Automation in SAP Operations
Transitioning your SAP systems to the Cloud can enhance innovation and significantly boost agility in your operations. However, what’s the path to get there?
Firstly, it’s crucial to remember the reasons behind initiating the digital transformation. Generally, organizations aim to accomplish four main objectives: lowering costs, simplifying system management processes, enhancing flexibility and bolstering security. These four areas are the backbone of SAP in Cloud innovation. Thus, enterprises should address each of these areas sequentially when planning strategy.
The Power of Automation
IT teams are tasked with performing a wide range of services, all of which should be outlined in a service catalog. This includes tasks like setting up new SAP systems and updating existing ones. These tasks traditionally demand a considerable amount of manual labor from the SAP technical teams. For any modifications, the IT team initiates a Change Request and then supplies the necessary data for the change. They then need to assess the implications to cost and security, as well as navigate through several approval stages before implementing any change.
For those customers with an on-premises model, these tasks would typically be performed using manual procedures and fixed documents. However, the scenario changes when you operate your SAP systems on the Cloud – this is where the power of automation truly shines.
For example, consider a business that wants to upgrade its SAP HANA database from a 2TB to a 4TB size. Automation can generate a change request in your ITSM systems and provide insights on how the modification would impact security and cost. This not only saves the team significant amounts of time but also ensures more precise information. This additional detail forms the groundwork for the technical change. The automation can evaluate and implement the change more swiftly and accurately, mitigating the risk of human error and eliminating the need for repeated efforts in case of errors.
Automation helps reduce technical efforts within IT processes, allowing teams to focus on greater value-added activities. All matters within the service catalog can be prioritized, beginning with the most crucial tasks, the most expensive, or those that yield the fastest desirable results. Each prioritization depends on what the business deems most important.
Automation proves its worth when teams need to access archived SAP systems. Occasionally, teams may need to retrieve historic records, which involves a process that could take days if done manually. However, if these archived systems are uploaded to Cloud, automation simplifies the process. With a start-stop button, users can activate the system as needed, perform their query and then shut it down immediately. This not only saves costs and reduces wait times but also eliminates unnecessary complexities.
Streamlining SAP Systems
Automation can significantly simplify a System Refresh, a process that involves transferring data from one system to another. This process varies for every business and has traditionally posed a challenge for SAP customers. With automation to facilitate custom environmental changes, it ensures that no system is deemed incompatible.
When automation is deployed to update Test Environments, it provides more current data for a test cycle. This leads to improved testing quality and helps prevent flaws. In the case of Prototyping, the ability to experiment with an idea on a replica of the production system in a separate environment opens up genuine possibilities for innovation.
Automation allows teams to evaluate how projects contribute to innovation while monitoring the results. It structures innovation around SAP without the burden of substantial costs, which has traditionally been a challenge, thereby fostering a shift in team culture.
This is a great example of how automation brings innovation to life.
Reinforcing Security
One of the realities of Cloud is that there is a greater number of moving parts than on-premises environments. This, combined with it being in the public domain, makes for a much more complex security environment.
While the tools offered by hyperscalers are as sophisticated as the challenges businesses face, the complexities often overwhelm teams when it comes to day-to-day management. On Public Cloud, privileged access management is a mandatory rule, which means establishing fine-grain definitions across a broad number of security objects.
The amount of work required to design, build, and maintain the security environment is greater than on-premises, and teams often fail to realize the importance of automation when it comes to scaling operations post-migration.
Prioritize User Experience
It’s easy to tell when an organization has implemented automation in their operations post-migration by simply looking at user experience. If starting up an SAP system takes days from the time of the request – rather than hours – then it’s not automated.
The Uber ridesharing app is a current example of how automation revolutionizes a service and prioritizes efficiency and customer experience. The company analyzed the process of ordering a car service to get from point A to point B and removed all possible manual steps. Before the implementation of Uber, a customer would have to research a taxi company, call them up, provide their location (as accurately as possible), confirm the destination address, be given a quote or started on a meter (so the cost isn’t confirmed until the end of the journey), hand over the cash or credit card upon arrival, and wait for the driver to draft a receipt. Uber took each of these steps and automated them securely and efficiently through their mobile application.
This outcome is achieved when automation is seamlessly integrated into an operating model from inception to completion, a process commonly known as ‘digitization.’
The End Game… is Innovation
Businesses that prioritize innovation in their SAP on Cloud operations will succeed and thrive in the race to future-proof the resilience of their business. The main thing to remember here is that the key to innovation is to assess where changes can be made to deliver the biggest impact without major operational disruptions.
All developments should align with at least one of the core pillars of digital transformation: reducing costs, removing complexity, increasing flexibility, and improving security. Assessing how automation benefits the organization at each stage will provide teams with a transparent overview of how the operating model is faring and will demonstrate where further innovation is possible.
Innovation is underpinned by agility, and automation provides the foundations for agile SAP on Cloud operations.
