I recently attended the SAP ACS Infoday in SAP’s Hamburg offices. Which, by the way, are stunning. They are located adjacent to a lovely park located close to the city's center. The beautiful setting made it difficult to concentrate on the business at-hand, which was to learn about SAP's latest ACS and SCM offerings.
Back to business
Here are the 13 lessons I learned from SAP’s Mario Rebitzer’s excellent presentation to a group of 30 IT and Business leaders: (Mario is currently SAP ACS's Sales Director)
SAP Has Over 900 Pre-Packaged Business Solutions
That's right, SAP delivers over 900 pre-packaged business solutions; everywhere across Sales, Procurement, Finance, and across industries. How did they develop so many solutions? Well, when you've delivered over 300,000 SAP projects globally, you can extract a lot of valuable information from these projects.
Customers Demand Simplicity and Pre-Packaged Business Solutions Get You There
The idea of prepackaged solutions is nothing new to SAP, it represents a continuation of the concept of Rapid Deployment Solutions (RDS) coupled with 'Best Practices'. They are able to develop these solutions by listening closely to their customers via the various ASUGs, which are present globally, as well as talking to partners, listening to what is buried in their support messages as well as their various Industry Solution user groups.
ACS Warranty Solution Was My Focus
We're a specialized firm focused on delivering engineered services focused on the SAP ACS Warranty Management Solution. This solution, which is comprised of 90 solutions including the SAP ACS Warranty solution, provides our customers with a great deal of value. So I wanted to keep up with the latest developments.
The 13 Key Lessons Learned
ACS offering is a fixed price packaged engagement:
Pre-engineered Solution as software + advanced consulting expertise.
- Predictable Results. Today's customers are demanding a predictable result. They are not willing to implement a solution that may or may not work. They want a clear business case to be made by the software vendor up front and they want to be able prove they got what the business case promised after Go-Live.
- Large Installed Base. Solution has been sold to over 300 customers globally. Each year about 2,000 potential customers inquire about ACS solutions availability and pricing. This is an indicator the growing demand for this approach.
- Multiple Languages Supported. The Software + Documentation is always published in English and German. It is also sold to Mexico, Japan and China. When sold to other countries it is being translated to those country's languages.
- Easy Availability. You can see all of the available ACS solutions @ www.sap.com/ACS. This is an impressive list of pre-packaged offerings.
- Major Investment. SAP is investing considerable resources into this approach. There are two large teams in Hamburg, Waldorf, Ratingen and Munich with 60 developers working on it at all times.
- Customer Expectations Changing. Customers are looking for pre-configured, pre-engineered solutions from SAP. Twenty years ago that was not the case.
- Going Where Our Customers Live. SAP has sent and is continuing to send teams to customer sites to 'audit' the projects to learn what they can about what is working and what needs to be improved. They are using a continuous integration approach based to constantly improve their offering. This is part of their Agile approach to software development.
- Capability On Demand. In many cases, customers find they need additional capability even at the end of their project. The ACS approach provides a sort of plug-in building block approach that facilitates late-in-game, intelligently chosen, scope changes.
ACS is as close to standard SAP coded solutions as it gets (without being in standard).
Technically, in the PMP/ASAP methodology we are obligated to look for the best solution throughout the project. Experience tells us: 'Get to Go-Live' is the highest imperative. This approach will allow us to get there with a client base that are just a bit more satisfied.
- Fixed Price. Important topic for our customers is for the ACS solution to have a fixed price option and updated price information is available daily. Is available directly from us, for the warranty ACS and pricing can be requested via email. Prices are subject to changes due to a number of factors. ACS is not on the official SAP price list because it is not sold as code under SAP software purchasing license agreement. Important to keep in mind; ACS is sold as a consulting solution, technically client is purchasing ACS solutions like a consulting engagement.
- Total Cost Known. "Do not generate more fees and cost after the project is done." Check.
"No maintenance fees." Check
"No further cost after project implementation is complete." Check
- On S/4 HANA Roadmap. SAP is investing in the solution, has a defined budget to develop and upgrade existing solutions. For example, to S/4Hana on premise. 800 man days invested for a particular solution…prices are manageable in the 3-35k Euro range for most packages, with the exception of IQOS and Warranty.
- Major Benefit: There is an existing solution available at a fixed price.
- What is part of the fixed price?
The fixed price contains:
- Technical implementation, which can be done remotely via the network service connection
- Several workshops to review and hand-over solution
- Documentation + training
- SAP Jam. SAP Jam is a sharing and collaboration tool in the cloud. (mostly file and sharing environment in defined groups).
Great News For Our SAP Customers
Overall, I believe that the continued development of the SAP ACS solution represents a major advantage to our customers. It offers a simplified deployment approach while continuously upgrading the solution, on a fixed price basis.
If you're looking for a way to de-risk your SAP Warranty Implementation, a great way to get started is with our industry-unique QuickScan Solution.
Thanks.