ARTICLESRetrofit:The Missing Conversation in SAP Transformations 7 AugRead more
ARTICLESCode Connect 2026: Our Recap from St. Leon-Rot 5 AugRead more
EVENTSMeet Rev-Trac at NZSUG 20263 AugRead more

Category: Articles

A question our customers repeatedly ask is: “How can we effectively manage risk that change introduces to production? “. An excellent question to include in your current portfolio of areas to address with your change management process plan. To effectively manage risk, one must be able to identify and categorise risk. That is, could the change cause a problem, and what happens if it does (likelihood and impact)? For simplicity, I’ll cover two obvious categories, high risk and low risk.
Aug 2017
Read
After many years analyzing customers’ change control processes we’ve learned that no two processes are ever the same. However, I’ve noticed that when a company sets out to improve their change control processes, they tend to make them more complex than necessary. Particularly when attempting agile processes for the first time.
Aug 2017
Read
The recent article Ringing Down The Curtain On Change Management Theater by Forrester analyst Charles Betz made me think about the future of SAP change management. What is it going to look like in 3, 5 or 7 years? One thing that is certain is that it won’t look the same as it does today. Over the years, I’ve seen SAP customers go from managing SAP change with spreadsheets, emails and ITSM tickets (and many still do it that way); to ITIL-based, semi-automated processes; and now towards business-driven automated Agile/DevOps practices.
Aug 2017
Read
Earlier this week I spent a day with one of our technology partners’ customers at the EPI-USE Labs user group event in Sydney. Part of the day included a presentation from David Powell, General Manager, IT Security Strategy at the National Australia Bank (NAB) around the criticality of IT security at both an individual level and at a corporate level. The presentation was both fascinating and eye opening, to say the least.
Aug 2017
Read
In the rush to get to SAP’s HANA database, some customers have not given proper consideration to the Z-code that has been developed over the years and its compatibility with the new DB. During the initial SAP implementation, nearly every company that I know of was “special” in some way and choose not to go with the SAP standard. Therefore, we all have substantial Z-code we used to fill that and other gaps in our processes. Now with the HANA DB on the scene, some are finding that post migration, some of their Z-code either won’t work or has some serious performance issues running on the HANA database.
Jul 2017
Read
That has proven to be a difficult question to answer accurately because the Solution Manager scope has been expanding over the years to cover many different functional and solution support areas. One of the best resources to help understand the overall size and scope of Solution Manager is the recently published SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Adoption Framework. This lengthy document describes 40 different functional areas in Solution Manager 7.2. SAP also provides some rough guidelines regarding estimated efforts to implement the functionality. What struck me was the overwhelming amount of effort required when you take a closer look.
Jul 2017
Read
One of the great criticisms underpinning the move away from Enterprise Core type software applications to more agile cloud based applications is the slow and frustrating rate of change that is unsuited to the rapid response era in which we now operate – with robust change control procedures often seen as the culprit.
Jul 2017
Read
I recently read a great analogy describing Waterfall vs DevOps. While Waterfall requires the team to be driving 4X4 vehicles to deliver their change across a landscape, DevOps requires an automation evangelist to pave smooth roadways so that the delivery team can drive supercars at fast pace across the landscape. One of the keys is around user experience, which has in the past been overlooked by many organizations in the enterprise space.
Jul 2017
Read
In my role at Revelation Software Concepts I regularly brief the relevant analyst community on our SAP change control automation software roadmap. Quite often, due to our specialized knowledge I get asked my thoughts on SAP’s strategic directions and on various SAP Applications. During my most recent series of analyst briefings I faced numerous questions around the topic of SAP HANA, S/4 HANA and SAP Cloud. What I learned this time is that analysts are very keen to understand SAP customer attitudes to S/4 HANA and what their plans are to transition. So, what are we seeing SAP customer’s doing in transitioning from SAP ERP to S/4 and how can a change control automation software like Rev-Trac help?
Jul 2017
Read
One of the great criticisms underpinning the move away from Enterprise Core type software applications to more agile cloud based applications is the slow and frustrating rate of change that is unsuited to the rapid response era in which we now operate – with robust change control procedures often seen as the culprit. But does a change control procedure need to necessarily slow down the rate of change to an SAP Enterprise Application and work against agile development goals?
Jul 2017
Read