We all know there are many challenges with SAP change management, with teams required to resolve errors and deliver more change for the business than ever before.
IT Executives have to manage the risks with their IT transformation projects. At the same time, they must continue to deliver value to business users and keep costs under control.
This puts pressure on SAP IT teams to keep up with the increasing number of business changes. And of course, the business wants the SAP changes deployed as soon as possible, and many teams struggle to keep projects and releases on time and on budget.
Also, today, many organizations are trying to figure out how to increase agility and support SAP DevOps and CI/CD pipelines. All while S/4HANA projects are on the horizon.
Rapid issue resolution maximizes system uptime
Yet, the reality is, SAP’s unique and flexible architecture means that delivering any kind of change has the potential for error. With high levels of interdependencies and integration, and largely manual efforts such as the use of spreadsheets and emails, planning and sequencing transports can be a nightmare.
Even with the best tools and processes in place, when there are many moving parts and competing priorities across numerous teams, errors may need to be introduced due to emergency change requirements or high priority items. As a result, organizations can accept a smaller error to resolve a bigger issue or meet a tight deadline.
You simply can’t predict every issue; there will always be those unforeseen problems – the ones you don’t know about. And with fewer people on task and extremely tight project timelines, for example, things aren’t always going to go to plan.
In these scenarios, it all comes down to how quickly you can identify and resolve the problem when it does occur. Fixing the technical error – whether an unknown dependency or out-of-sequence transport etc. – as soon as possible cuts down business interruptions.
How Rev-Trac resolves errors
Rev-Trac incorporates functionality to allow teams to identify and quickly resolve errors and any other issues that might have been introduced to Production.
Features that assist in the rapid resolution of issues after they have occurred include:
Migration Workbench
The Migration Workbench provides an effective method of migrating transports to any controlled system. Built-in are “look before you leap” safety checks that ensure an administrator knows of any out-of-sequence transports that threaten the target system’s stability.
With the Migration Workbench, you can determine the makeup and sequence of transports for migration. This allows teams to rapidly respond to production issues by reapplying or re-sequencing transports for deployment outside the change management process. If users are mishandling SAP change requests, organizations have a powerful tool to rapidly resolve errors and overwrite transport sequencing issues.
Watch Bot
The application provides alerts that allow system administrators and developers to keep track of the health and data integrity of SAP systems.
Did someone make a manual change directly in QA or PRD, bypassing your processes? Watch Bot will spot it. It will inform you of changes to complex objects or even whole development classes. And can detect potential parallel development issues between BAU and project landscapes.
Occasional manual checks of your systems are no longer required. Automated alerts notify users when something has changed in the system.
The sooner a critical issue can be identified, the sooner it can be resolved, and the less costly it is to do so. With Watch Bot alerts, SAP IT teams can quickly act upon crucial data to resolve errors and avoid an unplanned shutdown.
Root Cause Analysis
Rev-Trac is aware of all objects changed and provides an audit trail that shows how the change progressed and why errors were accepted. Meaning it’s easy to conduct a Root Cause Analysis, which allows an organization to determine why errors might have occurred and make better adjustments for future risk management.
Quickly discover what caused an issue, how it was introduced and then develop a process to prevent the problem from cropping up in the future. The better you can manage this autopsy, the more you can change processes and user behaviours, and the less likely you will be impacted by the issue after that.
The bottom line
Businesses can maximize SAP system uptime by empowering their team with the best tools to resolve issues/problems as soon as possible.
Rev-Trac Platinum’s automated error detection capabilities allow users to respond to errors before they are progressed through the SAP landscape. SAP IT teams can act quickly, fix problems when things go wrong, and reduce ongoing risk by implementing a defined mitigation process.
For more information on reducing risk in SAP change, please contact one of our change management experts.
