It’s essential to understand the purpose of SAP Centre of Excellence (CoE) teams. For many organizations, the SAP CoE team can provide application expertise to support your organization’s SAP implementation in many ways.
Your Guide To Everyone That Should Be On Your SAP CoE Team
The CoE team help design new processes, optimize current operations, provide user support and training, manage implementation projects, and keep the complex SAP system up and running. The CoE helps maintain all SAP products’ efficiency cost-effectively, contributing to your organization’s success. This process involves application management and enhancements, change management, and operational support.
Several core success factors are important for implementation that your SAP CoE team will be responsible for. Read on as we discuss everyone who should be on your team and what their specific roles are.
So what is an SAP CoE team, and who should be on your team?
The Center of Excellence (COE)
SAP defines a Center of Excellence as a team that combines both business and IT experts with the industry best practices to drive continued value from investments in SAP technologies. Essentially, it’s a team of highly skilled individuals and experts that can be acknowledged as a resource within your organization. They are responsible for keeping SAP investments on track to meet the agreed-upon business objectives.
Some of the essential functions and benefits of the typical SAP CoE team are as follows. They provide a unique platform for creating global SAP solutions and deploying best practices. This team should enhance your SAP solution’s value and generate more standardization and better integration of that system. Additionally, they should improve user productivity and also enhance the retention of crucial SAP personnel.
Without an SAP CoE team, you will lack the necessary ecosystem required to launch and sustain a successful organization and digital transformation system.
Start With Leadership
Let’s start with leadership. The head of the SAP Centre of Excellence is often a senior leader. They are responsible for the day-to-day management of the CoE and maintaining the SAP system’s lifecycle. It means they oversee regular operations, maximize uptime, and ensure that updates are applied in a timely manner. The head of your SAP CoE team will drive innovation and ensure that standards are defined and adhered to. This role will report to an appropriate corporate senior leadership team/board. During digital transformation, there will be a high demand for change and restructuring, and the head of the team must set and control priorities.
The core of Your SAP CoE Team
Now let’s get into the core of your SAP CoE team.
SAP Solution Architect
The Solution Architect understands the entire solution from all sides. They have a high level of knowledge of SAP. They also understand the high-level business processes and how those processes can be embedded within the technology. They are likely aware of SAP modules’ inputs and outputs and how they interlock together, plus the overall system’s integration points.
The Solution Architect knows the flow of the information needed to run the various modules and can pass those flows to the rest of the team.
Functional Analyst / Module Configurers
The SAP Analysts are the SAP experts, and they are aligned with functionality. These team members understand the detail of the processes in their sphere of expertise, and they seek to maintain and improve solutions. They should be aware of the latest developments in the areas they specialize in and will be vital in the transition from the project into business as usual.
Business Process Architect
The Business Process Architect sits alongside the SAP Solution Architect and will look at the entire business from a process angle. They are responsible for the strategic target operating model that SAP uses. When improvements are available or suggested, they will make sure the business processes reflect the new working ways. The Business Process Architect understands all of the operational aspects of the company inside and outside of SAP. They’ll work hand in hand with senior managers and capture the best ideas and bring them back to the team. These team members will control the expectations of everyone else in the group, and work with them to redesign working practices for the new improvements.
Users & Super Users
Users include several different positions like the CFO, the Sales Director, HR Business Partner, and your IT team. They may also include your vendors, customers, logistics service providers, contractors, and possible candidates in your recruitment funnel. Any good SAP CoE teams will place importance on all types of users.
Super users are people identified as key points of contact between SAP user community members and your CoE. They are responsible for advice and guidance on business processes and system usage. Great SAP CoE teams will consider their super user network as an ongoing community. They ensure super users are equipped with quality and up to date information and knowledge. Your SAP CoE team will ensure that these people can drive the adoption of the SAP solution on a day to day basis.
Want more information about users and super users? Click here for ways to Transform Regular Users into SAP Super Users.
Extended Team and Why You Need Them
Larger enterprises should also include these extended members if they want their digital transformation strategy to be successful.
Test Analyst(s)
The Test Analysts are experts in testing, and they work closely with the core team to define test scripts and scenarios for any test cycles. The test team should have a broad spectrum of process expertise to test the majority of the business processes without difficulty.
You will want to provide testing services to ensure application and technical changes before final implementation. This includes unit testing, regression testing, stress, and load testing, and more. Your Test Analysts will manage test environments with realistic test data and tests using real user security profiles.
Security and Authorizations Analyst(s)
Before you even implement SAP, you’ll want to make sure that all assigned roles and authorizations are appropriate. Segregation of duties is a crucial feature of any digital transformation, and roles should be identified and assigned to ensure no one is handling the full process independently. The security team will work with the core team to help define and build roles and proper authorizations for the SAP solution before implementation even begins.
The Security Analyst role is vital to ensure that the duties’ segregation remains useful in the business process. These people should be involved from the start of the integration so that they can adequately structure and maintain security levels.
Reducing the costs and frustrations of Digital Transformation
As digital transformation becomes necessary for SAP customers, decision-makers like you are faced with the need to migrate to SAP S/4HANA, and embrace emerging technologies that support enterprises rooted in intelligence. The SAP CoE team has a lot to learn, apply, and maintain while keeping up with the constant change of digital transformation.
However, even the best teams face the pressures of budget and time constraints regarding digital transformation and migration. Frustrations arise quickly when team members have to stop and relearn steps in the process, delaying your timeline and causing unnecessary tension.
OnScreen Can Make Your SAP CoE Team Run Smoother
OnScreen can make your SAP CoE Team run smoother and more efficiently in a variety of ways. Our OnScreen Guides are created by SAP CoE process experts and super users to help business users get through the process. These business users have the author role and can publish OnScreen guided walkthroughs of various necessary processes to help business users work more efficiently in SAP.
The benefit that comes with using OnScreen Guides is that it takes much less time and effort to create guides than traditional training methods. When you use OnScreen, your SAP CoE team will have less support requests, which means everyone can spend more time and focus on major initiatives. These onscreen guides can speed up both training and onboarding time. Business users have instant access to the information they need, right when they need it, which allows the entire process to run more efficiently.
Additionally, OnScreen makes knowledge more accessible within the workflow by implementing a system that allows for rapid iteration and onboarding around highly customized processes. It allows users to spend less time looking for information and also reduces the risk of inaccurate data which interrupt project rollouts and decrease employee performance.
OnScreen ensures faster user proficiency by allowing power users to develop and publish step-by-step guides right into your Enterprise Application.
Click here to schedule a demo with us so we can show you first-hand how OnScreen can work for you.