SAP Activate

The SAP Activate methodology is a modular and agile framework which helps project teams to accomplish their tasks to deliver an SAP system to support the business process in bringing business value. SAP Activate consists of 6 phases:

• Discover
  • Familiarize with SAP (S/4HANA) before starting a project to implement SAP (S/4HANA).
• Prepare
  • Initial project planning, where the project plan for S/4HANA implementation is defined which includes team assignments, defining project goals, scope, budget, roles and responsibilities and project timelines and trainings.
• Explore
  • Fit – Gap analysis is done which helps to identify the gaps with standard S/4HANA
  • Parallel activities include master data preparation, SAP test strategy & planning and training set up.
• Realize
  • Build, test and validate the business scenarios and processes identified in the previous phases along with end-users.
  • End-users’ training.
  • Multiple varieties of testing such as Unit Testing, Integration Testing and User Acceptance Testing is performed by different stakeholders to ensure the SAP system is configured according to the customer requirements and meets the pursued business value.
  • Data migration testing to ensure migrated data is in the correct format, ready to use and ready to import to the new SAP system.
• Deploy:
  • Setup of production system and cutover activities involve uploading master and transaction data, validating roles and authorizations of end users.
  • Perform regression testing to check earlier deployed objects are not impacted.
• Run:
  • Business is live with new the SAP solution. After the first period of hyper-care (where any issues, errors or incorrect entries occurred are corrected) day-to-day operation and maintenance is starting.

SAP Activate helps to shift from a Traditional ERP approach (Design to blueprint – Waterfall) towards a transformative (Fit-to-standard – Agile) implementation approach.

Traditional ERP (Design to blueprint)	Transformative (Fit-to-standard)
Consultative approach	Business owns the solution
Waterfall project methodology	Agile, Modular, Scalable
Customized solution	Lead with ‘standard’, best practices
Development, not configuration	Rapid, repeatable delivery steps
Historically been time consuming and costly	Accelerators: tools, templates, and content

SAP Activate supports different transition scenarios for organizations adopting SAP S/4HANA and provides dedicated solution specific Methodology, Content and Tools.

The SAP Activate methodology is part of the SAP Activate framework. This framework consists of three important pillars to help project managers use the SAP solution to achieve business goals. The three pillars are SAP Best Practices, Guided Configuration, and the SAP Activate Methodology.

SAP Best Practices
SAP has developed the knowledge and experience to deliver ready-to-run business processes which are optimized to run on SAP S/4HANA. This is the first pillar of the SAP Activate framework. Organizations can access the SAP Best Practices Explorer for all the SAP standard business process flows, roles, responsibilities, test scripts, etc. which can be integrated alongside the organization’s own unique processes.

Guided Configurations
Guided configurations make it easier for organizations to configure their SAP systems. To globalize and standardize best practices across industries, SAP is continually developing standard configurations that can be used to run business processes.

SAP Activate Methodology
Lastly, the SAP Activate Methodology is a project implementation methodology used to deliver SAP implementation solutions. Using solution-specific roadmaps, the methodology is then designed to continuously improve project quality and success of SAP projects.