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How to be successful with Run SAP Like a Factory

Heiko Zuerker & Michael HofmannRockwell Automation

SESSION CODE: SM418

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Manufacturer of industrial automation

control and information solutions

World headquarters in Milwaukee, WI USA

Annual sales about $6.62 billion in 2014

400+ locations world wide

22,000+ employees

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SAP Support @

Corporate SponsoredSAP Program

SAP Support CenterVendorChange

Execution Model ChangeBudget Flat

10% LaborReduction

RSLF

2011 2012 2013 2014

42,000

48,000

44,00041,500

SAP related Incidents Single global SAP instance

8,300 medium & high active users

16 production SAP systems

46 TB production databases 2.7 TB Solution Manager

Top 5% in solution complexity benchmark

Business SponsoredSAP Projects

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Show Hands

Who has a network at their company?

Who has a Network Operations Center (NOC)?

Who has SAP?

Who has an Operations Control Center (OCC)?

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Run SAP Like a Factory…

Is a methodology

Is not about the tools

Is a lifestyle change

Will transform how you run SAP

Needs an OCC to be successful

Should be a function of IT Operations

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Why did we start implementing RSLF?

No comprehensive monitoring

Incomplete or lack of actionable monitoring

High level of manual monitoring

Stability and performance problems

Data inconsistencies

Minor issues escalated to critical incidents

Large volume of technical errors

Lot’s of noise and non-value add activities

ITIL compliant

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RCA

TechMon

BI

Why you should use Solution Manager

It’s the foundation for RSLF

The price is right

You have it, might as well use it

Becoming one comprehensive toolset

Consolidated landscape management

Better integrated than other toolsets

Single source of truth

ICC OCC

ALM BPMon

DashboardBPA

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SolMan 7.1 SP7

Agents-on-the-fly

Wily Introscope MOM

TechMon Portals

Our RSLF journey

2012 2013 2014

RSLF Workshops

SolMan 7.1 SP4

“OCC” Pilot BPMon

OCC Go-Live BPMon

Root Cause Analysis

TechMon all of Production

Retired CCMS

Cleanup BPMon & TechMon

Development Solution Manager

Support Pack 9 Testing

SolMan 7.1 SP10

Business critical IDOCs

Middleware Queues CRM & ECC

Critical BI process chains

Security Cleanup

 Job Management

More BI process chains

SAP Content Servers

OCC Continuous Improvement

Alert prioritization

Self-Check & Self-Monitoring

SAP upgrades

TechMon BI, CRM, ECC

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Our RSLF investment

Design, planning, initial setup

128 MaxAttention days

2.5 FTEs

2012 2013 2014

2.5 2.5

5.55 67

RSLF Resources

Basis OCC

2012 2013 2014 2015

128

1650 60

MaxAttention Services

MaxAttention Days

No incremental cost increase

Reprioritized objectives

Reallocated resources

(estimated)

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OCC & RSLF Team

Onsite leadership, offshore execution

Dedicated resources

Leveraging freed up resources

Junior level OCC

3+ years Basis

Senior Basis Lead

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Planning

Phases are “just” another project

Keep phases short (max 6 months)

Do not try to boil the ocean

Avoid big-bang releases

Use small and easily achievable objectives

Deliver content frequently

Avoid scope creep

Make deliverables department level goals

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Example

High Level Scope

Detailed Scope

Kick-Off Review

Business Process Monitoring

Technical MonitoringECCCRM

BISNCSEM

SLDPI

Trex

PortalGTS

Preparation 10 Middleware Queues Weekly10 IDOCs Weekly

Buffer

Buffer

Phase x

Project Meetings

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High Level Process: Monitoring Delivery

Configure  Acceptable? Request 

No

 Approved? 

 AlertForecast 

(7+ days)

WriteGuided

Procedure

ReviewGuided

Procedure

No

Communicationto OCC

(Thursday)

Yes

Yes

Go-Live(Monday)

Functional Owner 

OCC Lead

RSLF Basis

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Alert (Event) Management

Avoid noise

There are no “good alerts”

Not actionable? No alert! No exceptions!

No development or test alerts visible to OCC

No longer than 5 – 10 minutes per alert

Monitor overall alert volume

Alert notifications for critical alerts only

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RSLF & Continuous Improvement

Plan RSLF phases

Objectives

Requests

Build

Monitoring

Processes

Reports

Dashboards

Improve

Recurring events Problem management

Remove non-actionable alerts

Adjust or disable noisy alerts

Enhance guided procedures

Run

Alert volume

Review alerts

Review actions taken

Review escalations to incidents

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Everything comes together

EEM   Data ReadinessBatchSystem Interfaces   Process ChainsMiddleware IDOCs Transactions

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Stability issues

High level of manual monitoring

Incomplete or lack of actionable monitoring

No comprehensive monitoring of SAP landscape

Data inconsistencies between SAP systems

Minor issues escalated to critical incidents

Large volume of technical errors

Significantly more pro-active

Almost no manual monitoring

More transparency into health of SAP

More resources for incident management

Less impact due to resource reductions

Less escalations of systemic issues

How RSLF has transformed our Support

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What are we monitoring?

Batch Jobs

Middleware Queues

IDOCs

BI process chains

Number Ranges

Business Processes

Systems

…

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SAP Master Data incomplete between systems

Issue

Product Master data inconsistenciesbetween ECC and CRM lead toproducts NOT being available to order.

