For 10 years, I worked at an SAP Centre of Excellence for a global manufacturing company as an ABAP developer. My role mostly involved developing new features and enhancements. But on occasions, I had to work on resolving some complicated incidents.
Time and again, I got stopped at the beginning, when I worked on an incident. It was all too common for crucial information in the error description to be missing. As a result, I could not reproduce the error.
The company deployed multiple SAP systems, and often end-users didn’t specify how they experienced the error. If they did, they did not enter the problematic transaction code. When users did, they forgot to set the selection criteria or input data used to run the transaction. If they did, they forgot to attach a screenshot of the problem. Without all the relevant data, I couldn’t recreate the problem and work on a solution.
Over the years, the company implemented multiple ITSM platforms. Yet, the problem remained the same. The company was global, so time zone differences impacted my ability to resolve an issue quickly. Often, I would have to wait one day to get a reply from the consultant doing L1 or L2 support on the other side of the planet. I often waited many days to get all the required information if I had multiple questions.
In an extreme case, an end-user submitted an incident and went on a two-week holiday. None of his colleagues knew what he entered in SAP to get the error he reported. The ticket didn’t progress, KPIs declined, and SLAs were breached.
The rise of ITSM Connector
One day, I received an incident with practically no helpful information. I was so frustrated; I began to think about a solution. What if I wrote an ABAP add-on that automatically attached all the data a developer needs to recreate and fix the problem, to the incidents. That day, I began work on a product that became ITSM Connector for SAP.
My goal was to provide a solution that was easy to use but powerful.
I constantly added new features such as automatic attachment of screenshots, authorization reports, SAP system, program, user details, and integration to more and more ITSM platforms, including ServiceNow, Jira, HP Service Manager, BMC Remedy etc.
The vision was to let the end-user enter only basic information directly on the SAP screen where the error occurred. The add-on would create a ticket in the connected ITSM tool, attaching all the necessary information. ITSM Connector ensures tickets SAP users create end up on the desk of the appropriate people, with all the information readily available.
Rapid issue resolution, reduced Production outages
In time, I left my employer and founded my own company – STA Consulting – in 2015 to develop and sell ITSM Connector. Since then, ITSM Connector has been certified for S/4HANA 2021 and received certification from ServiceNow. More than 20 customers across the globe, including sizeable organizations such as Carl Zeiss, Airbus, Uniper, Daimler, and ArcelorMittal, have deployed ITSM Connector to help avoid delays to incident resolution times due to incomplete error descriptions.
Case studies reveal that our customers increase SAP ticket resolution times by approximately 30% on average and have 12% fewer SLA breaches. ITSM Connector can be installed and configured in a day and automatically routes and categorizes the tickets it creates based on the transaction code or module. As a result, your organization can reduce the number of ticket reassignments by more than 90%.
Contact one of our in-house SAP change management experts for more information about ITSM Connector and a Rev-Trac integratio
