Run SAP and Solution Manager: Emerging SAP Skills Driven by Enterprise Support

In this economy, there aren’t many bright spots when it comes to SAP services. But one area that service providers and SAP freelancers need to be keeping an eye on is Run SAP and Solution Manager. Taken together, Run SAP and Solution Manager are the keys to SAP’s vision of deriving value from an SAP implementation after go-live.

However, these new tools are not without their controversy. SAP’s “Enterprise Support” offering, announced last July with a 17% to 22% maintenance fee price hike, is in large part justified by SAP due to the increased value these new tools (Solution Manager) and methodologies (Run SAP) are supposed to provide.

Speaking of Enterprise Support, the last time I checked in on that topic in the PAC blog, SAP was working with a confederation of SAP user groups known as SUGEN to identify a series of KPIs that would provide all parties with a supposedly objective standard for assessing the value of Enterprise Support. The idea was that sometime early in 2009, any increases in SAP support would have to be backed up by SAP meeting these agreed-upon KPIs. (see SAP's official press release on the KPIs). We should be on the lookout for an update on these KPIs, which should be finalized soon. When/if PAC hears about it, you can count on a blog entry here.

Whether or not these KPIs change the Enterprise Support value discussion, there’s one thing we do know: Run SAP and Solution Manager are here to stay. So what are the keys to this post-go live skill set? At JonERP.com, I kicked off the year with a podcast on Run SAP and Solution Manager skills with Ajay Vonkarey of Alphasirius. Ajay had some very interesting things to say about the skills needed in these new areas.

Ajay explained that a classic SAP “Basis” person was not, by default, a good Solution Manager consultant. The roots of this misconception go back eight years ago to Solution Manager 2.1. At that time, Solution Manager really was a monitoring tool used almost exclusively by the technical and Basis teams. Fast forward to 2009: Solution Manager has been significantly enhanced and aligned with Run SAP. During the podcast, Ajay warned that SAP customers will run into difficulties if they don’t expand their Solution Manager skills beyond Basis.

Solution Manager now touches on Basis and many other roles, from project management to business process expert or analyst roles. On the technical side, the Basis team, the infrastructure team, and the development team may all use Solution Manager to some extent. Those consultants who anticipate these skills trends can stay a step ahead. During the podcast, to back up his point, Ajay talked about a customer that expanded Solution Manager beyond core functions into change management, which tied in business change management issues and also integrated with technical transports as well. They needed a broader set of SAP skills to realize these aims.

So how goes this connect to Run SAP? And what exactly is Run SAP anyway? Sometimes known as "ASAP for Operations," Run SAP was created to help SAP customers better manage their environments after go-live. To organize the Run SAP methodology, SAP surveyed a number of customers on their post-go live needs and built 16 “end-to-end solution operation standards.” Run SAP is a methodology that allows you to address these 16 areas, and Solution Manager is the tool that allows you to manage your Run SAP approach. Solution Manager allows SAP users to enable operational standards and functions. Its technical tools include system monitoring, root cause analysis, and diagnostics.

Needless to say, not all SAP customers are rushing to embrace these new tools, but I’ve seen enough activity to convince me that it’s one good skills area for aspiring consultants to target. Those who are looking to add Solution Manager to their skill set might want to start with the latest version of Solution Manager, the Enterprise Edition, which includes many new functions, including business processing and interface monitoring.

As I noted, SAP consultants of a variety of flavors, from technical to functional to project management, can tie their skills into Solution Manager. However, I believe the most successful individuals (and service firms) will need to go beyond “tools aptitude” and be able to help SAP customers understand how the functionality of Solution Manager maps into Run SAP and, hopefully, provides a new level of value to SAP customers via project optimization.

To some degree, it’s unfortunate that these tools have been drawn into the debate about Enterprise Support. Now it’s difficult to evaluate them for their own merits, outside of cost. The pressure is on for SAP to justify that Run SAP and Solution Manager are worth a five percent increase in maintenance. Regardless of the merits of these new tools, that’s a big challenge. KPIs may help to quantify this debate, but the marketplace will have the final say.