitor & communicate the status and trends of risks * Balance the project, and * Manage the investment choices Risk Planning It is a process of identifying risks and others factors associated with the risk management. Risk Planning is carried out during the defining phase of the project management. It is during this phase where we create the Risk Management Plan. Here are the four major activities that we perform during Risk Planning. Identify Risks Imagine what can happen if you miss identifying a critical risk, positive or negative. It will impact the financial benefits of the project. A strong risk identification process is critical to the success of risk management which in turn, is critical for the successful outcome of the project. During this process, we prepare many documents such as Risk Register, Opportunity/Threat Matrix, Risk Breakdown structure and few others. All the identified risks must be noted down in Risk Register. Here are few of the sources from where we can identify a risk. * Look at the Assumptions – We make lots of assumptions while building the project plan, defining the scope, deciding the schedule and milestone, estimating costs, and during several other key process & steps. Assumptions are the first place to start with to identify the risks. It is also important to note that the quality of risks or the number of risks identified from this section is limited and directly proportional to the assumptions listed. During the discovery phase of the ACTIVATE Methodology, many of these risks can be identified. Any sessions, meetings with the prospective client will help you identify a risk. * Historical Information – Look at the historical information to identify the type of risks and issues that a similar project faced. There may not be a lot of historical information available. For example, if you are a manufacturing client and in the process of implementing S4HC manufacturing, you will not have any historical information available to you to assess the risks. In this case, SAP and the vendor team will come into play. They can provide you with their experience in implementing S4HC Manufacturing for some other clients, ensuring the confidentiality and other legal agreements are followed. * Prior Experience – Organize brainstorming sessions with peer managers and business leads to discuss their prior experience in similar projects. The discussion must remain within the context of risk management. It will give you a good amount of risks, however, as the Project Manager, you must validate those risks in the context of the current project you are working on. * Expert Judgement – Include Subject Matter Experts in those brainstorming sessions. It will help you identify risks that are relevant to the functional areas. * Use tools such as Checklist, Risk Breakdown Structure – It will also give you a substantial amount of valid risks. Identify Risks Owners Every risk must have an owner identified. A risk owner is the team member, responsible for the management, monitoring, and control of an identified risk, including the implementation of the selected responses. A risk owner is identified based on the risks and the knowledge requires carrying out the activities related to that risk. The responsibilities of the risk owner include but not limited to * Manage, monitor, and control the risks. * Implement the selected response strategy of the risks * Share the status updates with risk response board, Project Manager and PMO * Owner may provide an input, suggestions for improvement to risk framework * Risk Owner may play a decisive role in setting up risk policy, tolerances, and processes Identify Risk Tolerances Risk tolerance is the degree of variability in investment returns that an organization is willing to withstand. As a Client Project Manager, it is critical for you to understand the organizational risk tolerance. Furthermore, if the tolerance level at the Project level may different than organizational tolerance then you need to have the buy-in from organization management and executives. Identify Risk Processes As a part of Risk Management Planning, it is important for you to know and understand the risk processes. Additionally, not all the processes will be utilized for your project. Identify those processes that you think will need for the Project, ensure that the process work for your organization, have complete documentation and your team is educated about the process. Risk Assessment Risk assessment is to analyze a given risk, qualitatively or