Johannesburg, 22 Aug 2016
"SAP Solution Manager 7.2 is now positioned as a strategic management tool," says Graham Henderson, Managing Director of BluePencil Consulting.
In early 2016, SAP released the long-anticipated Ramp-up version of SAP Solution Manager 7.2. The general availability release of 7.2 was released on the 15th of August 2016 in the form of Service Pack 3 (SP3).
This new version has been built from bottom up and not only brings across the tried and tested operational focused capabilities, but has a completely redesigned project and resource management component that was lacking in version 7.1. Another major change that has been long overdue is the ability to build and define the SAP business processes beyond the 3-level hierarchy structure, with an enhanced graphical representation.
The strong focus to support the 'Build' phase of the SAP lifecycle, is evident in the inclusion of SAP's IT Portfolio and Project Management 6.1 (ITPPM) component in the 7.2 release. This, together with capabilities to support Business and IT Requirements gathering, complete the package to support for the entire lifecycle from requirements logging and acceptance through project time and resource management to managing the change and release cycle and finally, the monitoring of the built functionality in the productive arena.
Additional intelligence has been added to the operational capabilities that allow SAP Solution Manager to monitor transaction activity with greater accuracy and assist with establishing the extent of what is being used in the SAP ERP environment. "This information is extremely valuable when embarking on a project to document and build the processes of an existing SAP ERP implementation," states Graham.
To strengthen the positioning of 7.2 in a project environment, SAP Solution Manager includes standardised project plans and SAP services, up-to-date best practices and some pre-configuration. To align to the ever-growing popularity of Agile project management, SAP Solution Manager 7.2 also supports the necessary feedback loops to allow for projects to run, be built and deployed in incremental phases. New realtime dashboards are now also available to add a new level of reporting.
SAP have also released their two subscription based Focused Solutions aimed at supporting the projects environment and the operations environment. The Focused Build Dashboard gives the project management team a real time view of the project summary and ongoing efforts including, requirements tracking, issue logs and testing progress. It is also fully aligned with SAP Activate Methodology. At a glance, you can ascertain the status of the project.
The Focused Insights Dashboard is aimed at the Operational Centre of Excellence providing realtime dashboards to support any governance, operational and strategic initiatives.
A big win for Enterprise customers is that SAP Solution Manager 7.2 is now available on HANA. The HANA licence is offered for free which will encourage customers to install HANA in the SAP Solution Manager environment allowing the technical teams to become familiar with HANA before committing to the deployment in the SAP ERP environment.
"BluePencil is South Africa's leading Solution Manager service provider and over the past several years has built a strong reputation for expertise and project successes. We are able to assist any SAP customer on their journey to fully realise the potential of SAP Solution Manager and the Focused Solutions which brings value to the customer's business," concludes Graham.
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