In the world of SAP solu­tions, ​“evo­lu­tion” is more than a buzz­word; it’s a cor­ner­stone of progress. 

Amid recent updates to SAP Acti­vate, a project imple­men­ta­tion method­ol­o­gy used to plan and exe­cute com­plex SAP solu­tions, ASUG sat down with Jan Musil, Chief Prod­uct Own­er for SAP Acti­vate, to dis­cuss the six-phase approach, its recent evo­lu­tion, and the recent­ly pub­lished sec­ond edi­tion of SAP Acti­vate: Project Man­age­ment for SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, an SAP Press pub­li­ca­tion co-authored by Sven Deneck­en, SVP & Chief Mar­ket­ing and Solu­tions Offi­cer for SAP Indus­tries & CX, SAP SE, and Sri­vat­san San­thanam, Vice Pres­i­dent, Spend Engi­neer­ing, Head of Con­cur R&D, SAP Labs India. 

Div­ing into the SAP Acti­vate method­ol­o­gy, our con­ver­sa­tion illu­mi­nates the col­lab­o­ra­tive effort between more than 20 authors that made this book’s pub­li­ca­tion pos­si­ble, offer­ing insights into the shift­ing land­scapes of ERP deploy­ment, tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, and the intel­li­gent enterprise’s dri­ving ethos. 

Musil under­lined his grat­i­tude for the team effort that brought this sec­ond edi­tion of SAP Acti­vate to fruition, explain­ing that each of the col­lab­o­ra­tors con­tributed their exper­tise to ensure the pub­li­ca­tion would serve as a com­pre­hen­sive guide to the method­ol­o­gy. In the first part of our con­ver­sa­tion, Musil’s insights offer a roadmap for enter­pris­es nav­i­gat­ing evo­lu­tion, accen­tu­at­ing the neces­si­ty of embrac­ing new par­a­digms while fur­ther­ing one’s under­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal pil­lars of success. 

This inter­view has been edit­ed and con­densed.

Q: For any read­ers not famil­iar with SAP Acti­vate, could you pro­vide some back­ground on the method­ol­o­gy?

A: SAP Acti­vate was built from the knowl­edge gained through pre­vi­ous efforts with Accel­er­at­ed SAP (ASAP), a pre­vi­ous method­ol­o­gy that SAP Acti­vate suc­ceed­ed in 2015, around the time that SAP launched SAP S/4HANA. Our goal was to pull togeth­er all the con­tent we had avail­able on best prac­tices, ready-to-run busi­ness process­es, guid­ed method­olo­gies, and the tool­ing that our cus­tomers should use when deploy­ing ERP solutions.

Since then, we’ve expand­ed SAP Acti­vate to cov­er more than ERP. Now, it cov­ers every­thing from SAP Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning to SAP Ari­ba, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, and oth­er solu­tions. It’s like hav­ing a cook­book that helps you deploy SAP software. 

Q: That’s a great metaphor. There are a lot of ingre­di­ents.

A: And there’s a lot of skill rep­re­sent­ed with­in SAP Acti­vate. Con­sid­er the chef of a five-star or Miche­lin-starred restau­rant. There are a lot of peo­ple around that chef who make them suc­cess­ful. That’s how SAP Acti­vate is built. 

Q: What neces­si­tat­ed this sec­ond edition? 

A: It was inter­est­ing for every­one involved how quick­ly the first edi­tion was picked up by read­ers. The ini­tial print run sold out much soon­er than expect­ed. How­ev­er, that was­n’t the main rea­son for writ­ing the sec­ond edi­tion. SAP’s intro­duc­tion of RISE with SAP at the begin­ning of 2022 gave us a rea­son to update the first edi­tion. We want­ed to cov­er RISE with SAP com­pre­hen­sive­ly in this new edition. 

We noticed from the first edi­tion the dis­tinc­tion made between ​“fit-to-stan­dard” and ​“fit gap” for assess­ing require­ments. ​“Fit gap” was used most­ly in pri­vate cloud and on-premis­es spaces. With pub­lic cloud, ​“fit-to-stan­dard” was the most pop­u­lar approach: fol­low­ing the SAP stan­dard as much as possible. 

