Adoption and Stabilization: A Timeline
There are several factors that may affect how long the post-Hypercare phase of your SAP Ariba deployment lasts. Those include company size, how many modules were deployed, and if it was a big bang deployment, versus a phased go-live, etc. in this article we take a closer look at each of these non-personnel factors and how they might affect your company’s time frame for administration and support.
How long will it take?
There are several factors that may affect how long the post-Hypercare phase and adoption and stabilization phase of your SAP Ariba deployment lasts. Those include company size, how many modules were deployed, and if it was a big bang deployment, versus a phased go-live, etc. Change Management is a crucial factor as well, as we discussed in the previous blog in this series.
Now we’re going to take a closer look at each of these non-personnel factors and how they might affect your company’s time frame for administration and support.
Company Size
We’re sure it comes as no surprise when we say the bigger your company, the more complex your post-deployment landscape will be. That’s because the larger the company, the longer it will take to roll out the changes to users. It also takes longer to get feedback from the users and incorporate those changes to provide the best user experience.
There are no hard and fast rules for how long this adoption and stabilization phase may last, but here is a rough estimate based upon our extensive experience:
| Number of Users | Anticipated Length of A&S Phase |
| Less than 500 | 3 to 6 months |
| 500 to 2,500 | 6 months to 1 year |
| More than 2,500 | 1 to 2+ years |
Number of Deployed Modules
As with company size, this is just common sense: if you deploy one or two SAP Ariba modules your Adoption and Stabilization phase is going to be shorter than if you deploy a plethora of Ariba modules. Integrated environments will naturally result in a longer Adoption and Stabilization phase because you must consider any other system that touches your SAP Ariba systems.
Essentially, the more modules that are deployed the longer the Adoption and Stabilization phase is going to be. If it is a simplistic deployment with one or two modules that are not integrated, your Adoption and Stabilization phase may only run for a couple of months. With a full suite Ariba deployment with multiple modules that are integrated — especially if it’s affecting your compliance systems and ERP — you’ll want to monitor the system for a longer period because you have transactional data and financial data included that are going to be affected by the deployment.
Big Bang Deployment vs. Phased Go-Live
There are two ways for a larger company to deploy their SAP Ariba Solution:
Big Bang: There are a lot of modules to deploy, you are deploying across several countries and multiple departments, and they’re all going live at the same time.
- Pro: it’s a huge project, but once it’s done it’s done.
- Con: Your support and administrative teams can be overwhelmed by the demand for their services from multiple locations and departments.
Phased: Space out the Go-Lives over a specified period, say, North America first, then Europe three months later, then South America three months after that, etc.
- Pro: Onboarding a smaller subset of users can be a lot less overwhelming for support.
- Con: Each division is on a different schedule for Adoption and Stabilization.
There are also different types of phased Go-Lives that don’t necessarily rely on location. Some companies choose phased module go-lives. They may choose Sourcing first, then Contracts, and then they’ll go live with SLP and downstream at the same time. Sourcing and Contracts may require minimal support and then whenever they go live with the other items they’ll need more support.
The bottom line in addressing this is that each company needs to plan for Adoption and Stabilization phase up front, to start as soon as Hypercare ends. Waiting until the process has already started and an overwhelming number of issues and problems have cropped up could negatively impact your short- and long-term success.
This is where an experienced SAP Ariba Managed Services Partner can be helpful. The right consulting team can help smooth out these bumps and even advise larger firms on the most effective roll-out strategy. Visit our Ariba Managed Support Page to learn more.
And if you found this useful, be sure to read our entire Post-Deployment Success series. And to get off the right start, check out our series on Pre-Deployment Readiness.
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