SAP Solution Manager 7.1 has certainly received a lot of coverage in the market lately. Aside from HANA and mobile technologies, it was one of the most significant topics featured at SAP TechEd, and has been the subject of many of our recent articles. 

SAP has promoted SAP Solution Manager in the past, particularly with the 7.0 release, as being a significant cog in organizations’ SAP installations. While some companies didn’t agree with this position, Michael Pytel of NIMBL Consulting argues that 7.1 may change their minds.

“I think SAP has done a great job of advertising some of the new capabilities,” says Pytel. “I think there was some confusion in the marketplace where Solution Manager 4.0 was renamed 7.0. People weren’t quite sure, did they get new functionality? Was it just a marketing thing? But with 7.1, we do see true enhancement of functionality with everything from CIO dashboards to improved UI to improved reporting. It has been well received.”

One of the major factors in SAP Solution Manager adoption, like many IT solutions, is its ability to return a company’s investment. Typically, it is thought of as a monitoring tool — something reserved for the IT team and removed from the deliverance of value to an organization.

Pytel says that while SAP Solution Manager certainly provides monitoring functionality, its ability to map out business processes allows the business to reap rewards from a project management standpoint as well. Project management team members, however, may initially dismiss the tool based on the reasoning that if it does not help with the actual execution of a project, it is worthless.

“One thing I like to educate project managers, leads, or stakeholders on is that Solution Manager is not a project execution tool,” says Pytel. “It is a business process repository. When project managers think about Solution Manager, don’t think of it as a tool to run your project. It’s a tool to support your project and it’s a tool to act as your business process repository for your project, so that all documentation you create during that project is reusable for future support teams and generations.”

Pytel notes that this can create a disconnect between project management and IT.

“On the IT side, when approaching project managers, it’s difficult to say, ‘This is a great monitoring tool,’ because that’s not important for a project manager. What you can do is approach them from the angle of, ‘This is a business process documentation tool, a test management tool, and a background job management tool’. These are some of the pain points that project managers have. From an IT perspective, the monitoring piece is great, the management piece is great, but that doesn’t resonate with project managers, who really need to [know that] this will help solve some of our business process documentation issues and concerns, and this will impact analysis for future patches and Support Packages for SAP.”

For more of Pytel’s thoughts on SAP Solution Manager’s impact on project management, as well as the functionality of features such as the Solution Documentation Assistant, Business Process Change Analyzer, and Test Workbench, download the podcast here. We’ve also provided a transcript of the entire podcast below. Michael also appeared in a live Q&A forum in the Insider Learning Network IT group on Wednesday, November 30, and answered users' questions. 

Transcript

SAPexperts: Hi, this is Scott Priest, editor of the Solution Manager hub of SAPexperts. Here with me today is Michael Pytel. He’s a consultant with NIMBL and is an expert on Solution Manager 7.1. Michael has spoken regularly at SAP and SAPinsider conferences, including this year’s IT 2011 conference. We’ll be talking here today about the changes in Solution Manager, particularly related to 7.1, with a focus on the project management side of things.

Michael, thanks for joining us today. How are you doing?

Michael Pytel: Very good. Thanks for having me.

SAPexperts: I just wanted to get started, before we get into the project functionality, how has 7.1 been received in the marketplace generally speaking? Is it thought of as a major improvement over prior versions?

MP: I think so. I think SAP has done a great job of advertising some of the new capabilities. We’ve been speaking about Solution Manager 7.1 at SAPPHIRE early in the year. We had multiple customers going through Ramp-Up. Then at TechEd, we did a lot of great sessions with ASUG, and speaking about Solution Manager 7.1 with SAPinsider. I think the information about its capabilities has been well-received. I also think that the fact that it's actually a real enhancement. I think there was some confusion in the marketplace where Solution Manager 4.0 was renamed 7.0. People weren't quite sure, did they get new functionality? Was it just a marketing thing?

But with 7.1, we do see true enhancement of functionality with everything from CIO dashboards to improved UI to improved reporting. So it has been well-received.

Some quick numbers from our side. Since TechEd, our organization has been involved on nine different SAP customers installing Solution Manager 7.1 since August of 2011. So I think it’s been well-received.

SAPexperts: You mentioned the UI improvements. Are you seeing this as a significant change both from an IT perspective and from project management teams as well?

