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Setup Guide
For internal SAP and partner use only
Copyright
2014 by SAP AG. All rights reserved.
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DOCUMENTATION VERSION
Date:
19 March 2014
Release:
5.1
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Introduction
1.1 Definition
1.2 Components
Set Up
Deliver
Certify
10
11
11
12
14
15
17
21
Support Roles
21
23
24
24
25
People Certification
26
Outsourcing or Subcontracting
27
27
28
28
28
Preparing an Incident
29
Reporting an Incident
30
Receiving an Incident
31
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Acknowledging an Incident
32
Assigning an Incident
33
Processing an incident
33
Forwarding an incident
34
Closing an incident
35
35
36
36
On-Call Support
36
37
Complaints
37
Escalations
37
38
38
40
40
41
41
41
42
44
44
44
45
Team/Processor Reporting
46
Management Reporting
47
47
Internal Feedback
47
External Feedback
48
48
49
50
51
51
53
54
55
55
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61
63
64
66
68
70
71
71
72
Readiness Audit
72
Validation Check
73
Re-Certification
73
73
73
76
79
80
81
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Introduction
These guidelines are intended for Value Added Resellers (VARs) as participants of the SAP PartnerEdge
channel program, who are about to set up and operate a Partner Center of Expertise (Partner COE). A
Partner COE is that unit within a VAR which is responsible for provision of various support services for the
indirect customer base.
SAP PartnerEdge VARs are entitled to sell specific software products (e.g. SAP Business All-In-One, SAP
Analytics) including maintenance. They engage with SAP and their customers via a shared support
delivery model, called VAR-delivered support. Within this shared support delivery model, Value Added
Resellers take care of their customers while providing first and second level support and their related
maintenance services. They are the first and single point of contact for their customers concerning the
SAP-based solution.
Information to set up a VAR-specific support infrastructure can be found via the special home page
http://service.sap.com/var-partner and the SAP PartnerEdge Portal, http://sappartneredge.com/pcoe.
Further links to relevant items are provided in this document. These guidelines should be used as a basis
for building and operating support structures in a Value Added Reseller support organization.
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1.2 Components
To enable a successful support operation, a Partner COE
requires several components to work seamlessly and efficiently.
These components are grouped into the following areas:
Detailed information with respect to the expected set up of these various components are discussed
through several chapters in this document.
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The setup of a Partner COE is dependent on factors such as the size, supported products, experience,
and maturity of the organization. The timelines shown from Figure 2-1 shows the phases of setting up a
Partner COE.
SET UP
During the Set Up stage, VAR Partners should clearly determine the
requirements and standards for the Partner COE. These could be
accomplished by going through the maintenance instructions from the
PartnerEdge contract, attending focus sessions on PCOE enablement, or
utilizing the assistance of both the Partner Account Manager (PAM) and
the Partner Services Advisor (PSA) to ascertain the requirements and get
the best advice with respect to the set up strategies based on the VAR
Partners situation.
Some of the pertinent activities expected during the set up stage are as
follows:
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DELIVER
Once all physical elements are established and support processes are
clearly understood by support staff, the VAR should consider a go live
activity by which the Partner COE commences the delivery of
maintenance services with existing customers. Amongst the activities
that are expected to be performed are the following:
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with Good morning Sir! Youve reached <<company name>> support. How may we help you?
Online Support
It is not uncommon for well-established support
businesses to offer online accessibility of their
incident management system or other supportrelated facilities such as knowledge bases, forums,
or product information and documentation. Online
availability of the incident management system
allows interactive and efficient means of
communicating incident progress and resolution
with the customer base and offers visibility of issues
logged with the VAR.
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Fax
Although outmoded in current times, a fax machine still provides a valuable backup alternative to
electronic means of communication. Thus, having a dedicated fax number for such emergency
situations is recommended.
Issue automated voice instructions offering alternative means for reporting incidents
Routes to a dedicated mobile number or communications service fully monitored and available for
emergency calls
It is not recommended to offer alternative numbers to customer end users such as the following:
A dedicated support hotline must be a local land line available for use 7x24. It is
recommended to have phone routing capabilities or voice mail as well to handle busy
lines and/or after-office calls.