How­ev­er, the advent of a cloud mind­set and ​“clean-core” approach brought togeth­er more cus­tomers in con­sid­er­ing ​“fit-to-stan­dard,” mov­ing to enable their busi­ness­es to run as close to stan­dard func­tion­al­ly in SAP as pos­si­ble, extend­ing where need­ed to sup­port their busi­ness­es but not over­do­ing it, because this lim­its cus­tomers’ abil­i­ty to inno­vate and absorb SAP inno­va­tions through upgrades. We focused on mak­ing ​“fit-to-stan­dard” a cen­tral theme for this sec­ond edition. 

Hon­est­ly, I think it might have had some­thing to do with every­one work­ing from home dur­ing that peri­od. Sud­den­ly, every­thing became cloud-based, and we had to adapt to that envi­ron­ment. This led many busi­ness­es to reflect that, in their imple­men­ta­tions, being flex­i­ble and respon­sive is cru­cial. This aligns with the theme of SAP Acti­vate: adop­tion of agile tech­niques, lever­ag­ing fit-to-stan­dard, using pre-deliv­ered and pre-con­fig­ured solu­tions, then build­ing on top of that. 

Q: I want to high­light the intro­duc­tion by Megan Fuerst, Devel­op­ment Edi­tor at SAP Press, in which she dis­cuss­es the chal­lenges of nav­i­gat­ing tran­si­tions. What, in your opin­ion, are some ele­ments con­tribut­ing to these chal­lenges when shift­ing in the SAP environment? 

A: I real­ly like Megan’s anal­o­gy about unhelp­ful guid­ance from GPS sys­tems, which some­times insist on going the wrong way because their maps aren’t up to date. It’s some­thing that hap­pens to many, I’m sure. Usu­al­ly, it’s because the GPS has out­dat­ed soft­ware or out­dat­ed log­ic. When devel­op­ing SAP Acti­vate, we thought of it as updat­ing the GPS for the SAP ecosys­tem, mov­ing away from the tra­di­tion­al notion of imple­men­ta­tion via blue­print­ing and lengthy deploy­ment cycles. We want­ed to lever­age the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and har­ness the ben­e­fits of today’s cloud, which is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from eight years ago. 

Pro­vi­sion­ing of ini­tial sys­tems or sand­box­es used to take weeks: set­ting up hard­ware, oper­at­ing sys­tems, and every­thing an on-premis­es envi­ron­ment required. Now, pro­vi­sion­ing a sys­tem in the cloud, it’s avail­able with­in an hour, ready to run. That’s a huge time saver, and it’s just one of the new tech­nolo­gies we’ve incor­po­rat­ed, lever­ag­ing the cloud and a cloud mind­set. That’s what we built SAP Acti­vate to reflect. 

It’s keep­ing our own GPS updat­ed, con­sis­tent­ly inte­grat­ing new instruc­tions. We’ve updat­ed that GPS every sin­gle year. It’s not just an annu­al update; specif­i­cal­ly talk­ing about ERP: with pub­lic cloud, SAP Acti­vate gets updat­ed every two weeks, ensur­ing it remains up to date. This isn’t sole­ly based on SAP changes but also on user feed­back: cus­tomers who talk to us and ask ques­tions. In the pri­vate cloud, updates range between two to four weeks. We were on a two-week cycle until late 2023; now, we’ve slowed a bit, because guid­ance evo­lu­tion isn’t as rapid on the pri­vate cloud side. 

Q: The GPS metaphor works well because it encom­pass­es not only soft­ware but also the land­scape.

A: It is the land­scape. And if you think about it, what’s changed since we launched SAP Acti­vate in 2015? The rapid accel­er­a­tion of pub­lic and pri­vate cloud adop­tion. Back in 2015, many cus­tomers were start­ing with on-prem adop­tion of SAP S/4HANA. Now we have addi­tion­al ingre­di­ents, such as SAP Sig­navio, com­ing into play, along with oth­er solu­tions for our customers. 