quantitatively, to estimate the threat related to a well-defined situation. Based on the assessment, a risk can be handled in many possible ways. These are identified in section “Risk Response”. Assign Probability, Impact, Importance & Timing As an important part of Risk Management, the risk owner assigns the probability of occurrence and the impact of the risk in case the risk does occur. We all know that for each risk, we identify and assign a category for that risk. The “importance” defines the importance of that category. There are certain categories that are more important for the project than others. One such example is the “Financial Risk”. For a certain project, “Financial Risk” will have more importance than “Timeline” related risks. However for a Product launch, competing against a similar launch from a competition, “Timeline” related risks would be more important than “Financial”. Additionally, a scope related risk occurring at the beginning of the implementation will have less impact as compared to the same risk occurring at the middle or end of the implementation. So it is important to identify the timing of the risk. What it also means is that we need to assess the risks at a given frequency and assign the probability, impact, importance, and timing of each risk. Analyze Interdependencies and identify confidence limits Interdependency is the relationship between a risk and the type of the risk. Type of risk is also known as risk category. In general, these are the types of risks * Strategic Risks * Compliance Risks * Operational Risks * Financial Risks * Reputational Risks Confidence limit is the assurance level of the risk and performance measure. Prioritize Risk The risks are recorded in risk register according to their priority. In general, the risks are prioritized within the given category. In some instances, you can also prioritize the risks across the implementation. However, the risks are always prioritized based on the probability of occurrence and the impact of that risk. Analyze Risk Trends As a part of the continuous analysis, we analyze the risks at a regular frequency; if needed we re-assign the probability, impact, importance, timing, category, confidence limit, priority or any other parameters. Risk Response So far, we have identified and prioritize the risks. However, that’s not enough. We need to know exactly what to do in case of the risk being real. We need to detail the response strategies for each risk. There are several ways to respond to a risk. They are * Avoidance – is a way to eliminate the activity that can expose the organizational asset to negative impact. * Prevention – is to apply the process and techniques that will prevent the risk of * Mitigation – involve creating a plan that will help to reduce, eliminate or manage the risk within an acceptable limit. * Retention – is a strategy to retain the risk where the cost of the risk is less compared to the cost of mitigating the risk. * Transfer – is a strategy to pass the risk to the third party. The detail for the above-mentioned strategies is beyond the purview of this blog however it is important for you to know the definition of these. Monitor the status and trends As a part of risk response strategy, you need to monitor the status and trends of performance data. It compares the data for past performance and current performance, recent trends, and compares recent changes in the project. As a project manager, you need to understand these trends to identify the trigger point for a given implementation. This status and trends must be communicated to risks owners so that they can further the analysis. Balancing the project In case of any deviation due to risk management or in any other scenario, rebalancing methods are utilized to bring the project realigned with organizational strategies. Manage the investment choices There are several investment choices tools, some of them are * Trade-off analysis – will determine the effect of changing one or more parameters of the project. * Market-payoff variability – analyzes the effect of a change in pricing & sales forecast on the project itself. * Budget variability – analyzes the effect of changing the project itself. * Performance variability – analyzes the performance of the project. * Market requirement variability – analyzes the change in the market requirement in relation to the project. * Time-to-market variability – it determines the effect of project velocity. http://bit.ly/2Em3B5f #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