MP: Yeah. I think from an IT perspective on the technical monitoring side, the UI has been drastically improved. I think a lot of administrators are used to the tree-based navigation of CCMS or Central System Monitoring. Now, SAP has introduced Flash Islands, some creative graphics and creative ways of navigating through alerts and monitoring information, which is great. On the project side, more on the functional side, I’m actually running and implementing SAP, new UIs with Test Workbench, enabling testers to more easily access their test results, test script, and then document their test results in one screen. It’s phenomenal. It’s improved how we can execute test cases.

SAPexperts: Is that helping in terms of communicating higher up in the ranks of IT? With it looking better, are you seeing higher-level folks saying, “This is something I want to adopt”?

MP: Absolutely. SAP sort of took cues from BusinessObjects in Xcelsius in building the CIO dashboards, which are very pretty, very easy to navigate. These CIO dashboards contain information relevant to that CXO position. There are change management dashboards now where a CXO or a director or an application director can have some KPIs around the changes that were introduced into their SAP landscape in the past week, month, quarter, etc. How many times did we move forward an urgent change or an urgent fix into production in this last week? How many standard or planned changes did we move into our environment in the past week? So these very sexy-looking dashboards are really catching the eye of these IT leaders.

SAPexperts: Let’s talk about a few of the specific functionalities involved. What would you say are some specific improvements that 7.1 brings for project administration?

MP: I think there’s a couple things there. The core of project administration is still the same, but SAP has added and tweaked a couple of features. Number one, they’ve allowed you to now create a business process structure in Excel. So, maybe your organization already has a business process hierarchy or a business process repository in Excel and you need to figure out a way to translate that into Solution Manager quickly. Well, with Solution Manager 7.1, we now have the integration with Excel and Solution Manager to where if I have my business process hierarchy documented, I can upload that into Solution Manager and create a project structure.

So, the ability to import from a CSV file or a tab-delimited file into Solution Manager to create that project structure is a nice feature.

The other thing that SAP added was this Business Process Blueprinting tool, which is a graphical tool to document your business process. It actually integrates with NetWeaver BPM, which is a much more advanced topic for another discussion.

SAPexperts: Is the Business Process Blueprinting, is that something that comes standard with it and you can get started right away? Or is there more to it than that?

MP: It is included with Solution Manager 7.1. You can basically follow the installation guides to activate the services in Solution Manager, and then there is a client-side application that installs on the end user’s desktop. The actual application for modeling. It’s very much a graphical tool that looks and feels like Visio. You basically drag and drop design processes. Those business processes can span multiple SAP and non-SAP components.

For example, if you have an interface that begins with the bank creating a lockbox file, and then PI (Process Integration) picks up that file and moves it into ERP, ERP processes that lockbox file, you could document that business process graphically in tool and then it will synch with Solution Manager to create that project structure.

A lot of people sometimes have an issue or a challenge with viewing a business process in a tree structure in Solution Manager. This Business Process Blueprinting tool allows us to do it graphically. So to view business processes more like you would see in a Visio or a Microsoft PowerPoint.

SAPexperts: The changes that you mentioned in terms of the graphical nature of things, does it create a lot of need for training on the part of end users? Or is it because of the graphical nature it’s pretty easy to figure out?

MP: There is some training required. It’s not Microsoft in that Microsoft’s very good with wizards, right? With SharePoint and with Visio, we get lots of different wizards available to us. It’s a step in the right direction. The Business Process Blueprinting tool is still version 1.0, so I think we’re going to see a lot more changes from SAP. It’s going to continue to grow and evolve. There is a little bit of training up front to educate people on how to drag and drop the different items to map out the business processes.

SAPexperts: Another thing that we’ve seen a lot of interest in is the Test Workbench. Can you tell us a little bit about the changes in terms of functionality and configuration here, and what you would say are the best ways to make use of this functionality?

MP: Test Workbench, I think, is a product that is improved in this next release. I mentioned it earlier with the new UIs. Test Workbench has always integrated with Project Administration. You use Project Administration to document your requirements and document your business processes, and then you can integrate with Test Workbench to ensure that all requirements are being tested or that all business processes are being tested. What SAP has done in 7.1 is they have enhanced the integration not only with Project Administration but with Service Desk. They’ve also added new UIs so that when a tester receives a test notification and they pull up the application to actually execute the test, on the left side of screen they see the test script — a lot of people are still doing manual testing — and on the right side of the screen they see information that we can collect about the test execution.

Did it pass/fail? Was there an exception? What failed? How long did take you to execute that test? At what point in the test did the test group fail? So, it allows us to capture more real-world information within that screen.