I’m sure your read­ers are aware of SAP Cloud Appli­ca­tion Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment (ALM), and you might be dis­cussing it with your audi­ence as they tran­si­tion from SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er to SAP Cloud ALM. There are a lot of mov­ing parts that need con­tin­u­ous updat­ing. If we did­n’t update them, the result would be like Megan’s expe­ri­ence, lead­ing you down the wrong path and pre­vent­ing you from reach­ing your destination. 

Q: One thing I appre­ci­ate about this book is its flex­i­bil­i­ty, cater­ing to both begin­ners and more advanced read­ers. What fun­da­men­tal areas do you feel all read­ers should dive into?

A: We’ve inten­tion­al­ly designed the book struc­ture to be flex­i­ble. As you men­tioned, you have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to start any­where. You can begin from the out­set, learn the fun­da­men­tals of SAP S/4HANA, delve into the fun­da­men­tals of SAP Acti­vate, and review the details of indi­vid­ual sub­ject area groups — whether that involves design­ing con­fig­u­ra­tion tech­nol­o­gy, orga­ni­za­tion­al change man­age­ment, or the agile method­ol­o­gy, which has a sep­a­rate sec­tion in the book. You can enter from any side, and we’ve arranged it like that because the audi­ence isn’t as sin­gu­lar as ​“tech­ni­cal or func­tion­al” book read­ers. We’re serv­ing a wide range of stake­hold­ers: project spon­sors, project man­agers, func­tion­al con­sul­tants, and busi­ness users. Our scope is cor­re­spond­ing­ly broad. That’s why we’ve empha­sized this. 

I high­ly rec­om­mend every­one review the fun­da­men­tals of SAP Acti­vate and not skip that sec­tion. You can update your knowl­edge if you’re com­ing through ASAP blue­print­ing. You will real­ly need to under­stand ​“fit-to-stan­dard,” how it’s done, why it’s done that way, and how we’re chang­ing the par­a­digm. The chap­ters pro­gres­sive­ly build knowl­edge, from fun­da­men­tals to more advanced top­ics, and to the spe­cif­ic path that you are select­ing for tran­si­tion, link­ing back to spe­cif­ic details, and cross-ref­er­enc­ing oth­er chap­ters. Even if you skip ahead, it’ll loop you back in. 

If you look at the lat­er chap­ters, they’re build­ing on that knowl­edge from the ear­li­er chap­ters around top­ics like data migra­tion. Review all the steps because, as we cov­er each indi­vid­ual tran­si­tion jour­ney, we want to avoid repeat­ing the same infor­ma­tion four or five times. We want to grad­u­al­ly build upon it. 

Q: Busi­ness­es are rapid­ly chang­ing. They need to col­lab­o­rate across dif­fer­ent areas and lever­age mod­ern tech­nolo­gies like AI and big data to enhance deci­sion-mak­ing. How do we gauge suc­cess in this new par­a­digm? What are the key deci­sions that dri­ve suc­cess?

A: When busi­ness­es imple­ment SAP solu­tions or their busi­ness solu­tions — because it’s not always just SAP — they’re imple­ment­ing end-to-end busi­ness process­es. We’re cov­er­ing these end-to-end process­es, poten­tial­ly imple­ment­ing mul­ti­ple solu­tions from SAP and oth­er ven­dors simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Thus, we need to con­sid­er the inte­grat­ed nature of this imple­men­ta­tion. We’ve fac­tored this into how we’ve designed SAP Activate. 

If you exam­ine the method­ol­o­gy for SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and SAP Ari­ba, you’ll notice the same flow of steps inten­tion­al­ly. The struc­ture of the infor­ma­tion is designed to bring these ele­ments togeth­er, con­struct­ing a roadmap for an intel­li­gent enter­prise that reflects its com­plete scope. This set­up pro­vides access to all nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion, based on the imple­men­ta­tion’s scope. That’s one aspect. 