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allow SAP or the VAR Partner to downgrade priority calls as the expected resolution for incidents without
immediate access would be lowered.
Figure 2-2.
Remote connectivity has to be setup with customer systems for the following purposes:
View, analyze, and resolve incidents from SAP or VAR side from any location at any time.
Execute SAP and/or VAR services for either proactive monitoring (such as SAP EarlyWatch
Alert, Root Cause Analysis, or Solution Monitoring.)
Security Issues
Customers do have valid concerns about remote connectivity and its potential risk for uncontrolled or
undetected access to their critical systems. Thus, it may be necessary to educate customers on the
following aspects:
Customer has full control of their connection and has sole
capability to open the connection manually from their end at their
own time, at their own means.
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Figure 2-3.
For non-ABAP platforms, customers can use other options available as listed from the SAP Service
Marketplace pages. One of the more popular and easiest methods is Netviewer. This allows SAP to either
view the customers screen via a Show Only permission or execute transactions via the Full Access
privilege (requires SAProuter). For information on the usage and application of various remote
connection strategies and tools, please visit http://service.sap.com/access-support.
As a key ingredient for certification, remote connectivity is expected to be available for the following:
Being a mandatory requirement, the VAR Partner should ensure that compliance for
remote connectivity is generally high within its customer base and its own support
infrastructure. An 85% compliance target is required.
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Test systems should be available for all products with versions and/or releases used by
the customer base. These should have remote connection established with SAP.
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Progress documentation
An essential component of an incident
management system is its capability to store
information on the following activities:
o Communication between support
processors and customer end user
o Internal documentation on findings, test
simulation data and results, and call
contents, and discussions
o Date and Time stamps on all activities
o Attachments such as screen shots, error
messages, incident details, logs, and
communication copies
Documentation should not be modifiable to
preserve the integrity of documented
processes.
Different text types or memos should be
available to easily distinguish the documentation type. Examples are Internal Note for
discussions exclusively within the support unit and Reply solely for responses to customer
end users.
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Use SAP Solution Manager Service Desk for incident handling and/or integrate 3rd party
systems, if applicable. Online availability should be possible and is integrated with the
SAP Service Marketplace.
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Figure 2-5
The report can be generated and read from the SAP Solution Manager in HTML or Microsoft Word
format. Alternatively, it is possible to automate sending HTML reports per email to assigned recipients.
If SAP EarlyWatch Alert data cannot be processed in a local SAP Solution Manager system, data from
productive systems can be sent to SAP for processing (Scenario C of Figure 2-5). To learn about the
restrictions and to activate SAP EarlyWatch Alert data to be processed at SAP, please follow the
instructions from SAP Note 1172939 .
SAP EarlyWatch Alert is most effective when activated for the production system of each SAP
component in your customers solutions. This gives you a complete overview of all components and their
effect on performance and stability. For non-productive systems such as quality assurance,
development, training, or test systems the service can be activated as well. As the check thresholds and
rating rules are set for production system, some results in the SAP EarlyWatch Alert report do not apply
to non-productive systems. E.g. the backup frequency may be of little importance for a training system,
and so the rating for backups in the SAP EarlyWatch Alert report can be ignored.
To create the report, SAP EarlyWatch Alert reads system data and analyzes it against set threshold
values. Depending on the analysis, SAP EarlyWatch Alert issues a red, yellow, or green traffic light to
indicate to what degree the threshold values are exceeded. The symbols are visible both in the report and
as a graphic alert in the system monitoring area of the SAP Solution Manager.
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Depending on the criticality of the SAP EarlyWatch Alert report, necessary action is to be taken
by the VAR Partner. If the overall rating of the SAP EarlyWatch Alert report is red, SAP strongly
recommends contacting the SAP Partner Support Advisory Center and subsequently open a message to
SAP with an attached SAP EarlyWatch Alert report within 24 hours. The SAP Partner Support Advisory
Center will analyze the situation based on the report and decide if a Technical Quality Check (TQC) is
required. The SAP Partner Support Advisory Center will inform VAR Partners on the analysis result and, if
required, schedule service delivery of the relevant Technical Quality Check service jointly with the VAR
Partner and its end customer. For details, see SAP Note 1162164.