[craigbrownphd-blog-blog]

Managing Risks in ACTIVATE Methodology

My first SAP implementation as a Project Manager was back in 2002 when I had just 6 years of IT experience. Before that, I had worked as a developer, Oracle DBA, SAP BW Consultant and SAP PP Consultant. Till now, I don’t know if that was a fortunate event or an unfortunate one; However, my then Project Manager resigned and my employer forced me to take over as the Project Manager for that implementation. I was happy in my own small world of Production Planning, MRP, Bills of Material and surrounding integrated processes; I was reluctant to take over the role of Project Manager. As a novice and “forced” PM, I was not very much aware of many aspects of the project management. Even today, I have seen many experienced consultants and senior resources think that, Project Management is just about coordinating timesheet, billing and work as a messenger – passing the information from/to client to/from our team – without adding any value to the message. In any way, at that time I knew few things about Scope Management, Requirement Analysis and have no idea about cost management, resource management, time management and risk management. To date, I firmly believe that Risk management is the most critical part of project management. To my advantage, I learned that lesson on my first project when I was forced to work as the Project Manager. One fine day, when we were discussing upcoming work, I informed my client that a particular functionality about MRP is not available in the current SAP version. To my surprise (or maybe not), I inherited a commitment that the specific functionality in question is supposedly available in that SAP release. Suddenly, it poses considerable risks to the fate of the project. It not only will affect the scope, timeline, and cost but it also affected the organizational reputation. Personally, my leadership ability was at test in my first project as project manager. Recently, I attended a discovery session with a prospective client and SAP. The prospective client has an outdated 3rd party ERP system and they want to retire that system to replace with S4HANA on the cloud. One functionality, for discussion purpose, let’s say capacity planning, is critical for the client to decide in favor of S4HC. The capacity planning is neither the part of current functionalities nor it is in the S4HC roadmap. It is the exact same situation – I faced in 2002 – I was facing in early 2017. The only difference was, now I know how to handle those situations. To manage the risk at any project implementation, we need to know * The implementation methodology – in our case we will talk about ACTIVATE methodology * The tool/software – S4HANA Cloud in our case * Business Knowledge – in our example, let us consider the project is to implement “Streamlined Procure to Pay” and “Accelerated Plan to Product”. This article is not focusing on ACTIVATE, S4HANA Cloud or any functional area. It is assumed that you are well aware of these topics. We will focus on managing the risks and the types of risks that we may encounter. The S4HC implementation follows SAP Activate methodology. The methodology has Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy and Run phase. At every phase of the project, a new risk will inject and existing risks will close. Obviously, this is not new to any of us. Let us start looking into certain risks during a different phase of the project and from a different category. Phase Risks Risk Category Discover System Understanding Scope Infrastructure Requirements Requirement Prepare Process and fitment with “what we do” Scope Availability of the given functionalities Scope Columnar Database related risks Architecture Deployment over Cloud Architecture Mobility Related risks Architecture Explore Best Practice fitment into their current business processes Scope Data Migration methodology Data Migration Lack of understanding of ACTIVATE Methodology Implementation Data Security Security Ineffective Fit-to-Standard meetings Scope Ineffective / Lack of participation in Fit-to-Standard Communication Realize Changes in Scope Scope Deploy Lack of training, learning or participation from End Users Learning Run Lack of Continuous Support Reputational   Risk management will start from Discovery phase of the project. Even though we are far from implementation, we need to create the risk register. You may encounter the maximum amount of risks during the Prepare & Explore phase of the project. The risk management will follow the following steps: * Risk Planning – During the planning process, you identify * Risks, * Risk Owners, * Risk Tolerances, and * Risk Processes * Risk Assessment – During the assessment phase of risk management, you will * Assign probability, impact, importance & timing, * Interdependencies and confidence limits, * Prioritize risks, and * Analyze risk trends * Risk Response – Finally, in this part of risk management, you will * Monitor & communicate the status and trends of risks * Balance the project, and * Manage the investment choices Risk Planning It is a process of identifying risks and others factors associated with the risk management. Risk Planning is carried out during the defining phase of the project management. It is during this phase where we create the Risk Management Plan. Here are the four major activities that we perform during Risk Planning. Identify Risks Imagine what can happen if you miss identifying a critical risk, positive or negative. It will impact the financial benefits of the project. A strong risk identification process is critical to the success of risk management which in turn, is critical for the successful outcome of the project. During this process, we prepare many documents such as Risk Register, Opportunity/Threat Matrix, Risk Breakdown structure and few others. All the identified risks must be noted down in Risk Register. Here are few of the sources from where we can identify a risk. * Look at the Assumptions – We make lots of assumptions while building the project plan, defining the scope, deciding the schedule and milestone, estimating costs, and during several other key process & steps. Assumptions are the first place to start with to identify the risks. It is also important to note that the quality of risks or the number of risks identified from this section is limited and directly proportional to the assumptions listed. During the discovery phase of the ACTIVATE Methodology, many of these risks can be identified. Any sessions, meetings with the prospective client will help you identify a risk. * Historical Information – Look at the historical information to identify the type of risks and issues that a similar project faced. There may not be a lot of historical information available. For example, if you are a manufacturing client and in the process of implementing S4HC manufacturing, you will not have any historical information available to you to assess the risks. In this case, SAP and the vendor team