Volatile economic environments, highly dynamic markets, more demanding end users, faster technological development, tightening competition and shorter product lifecycles are some of the factors that are setting business applications under pressure. Despite this, to thrive in the market today, a business owner has to deliver products that are market differentiated and innovative. But how do you do this especially given the rapidly changing environment? Well, the answer is simple; you need to adopt SAP application lifecycle management. It offers you 360 degree support for all application development right from the first ideal to utilization of the application. With sap application lifecycle management, you will rise to the top of your niche.
What is SAP application lifecycle management (SAP ALM)?
In short, SAP ALM is a set of tools, processes and services that are tailored to help in all phases of an application development from data gathering and designing the SAP application to deploying it. It also covers optimization and final end of life archiving, shut down and removal of the application. You can see why I said it gives a 360 degrees support.
What is the technology behind SAP ALM?
SAP’S ALM is based on (ITIL) (IT infrastructure library) which is a series of identified best practices in the industry for running effective and efficient IT operations. The idea in SAP application lifecycle management is to cut on the cost of SAP implementations while at the same time maintaining a high level of effectiveness by consistently improving business processes and operations. The end result of SAP ALM is always a SAP implementation that not only costs little to operate, but also delivers continuous value to your business. In fact, research shows that adopting SAP’s reduces cost by 33% in manufacturing firms.
What is the cost of SAP ALM?
In practice, SAP ALM requires a large investment in SAP solution manager and associated software. This means that you will need to budget for the expertise required to use it effectively to the advantage of your firm as well as for solution managers. Well, it may look like the cost is prohibitive but when compared to the benefits that SAP application lifecycle management brings to your firm, it is worth it; its benefits outweighs the cost by far. Note that, the largest part of the cost is a one-time cost.
With Sap application lifecycle development, the application development process is hastened and systems are optimized to give you competitive advantage. This is due to the increased compliance to industry regulations and quality standards that SAP ALM gives your organization. It gives your business vital ability to perform essential processes with modular software.
In addition, with SAP ALM, your business can move up the stairs from handling issues related to difficulties in application lifecycle management to dealing with more pressing issues such as process monitoring. SAP ALM covers the following areas;
· Requirements identification, design and blueprinting
· Business process modeling, meant to take a snapshot of your business process, and deliver it to Solution Manager, develop into a project plan and link it to a testing plan.
· Change management, to maintain accuracy and consistency in how change is implemented across SAP landscape
· Document management, to aid with version control and project documentation
· Deployment acceleration tools
· Optimization and operation
· Archiving, to set the systems up for end of life consequent removal.
In conclusion, with SAP application lifecycle management, your applications development process and systems are optimized. It enables you to manage high speed and risky application development efficiently giving your firm a competitive edge.