Figure 2-7 shows further details on the workflow for SAP EarlyWatch Alert data and activities that could
be performed depending on the result ratings.
In evaluating SAP components, SAP EarlyWatch Alert monitors the following:
General component status
System configuration
Hardware
Performance development
Average response times
Current workload
Critical error messages and process interruptions
Database administration
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SAP Note 1257308 provides information with respect to SAP products and components for which SAP
EarlyWatch Alert is available.
SAP EarlyWatch Alert for Solutions
The SAP EarlyWatch Alert for Solutions enables users to gain an overview of the current status of the
entire solution landscape within one consolidated system report. This overview includes historical
developments, aggregated solution KPIs and detailed statistics about dedicated systems of the solution.
The solution-based report consolidates alerts generated by the regular SAP EarlyWatch Alert (EWA)
monitoring services and classifies them in order to identify potential areas for improvement, such as
performance or stability.
The report tool accesses the Solution Manager Solution Repository and hence provides a link between
standard SAP EarlyWatch Alert and individual core business processes with regard to performance
evaluations.
Features
SAP EarlyWatch Alert for solutions...
is an automated and periodic off-line monitoring service provided by the SAP Solution
Manager
is solution oriented and comprises all systems relevant to the business processes of
production
consolidates SAP EarlyWatch Alert reports, focusing on system key performance indicators
and SAP EarlyWatch Alert alerts
establishes a relationship between business processes and SAP EarlyWatch Alert alerts
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facilitates a comparison between system KPIs in order to enable fast detection of main
bottlenecks
reports on the solution performance as well as the solution stability
provides statistics about workload and performance, exceptions and changes each retrieved
from the BI of the Solution Manager Diagnostics (SMD)
reports the current software and hardware components and tracks changes in the solution
landscape
Figure 2-8 SAP EarlyWatch Alert for solutions in the SAP Solution Manager
The SAP EarlyWatch Alert topic is also covered in section 2.5 of this guide.
For SAP Analytics, SAP EarlyWatch Alert is also made available for specific products/releases and in
conjunction with the Remote Support Component. For more information, please visit
http://service.sap.com/rsc.
Knowledge Base and Services Information
To find setup and usage information on SAP EarlyWatch Alert, do visit the SAP Service Marketplace at
http://service.sap.com/ewa.
All productive systems should have SAP EarlyWatch Alert data transfers sent to the
VAR Partner on a weekly basis. A compliance rate of 85% for all customer productive
installations is required.
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Help Desk
Support hotline frontline personnel
Receives calls from customers and either (a) creates a new call into the
incident management system, (b) for existing incidents, document
customer call for processor, (c) for existing incidents with processor, can
forward calls to respective processor upon request
May not necessarily have product knowledge but understands key
components of incident posting.
Dispatcher
Processes incidents for resolution
Utilizes different tools, knowledge base, own and/or peer expertise to
resolve incidents
Simulates or reproduces incident steps in a test environment or customer
systems (if allowed)
Communicates with customer on progress, additional information, or
provided solutions.
Documents progress and findings in the incident management system
Forwards incidents to relevant parties (higher support levels and/or SAP)
if current expertise is insufficient in finding a resolution.
Coordinator
Manager
Depending on the size of the support staff and/or the customer base, some of the key support roles can
be performed by one individual.
For some support organizations, the Processor role can be divided into several levels depending on
product expertise. Within the SAP PartnerEdge Channel Agreement, support levels are sub-divided into
two: First Level and Second Level. Following are the duties attributed to each support level:
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Searching for previous customer incidents with identical symptoms from various knowledge
bases
IT experience and, depending on the Level, detailed knowledge of the supported product or
product area. If necessary, project experience
Familiarity with the terminology used in the company
Readiness to participate in ongoing training measures to further consolidate and update existing
know-how
Fluency in a foreign language (especially English)
Knowledge of the internal communication means (for example, mail program)
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A VAR should also clearly determine which product areas will be supported depending on the
products/components installed at their customer base. Foremost amongst these core components for
SAP Business All-In-One are Basis, Financials & Controlling, Sales & Distribution, and Materials
Management. However, VARs should always look into products and/or components installed at
customers to appropriately determine the correct support staffing expertise needed.
