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GrassDew provide Maintenance & Production Support for your SAP...!

By properly planning for post go-live production operation, you can minimize the risk and maximize the ROI from your organization’s SAP investment.

Key elements for successful production support:

1. Implement strict change control

2. Enforce structural production control

3. Follow required compliance control

4. Pay attention to “house cleaning” tasks

5. Have well-thought annual planning

I. SHORT-TERM ACTIVITIES & MAINTENANCE TASKS

Primary objectives of short-term tasks:

Provide production support

Support resources

Stabilize systems

Meet needs of all Production users

*Typical short-term activity time frame: 4-8 weeks post go-live

Closely monitoring key business process execution cycle in production systems confirm usage of:

Selection parameters

Variants

Background jobs

Batch jobs

Interfaces

Reports

Develop post go-live issues list (some may be known beforehand)

Rank and address issues by priority (e.g., MS Excel, Solution Manager)

Monitor system performance

Refresh QAS from PRD

Move fresh productive data to QAS

Reduces time to create test data

Improves troubleshooting abilities and time to resolve issues

Clean-up/removal of “optional” clients

DEV (e.g., data conversions, integration/interface testing)

QAS (e.g., data conversions, integration/interface testing)

*Formalize transport process

Secure Legacy System(s)

Restrict user access – only specific users should have access

Set to “Read Only”

II. MEDIUM-TERM ACTIVITIES & MAINTENANCE TASKS

Medium-term activities are tasks to be executed after the system(s) is (are) stable and the team can sufficiently support the system(s)

Primary objectives of medium-term activities:

Update software

Finalize post go-live support team

Complete “nice” to have requirements

*Typical medium-term activity time frame: 1-6 months

Due to freeze during project phase(s), the software needs to be updated (which requires extensive testing):

Support Stacks/Packages

Third-party software

Update BSI for tax calculations

Refresh QAS from PRD

Keeps data fresh in QAS

Schedule jobs to run regularly in QAS as well (e.g., runtime and payroll to stay in close proximity to PRD schedule)

Monitor performance

Review response times (e.g., ECC6, XI, Portal)

Review growth of database/tables

Compare size against established thresholds (e.g., add disk space when size goes over 80%)

“Sunset” legacy system(s)

Backup/archive data

Provide alternate data retrieval mechanisms

Retire legacy system(s)

Close support/license agreements for legacy system(s)

III. LONG-TERM ACTIVITIES & MAINTENANCE TASKS

Long-term activities include tasks that need to be performed continuously after your system is stable

Primary objectives of long-term activities:

Establish regular schedules

Long-term planning

Implement new initiatives/functionality

*Typical long-term activity time frame: Ongoing

Establish regular schedule for software updates (requires extensive testing):

Support Stacks/Packages

Third-party software

BSI

Update/upgrade hardware

Hardware changes can sometimes bring around quite unexpected results!

Examples include hard-coded IP addresses, logical system names

Carefully test when changing hardware

Refresh QAS

Ensures that data in QAS stays fresh with PRD data

Process major processes to keep QAS in-step with PRD

Monitor performance

Continue to monitor database size

Continue to monitor performance

*New business initiatives may require that certain software is at a specific release or patch level.

GrassDew has four main business streams – Consulting Services, Software Solutions, Security Services and Knowledge Services. Our primary focus is on various software development and maintenance services.

To know more about our services, email us at shekhar.pawar@grassdew.com