Pre-Deployment Readiness

In the previous articles in this pre-deployment readiness series, we’ve examined preparing for your deployment as it applies to Ariba upstream modules. Now we’ll look at the Ariba downstream modules related to Buying and Invoicing. There are a lot of similarities in how to prepare for each, including data cleansing and preparing key stakeholders across the organization. One that’s critical to preparing for downstream implementations, however, is understanding the challenges you’ll likely face in post-production.

Supplier management is the most complex solution to prepare for from a deployment standpoint. It’s also the most crucial because your suppliers are quite literally the backbone of your SAP Ariba solution. Even more so than with contracts, which we discussed in last week’s article, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to getting ready to deploy your supplier management solution. It’s critical to make sure the information you’re going to hand to your deployment partner is both current and accurate, or it can cause months-long delays in the deployment process.

In this article, we delve into preparing for your SAP Ariba Contracts Deployment. The key is to identify your goal before you start preparing for deployment. Our in-house experts on contracts explains: “There is a range of complexity in contract deployment, from simply utilizing the tool as a contract repository only; as a repository with basic approvals and negotiations; or as a repository with full contract creation and contract authoring. Setting a realistic schedule for your deployment will depend what level of complexity you need the contract system to be and how well-prepared you are for the level you choose.”

SAP’s Activate methodology has five foundational phases: Prepare. Explore. Realize. Deploy. Run. We’d like to add one more that we call Phase Zero: Initiation. In part one of this Pre-Deployment Readiness series we discussed the prep work you can do before your deployment partners begin on day one. These actions can potentially prevent avoidable, costly project delays. As one of our expert upstream consultants puts it: “The first question on the first day of the project should never be, ‘what are we doing?’ That question should already be asked and answered.”

Over the past few years some of our top SAP Ariba consultants at CCP Global have told me: When I started on “Day One” ready to assess our new clients’ current environment, I was told, “We don’t want to dive deep into our current processes, we just want the Best Practices.”  While the idea of Best Practice has a great connotation that infers a simple, uncomplicated SAP Ariba solution and deployment, the fact is that “best practices” are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Rather, they’re a framework for defining where you are and where you need to go.