In previous releases of Solution Manager, we would create what was called a test note to capture information. Well, now these are actual fields on the screen and we can be reporting against.

SAPexperts: You mentioned the UI difference with Test Workbench, and we’ve talked about that with a couple of these other functionalities. Are they consistently different in the sense that the new versions all look the same? Or does the Project Administration UI differ wildly from the other ones?

MP: No, it’s consistent. There’s no real radical changes. They’ve added new things here and there that I think they’ve learned from customers saying, “Look, in the real world, this is how you run test cases. We need to be able to store this information in Solution Manager.” SAP listened and it has added that to the screens. So, not a huge foundational change, but they’ve added some nice features.

SAPexperts: Sometimes people say they think of Solution Manager as just a monitoring tool. Is it too much to ask, do you think, for it to be considered a project management tool as well? Or do you think that’s something that it can pull off?

MP: I think you’re right, a lot of people think of it as a central monitoring system, and that’s the way that it was positioned early on, that this is the way we perform our proactive monitoring and maintenance of our landscapes. But what I tell customers, in speaking I do all around the country is that, the biggest bang for your buck is not going to be in the monitoring side, it’s going to be in the business process and ownership side. The ability to analyze your existing ERP systems, or new systems that you’re installing, document your business processes, then be able to use the testing tools in there to test what’s changing.

For example, there’s a tool called Business Process Change Analyzer. I think this is the biggest bang for the buck with Solution Manager. We now have the capability of using this tool to extract information from a running ERP system. What are the transaction codes and reports that the users use today? Extract that information in Solution Manager, and then be able to compare that to either an enhancement pack or a Support Pack extracted from SAP, to do targeted testing of only what’s going to change.

Very often times, when the customers would install fixes from SAP, they would test everything because it’s too difficult to know what exactly is changing. Well, using the Business Process Change Analyzer and a feature called our Technical Bill of Materials, I can compare what I’m using today in SAP in my landscape with fixes from SAP, and know exactly what’s going to change, and that includes custom objects.

My custom object calls an SAP include, or an SAP business function, or an SAP program. If that program is going to change, it will flag my custom program as being affected, and it identifies it as needing to be tested.

So, Solution Manager is a fantastic monitoring tool. Proactive monitoring does save the business time and money. Monitoring systems and database areas, and performance, etc.

But, if you’re able to take your integration testing time from eight weeks to four weeks, reduce the number of testers involved, reduce the involvement from the business, you really only have targeted testing, that’s real dollar savings that you could see in year one, when implementing Solution Manager 7.1.

SAPexperts: I would imagine again, getting back to talking to the C-suite, that pushing the business process angle, I would think, would mean more to the business side than maybe just saying all this does is just monitoring.

MP: Absolutely. For organizations that may be geographically dispersed or have multiple business units, often times an initiative would be, “We need to standardize how we do business. We need to standardize how we do accounts payable and accounts receivable.” Well, how do you standardize your business processes if you don’t have them documented? We need to know where we stand today in order to know where we’re going.

Using Solution Manager and its Reverse Business Process Engineering tools, we can connect to existing ERP systems, or CRM, or SCM systems, find out what are the transaction codes that our users are using, and then reverse-engineer that business process.

Now that we know what our business process is, we can move forward, figuring out how do we streamline and standardize?

SAPexperts: So, with all this in mind, what’s the first step in preparing to move to 7.1?

MP: You need to evaluate how you’re using Solution Manager today. There are a couple of key components that would impact your decision whether or not to upgrade from 7.0 or to install a new version of 7.1. When looking at an upgrade, if you’re using scenarios for Service Desk and Change Request Management, you’ll want to practice that upgrade a few times because those two features of Solution Manager are what SAP calls a complete reimplementation, because they’re new message types, new features. So, if you’re using Service Desk in ChaRM, upgrades can be tricky.

If you’re not using those tools, if you’re only using the technical monitoring pieces, you’re only using the process documentation piece, an upgrade is perfectly suited for you. All of your content will be preserved in that upgrade and you’ll be able to immediately begin taking advantage of some of those new features.

Once you upgrade, the very first tool you can take advantage of is the Solution Documentation Assistant tool, and that’s the tool that begins the process of documenting your business processes. It’s the tool that has the hooks in ERP, or SEM, or CRM, it’s capturing that vital information of, “How do my users use the system today?”

In terms of a quick win, I think an upgrade is appropriate if you’re not using those two scenarios I mentioned earlier. Then immediately working with a Solution Documentation Assistant tool to begin capturing information about your business processes as they exist in the system today.