will come into play. They can provide you with their experience in implementing S4HC Manufacturing for some other clients, ensuring the confidentiality and other legal agreements are followed. * Prior Experience – Organize brainstorming sessions with peer managers and business leads to discuss their prior experience in similar projects. The discussion must remain within the context of risk management. It will give you a good amount of risks, however, as the Project Manager, you must validate those risks in the context of the current project you are working on. * Expert Judgement – Include Subject Matter Experts in those brainstorming sessions. It will help you identify risks that are relevant to the functional areas. * Use tools such as Checklist, Risk Breakdown Structure – It will also give you a substantial amount of valid risks. Identify Risks Owners Every risk must have an owner identified. A risk owner is the team member, responsible for the management, monitoring, and control of an identified risk, including the implementation of the selected responses. A risk owner is identified based on the risks and the knowledge requires carrying out the activities related to that risk. The responsibilities of the risk owner include but not limited to * Manage, monitor, and control the risks. * Implement the selected response strategy of the risks * Share the status updates with risk response board, Project Manager and PMO * Owner may provide an input, suggestions for improvement to risk framework * Risk Owner may play a decisive role in setting up risk policy, tolerances, and processes Identify Risk Tolerances Risk tolerance is the degree of variability in investment returns that an organization is willing to withstand. As a Client Project Manager, it is critical for you to understand the organizational risk tolerance. Furthermore, if the tolerance level at the Project level may different than organizational tolerance then you need to have the buy-in from organization management and executives. Identify Risk Processes As a part of Risk Management Planning, it is important for you to know and understand the risk processes. Additionally, not all the processes will be utilized for your project. Identify those processes that you think will need for the Project, ensure that the process work for your organization, have complete documentation and your team is educated about the process. Risk Assessment Risk assessment is to analyze a given risk, qualitatively or quantitatively, to estimate the threat related to a well-defined situation. Based on the assessment, a risk can be handled in many possible ways. These are identified in section “Risk Response”. Assign Probability, Impact, Importance & Timing As an important part of Risk Management, the risk owner assigns the probability of occurrence and the impact of the risk in case the risk does occur. We all know that for each risk, we identify and assign a category for that risk. The “importance” defines the importance of that category. There are certain categories that are more important for the project than others. One such example is the “Financial Risk”. For a certain project, “Financial Risk” will have more importance than “Timeline” related risks. However for a Product launch, competing against a similar launch from a competition, “Timeline” related risks would be more important than “Financial”. Additionally, a scope related risk occurring at the beginning of the implementation will have less impact as compared to the same risk occurring at the middle or end of the implementation. So it is important to identify the timing of the risk. What it also means is that we need to assess the risks at a given frequency and assign the probability, impact, importance, and timing of each risk. Analyze Interdependencies and identify confidence limits Interdependency is the relationship between a risk and the type of the risk. Type of risk is also known as risk category. In general, these are the types of risks * Strategic Risks * Compliance Risks * Operational Risks * Financial Risks * Reputational Risks Confidence limit is the assurance level of the risk and performance measure. Prioritize Risk The risks are recorded in risk register according to their priority. In general, the risks are prioritized within the given category. In some instances, you can also prioritize the risks across the implementation. However, the risks are always prioritized based on the probability of occurrence and the impact of that risk. Analyze Risk Trends As a part of the continuous analysis, we analyze the risks at a regular frequency; if needed we re-assign the probability, impact, importance, timing, category, confidence limit, priority or any other parameters. Risk Response So far, we have identified and prioritize the risks. However, that’s not enough. We need to know exactly what to do in case of the risk being real. We need to detail the response strategies for each risk. There are several ways to respond to a risk. They are * Avoidance – is a way to eliminate the activity that can expose the organizational asset to negative impact. * Prevention – is to apply the process and techniques that will prevent the risk of * Mitigation – involve creating a plan that will help to reduce, eliminate or manage the risk within an acceptable limit. * Retention – is a strategy to retain the risk where the cost of the risk is less compared to the cost of mitigating the risk. * Transfer – is a strategy to pass the risk to the third party. The detail for the above-mentioned strategies is beyond the purview of this blog however it is important for you to know the definition of these. Monitor the status and trends As a part of risk response strategy, you need to monitor the status and trends of performance data. It compares the data for past performance and current performance, recent trends, and compares recent changes in the project. As a project manager, you need to understand these trends to identify the trigger point for a given implementation. This status and trends must be communicated to risks owners so that they can further the analysis. Balancing the project In case of any deviation due to risk management or in any other scenario, rebalancing methods are utilized to bring the project realigned with organizational strategies. Manage the investment choices There are several investment choices tools, some of them are * Trade-off analysis – will determine the effect of changing one or more parameters of the project. * Market-payoff variability – analyzes the effect of a change in pricing & sales forecast on the project itself. * Budget variability – analyzes the effect of changing the project itself. * Performance variability – analyzes the performance of the project. * Market requirement variability – analyzes the change in the market requirement in relation to the project. * Time-to-market variability – it determines the effect of project velocity. http://bit.ly/2nkUiL0 #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