Better Partnership: OCC is able to inform the business when this condition occurs,allowing the business to proactively resolve the issue before product is ordered.

Solution

Enabled Queue Monitoring to inform theOCC when the master data does not postsuccessfully. The OCC then notifies theproduct master data team of theinconsistency to resolve.

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SAP Billing and Tax Details – Not in External Tax System

Issue

The RFC queue between SAP and ourexternal tax system (Vertex) wouldperiodically get “stuck”, stopping the flow

of tax details to Vertex. We would notbe aware until called by the business.

Better Service: The support team is informed of the situation assoon as it occurs and takes action before the business is aware.

Solution

Enabled Queue Monitoring to inform theOCC when the queue is in error orpending items exceed a threshold. TheOCC then notifies the Finance supportteam to take appropriate action.

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Incident reduction and “shift left”

Issue Analyst actions were to either ‘stop’ or

‘restart’ a job based on a user request or a

high priority incident from the enterprisescheduling tool.

Solution

Created guided procedures for ‘re-start job’actions and configured job alerts for late startor long running jobs to be handled by OCC.

Incident Management Event Management

2

13 12

70

5

73

25

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Duplicates Cancel Restart Monitor Other No Action Action

CRM Services Batch Job Incident

Analysis(100 Incidents from 5/22 - 5/31 2013)

Savings: Hourly rate for OCCResources is less than the SAP

CRM IT Support Analyst rate.

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Providing Value – Sending Reports to Business

IssueSales order synchronization failssporadically between CRM and ECC.

SolutionEnabled Monitoring to notify the OCCwhen the condition occurs. The OCCthen delivers a list of failed orders to ourCustomer Care team.

Business Partnership:

• Helps the Business to proactively resolve issues before external customers are aware.

• Provides the Business with information that is otherwise hard to gather.

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Table inconsistencies

Issue

ECC SCM related tables (RESB /PLAF) become inconsistent and canlead to unnecessary purchase ordercreation that causes excessiveinventory to be ordered.

Hard Savings: OCC able to correct conditionusing guided procedure instructions, before

purchase orders are triggered.

Solution

Enabled table monitoring to notify theOCC when the condition occurs.Created guided procedures forcorrective instructions.

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IDOC Monitoring

Issues

Due to internal auditrequirements, as well asbusiness impact, IDOCerrors must be monitoredand addressed quickly.

IDOC monitoring initiallydone manually – substantialamount of time spentwatching for and takingaction on errors.

This forced us to develop a

complicated custom solutionto identify when there wereerrors.

Soft Savings: Supportresources previouslydevoted to monitoring

IDOC errors were

freed up to work onsupport issues thatprovide greater value

to the business.

Solution

Enabled IDOC monitoring to notify theOCC when errors occur. Create guidedprocedures for corrective instructions to behandled by OCC. Solution Managerprovides a more robust set of options formonitoring different IDOC statuses.

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End User Experience Monitoring

Issue

After a recent upgrade, users aregetting a “Portal runtime error”.

Incident Avoidance: OCC and Basis teams are able toproactively take action on a known issue. Users do not

have to call into the Help Desk to report a problem.

Solution

Enabled End-User Experience Monitoring tonotify the OCC when the condition occurs.The OCC creates a High priority incident toour technical team for action.

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Number ranges

Issue

Number ranges filled tocapacity, if undetected,required an emergencychange for resolution.

Distant early warning: Support team is able to proactively takeaction on a known issue. In the past, number range issues resulted

in emergency changes. Now they are resolved as normalmaintenance, with no negative impact to end users or batch jobs.

Resolution

Enabled monitoring of number range tables inSolution Manager for ECC, CRM, GTS, SRMand SNC. The OCC receives an alert whennumber ranges reaches 90% capacity, thencreates a ticket to the functional support teams.

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Continuous Improvement Project Example

Mission: Stabilize CRM Order Create

Dedicated team: Basis, Functional, Developer, Lead

Duration: 6 weeks

Findings

Missing business partner role validation

Missing ZIP code validation Insufficient check for blocked materials

Product listing error message not appropriate

Results

Labor cost to resolve identified problems: 81 hours

Estimated monthly labor savings: 300 hours = 2 FTEs

ROI: < 4 months

Configured BP monitoring and transitioned to OCC

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SAP Service Level Dashboard

Underlying technical and functional

components drive the availability and

performance of the business

processes and associated KPIs.

Correlation of underlying “technical” IT

metrics to business processes

Visualization of existing metrics

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Value Realization

val·ue/ˈvalyo ͞ o/ 

the importance, worth, orusefulness of something

Value is how YOU define it

Business process stability & performance

Visibility to events affecting the business

Pro-active problem management

Reduction of manual tasks

Incident reduction

Cost reduction

Shift left

Understand

Your goals

Value of activities

So what?

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Marketing & Communication

Keep Business & IT leadership engaged

Speak the language of your audience

Show value and showcase successes

Remind stakeholders how it used to be

Ensure momentum is not lost

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Run SAP Like a Factory…

Rocket science Event, incident, and problem management leveraging Solution Manager

Hobby Lifestyle change

Separate program Function of IT Operations

Big-bang projects Small and easily achievable objectives & short project cycles

Fire & forget Continuous Improvement

Something to do later Don’t you have problems now?

Is just for IT Has real benefits to the business

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STAY INFORMED

Follow the ASUGNews team:

Tom Wailgum: @twailgum

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Craig Powers: @Powers_ASUG

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THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING

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SESSION CODE: SM418

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