SAPexperts: I just have a few more questions that we’ve heard from different readers. Somebody was wondering if there is workflow available in Solution Manager?

MP: Absolutely, workflow is available in Solution Manager, you do have to go into the IMG, the Implementation Master Guide, and activate these BAdIs or extensions in order for workflow to be available. But we have a workflow available in a couple of areas. Number one, we have it available in the documentation side of Project Administration. So that if people upload documents, and they change the status of documents, that can trigger workflow out.

We also have workflow available on the testing side, and that’s where SAP is real powerful in that as a test manager, or a test lead, architects out the test cases, we can assign people to individual cases, or groups of people to test cases. Then as each test case is ready for test, an email notification is sent out to those testers using workflow engine.

The value here is that instead of having testers sit in one room, where you have one tester testing and two testers idle, we can use the workflow component so that testers are notified when they are ready to test, decreasing the idle time between test cases.

SAPexperts: I had another reader question. Somebody was saying that they use Excel to track their test cases and they wanted to know what Solution Manager offers that would improve on that functionality?

MP: We see a lot of customers in the same area, where they’re in a SME organization potentially, they’re not ready to buy a testing product like a Quality Center, or products from IBM. They use Excel today, they have Solution Manager as part of their maintenance, and they want to make the best use of the software they already own. So, Test Workbench basically brings that integration with the business process documentation that you have in Project Administration. Again, it allows us to logically group our test cases in what’s called packages, and then assign those packages to team members or to persons.

Then the best feature of it all is that it’s reusable. So, let’s say this month I’m going to run an integration test for FI. I use Solution Manager Test Workbench, I upload my test cases, I assign testers, and I execute it.

Then again a year from now, we apply a support package from SAP, we need to run the same integration tests for FI again. All that content I created in Solution Manager, the test cases, the test packages, it instantaneously becomes reusable. I can reactivate that test case, that test package with all the test cases.

Maybe I need to update the test scripts for new data types, maybe I don’t, but the main thing is it brings reusability. Often times when we run testing out of Excel, it gets thrown in a SharePoint site, it gets thrown in a file share, it’s not reusable, somebody forgets where it’s at.

Solution Manager is going to be part of every customer landscape at least through 2016. So, if you use it for testing now, you can rest assured that this content’s reusable for the future.

SAPexperts: I have just one final question. We talked a little bit about this project management versus just the IT side. Do you have any advice for, on the one hand, project managers who are looking to use Solution Manager for project management but maybe they’re a little bit nervous about the technical side? Then on the other side of it, advice for the IT folks who want to encourage project managers to use it but again they might be hesitant?

MP: Well, the project management side, one thing I like to education project managers, or project leads, or project stakeholders, is that Solution Manager is not a project execution tool. It is a business process repository. So, you need to think of Solution Manager as your business process repository for your organization. I think it does have some project planning capabilities but they don’t measure up to project planning capabilities of like a Microsoft Project Server or a Liquid Planner. It doesn’t do resource leveling very well, in my opinion.

When project managers think about Solution Manager, don’t think of it as a tool to run your project. It’s a tool to support your project and it’s a tool to act as your business process repository for your project, so that all documentation you create during that project is reusable for future support teams and generations.

On the IT side, when approaching project managers, it’s difficult to approach them and say, “This is a great monitoring tool,” because that’s not important for a project manager. What you can do is approach them from the angle of, this is a business process documentation tool, this is a test management tool, this is a background job management tool. These are some of the pain points that project managers have of, “How do we capture all business requirements? How do we capture all background jobs that need to be run? How do we execute test cases and ensure that every transaction code is being tested?”

So, from an IT perspective, the monitoring piece is great, the management piece is great, but that doesn’t resonate with project managers, who really need to take that approach of, this will help solve some of our business process documentation issues and concerns, and this will impact analysis for future patches and support packages for SAP.

SAPexperts: All right, great. Thanks a lot, Michael. Is there anything else that you wanted to add?

MP: No. I look forward to communicating with the community out there, and on Twitter (@MichaelPytel).

SAPexperts: All right, thanks a lot.

MP: Thank you.

Scott Priest

Scott was the senior managing editor at SAPexperts, responsible for the content development and acquisition for topics including HANA, mobility, and Solution Manager. He graduated from Bates College with a BA degree in English. You may follow him on Twitter at @priestWIS.

You may contact the author at scott.priest@wispubs.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.