The sec­ond is cru­cial for lever­ag­ing new tech­nolo­gies. In the last year, we’ve incor­po­rat­ed exten­sive guid­ance for cus­tomers uti­liz­ing the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form in their imple­men­ta­tions, whether they’re employ­ing ser­vices for exten­si­bil­i­ty, inte­gra­tion, or any oth­er func­tion. There’s more beyond those two exam­ples. We’ve added guid­ance on machine learn­ing (ML) and robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA). We are con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ing con­tent as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) becomes more vis­i­ble and is used by more businesses. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, new­ly inte­grat­ed for SAP Acti­vate (and not in this edi­tion of the book, as it was added more recent­ly) is con­tent for indus­try cloud appli­ca­tions. SAP offers indus­try cloud appli­ca­tions across its own offer­ings as well as the SAP part­ner ecosys­tem. In SAP Acti­vate, we’ve includ­ed spe­cif­ic ​“hooks” (tasks akin to inte­gra­tion and exten­si­bil­i­ty tasks in solu­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion) for these appli­ca­tions. This fos­ters a holis­tic imple­men­ta­tion, not sole­ly focused on pure SAP com­po­nents or prod­ucts, but rather an inte­grat­ed suite to effec­tive­ly run businesses. 

Q: Where could read­ers find this sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion?

A: As we empha­size in the book, the best path is to head to the SAP Com­mu­ni­ty web­site and fol­low SAP Acti­vate. My team and I, along with SAP Acti­vate users, share our knowl­edge there. Addi­tion­al­ly, we’ve ini­ti­at­ed SAP Acti­vate Minute, short videos for you to watch at your con­ve­nience. We cov­er var­i­ous top­ics like explain­ing SAP Acti­vate basics or div­ing into aspects of gov­er­nance. One of my team mem­bers also made a video about the indus­try cloud con­tent I men­tioned earlier. 

We have tru­ly shift­ed the par­a­digm in how we share infor­ma­tion. Ini­tial­ly, we fol­lowed the tra­di­tion­al approach of shar­ing infor­ma­tion through webi­na­rs. Now, we’re focus­ing on spe­cif­ic top­ic areas and aim­ing to cov­er them effec­tive­ly. Ini­tial­ly, we set a one-minute lim­it, but some­times you can’t cov­er every­thing in one minute. We’ve relaxed that stan­dard. Now, you’ll find SAP Acti­vate Minute videos that might be two to three min­utes long — but still short, con­cise, and to the point. They’re not the typ­i­cal 15‑, 20‑, 30‑, or 45-minute videos. They’re brief, enabling you to grasp what you need to learn quickly. 

Q: I appre­ci­ate that con­tent deliv­ery sys­tem. The bite-sized minute for­mat is invalu­able. We often over­es­ti­mate our abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend things, and hav­ing a min­ute’s worth of infor­ma­tion allows us the chance to digest and process it with­out feel­ing over­whelmed. It helps us under­stand how to inte­grate it into the vast amount of infor­ma­tion we encounter dai­ly.

A: That was real­ly the pur­pose behind this effort. We have jok­ing­ly dis­cussed cre­at­ing Tik­Toks about SAP Acti­vate, although we haven’t ven­tured into Tik­Tok. How­ev­er, we’ve embraced that approach of pro­vid­ing bite-sized infor­ma­tion that peo­ple can quick­ly con­sume, whether it’s between meet­ings or while wait­ing for a sand­wich dur­ing lunch. 

For more from Musil, check back next week for part two of our inter­view on SAP Acti­vate. This SAP Press pub­li­ca­tion was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between indus­try lead­ers from SAP and more than 20 con­trib­u­tors, includ­ing Sven Deneck­en, SVP & Chief Mar­ket­ing and Solu­tions Offi­cer for SAP Indus­tries & CX, SAP SE; Jan Musil, SAP Acti­vate Chief Prod­uct Own­er; and Sri­vat­san San­thanam, Vice Pres­i­dent, Spend Engi­neer­ing, Head of Con­cur R&D, SAP Labs India.