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SAP PP Lead

Role: SAP PP Lead Location: KOP,PA Duration: 6 months JD:- OOver 12 Years of data migration experience in Global SAP implementation ·         Functional Experience in the area of Manufacturing and Procurement processes (PTI ? Plan To Inventory & STP ? Source To Pay) ·         Hands on experience in following master data objects migration using various methods? ·         PP-PI è master data objects ( Material Master, Resources, BOMs, Recipe, Prod Version, Batch Search, Batch Derivation etc.) ·         PP-PI è Transaction Data Objects ( Process Orders, Planned Orders etc.) ·         MM è Purchasing, Pricing Conditions ·         Prior experience of Data migration for SAP S4HANA deployments for Pharma / GxP Industry preferred ·         Deep and hands-on expertise with defining / delivering LSMW, other data migration methods/tool ·         Excellent communication including documentation skills is required    Reference : SAP PP Lead jobs source http://www.qoholic.com/index.php?page=item&id=1989

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SAP PP Lead

Role: SAP PP Lead Location: KOP,PA Duration: 6 months JD:- OOver 12 Years of data migration experience in Global SAP implementation ·         Functional Experience in the area of Manufacturing and Procurement processes (PTI ? Plan To Inventory & STP ? Source To Pay) ·         Hands on experience in following master data objects migration using various methods? ·         PP-PI è master data objects ( Material Master, Resources, BOMs, Recipe, Prod Version, Batch Search, Batch Derivation etc.) ·         PP-PI è Transaction Data Objects ( Process Orders, Planned Orders etc.) ·         MM è Purchasing, Pricing Conditions ·         Prior experience of Data migration for SAP S4HANA deployments for Pharma / GxP Industry preferred ·         Deep and hands-on expertise with defining / delivering LSMW, other data migration methods/tool ·         Excellent communication including documentation skills is required    Reference : SAP PP Lead jobs source http://jobrealtime.com/jobs/technology/sap-pp-lead_i1909

[jobsaggregationco]

SAP PP Lead

Role: SAP PP Lead Location: KOP,PA Duration: 6 months JD:- OOver 12 Years of data migration experience in Global SAP implementation ·         Functional Experience in the area of Manufacturing and Procurement processes (PTI ? Plan To Inventory & STP ? Source To Pay) ·         Hands on experience in following master data objects migration using various methods? ·         PP-PI è master data objects ( Material Master, Resources, BOMs, Recipe, Prod Version, Batch Search, Batch Derivation etc.) ·         PP-PI è Transaction Data Objects ( Process Orders, Planned Orders etc.) ·         MM è Purchasing, Pricing Conditions ·         Prior experience of Data migration for SAP S4HANA deployments for Pharma / GxP Industry preferred ·         Deep and hands-on expertise with defining / delivering LSMW, other data migration methods/tool ·         Excellent communication including documentation skills is required    Reference : SAP PP Lead jobs source http://jobsaggregation.com/jobs/technology/sap-pp-lead_i1909