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Figure 2-9
or component areas and has had experience with actual implementation of their product. It is
recommended to supplement existing expertise with SAP classroom training and to evaluate their
knowledge through SAP product certification with the achievement of an SAP Education Associate
certificate at a minimum. For more information on product certification, please visit
http://www.sap.com/education under the Education tab.
Support staff with the relevant role equivalents should take the various e-learning materials as provided
in the SAP PartnerEdge Portal. To view these training curriculums, visit the PartnerEdge Portal page with
the links provided for each specific product area.
The following should be considered:
System Administrator
o Plan and perform the implementation of SAP Solution Manager across all related IT-components by
setting clear objectives for the system infrastructure, implementation process and integration
o Optimize technical team infrastructure
Message Processor
o Provide first and second level support by processing customer messages on different components
o Root cause analysis: analyze root cause of an issue via remote connection and resolve known errors
by means of SAP notes, solved customer messages, documentation or verifying customizing entries
or hardware parameters
o Evaluate problem category and forward to next level of expertise
o If message processor does not find a solution, message is forwarded to SAP Support
Support Coordinator
o Plan and coordinate the support center
o Interact with the Partner Account Manager regarding specific support topics
o Define new services within your SAP Enterprise Support offering
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PEOPLE CERTIFICATION
The Partner COE program requires the fulfillment of two people certification variants:
Product-specific certification
Support-Specific Qualification
Every VAR support unit should have at least two (2) support staff who have completed a support-specific
web-assessment qualification, Q_SUPP_1, as a mandatory requirement. A minimum of two achievements
should be fulfilled regardless of the number of products supported.
C_PXSUP_90 or C_BOSUP_90 certification will continue to be accepted in lieu of Q_SUPP_1, until further
notice.
Product-Specific Certification
In addition to support-specific certification, VAR Partners having support staff providing incident
handling services should have at least two product-specific certificates for each supported product area.
These are equivalent to SAP Associate Certification at a minimum. Examples of these product or
application-related certification are as follows:
SAP Product
Family
Exam ID
Exam Description
Analytics
C_BOBIP_40
C_EPMBPC_*
C_EPMFC_*
C_GRCAC_10
C_A1LOG_*
C_A1FIN_*
C_SRM_7*
C_TCRM20_7*
C_TERP10_6*
C_THR12_6*
C_AFARIA_01
Applications
Mobile
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SAP HANA
C_SUPADM_01
C_HANASUP_1
OUTSOURCING OR SUBCONTRACTING
It is also not uncommon for some VAR Partners to outsource some components to other parties outside
of their general area of expertise. For instance, some VARs would outsource either the Basis component
or specialized components such as HR, CRM, or some industry solutions. Such situations are considered
as sub-contracting. It is important to note that the PartnerEdge Channel Partner agreement does not
allow sub-contracting of any maintenance service without explicit approval by SAP. Thus, an audit may
not include services provided by third party and could lead to critical gaps in your maintenance provision.
This could ultimately lead to an audit failure. Thus, do contact your Partner Account Manager for current
SAP policies on this arrangement prior to PCOE registration.
Should an explicit approval be available, do expect that the Auditor may request documentation and
participation from the third-party unit to verify support arrangements and integration of support
operations between both parties. The PCOE auditor may also request that a third-party representative be
present during the audit interview should this be deemed necessary.
The partners SAP HANA test system is connected to an SAP Solution Manager system through
which the functionalities for root cause analysis and SAP EarlyWatch Alert should be
operational.
Remote connection types SSH and SAP-DB are established and connected to SAP.
For VAR Partners supporting SAP HANA, an SAP HANA test system must be available
which fulfils the following requirements:
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Has remote connection to SAP including both SAP-DB and SSH connection types.
Is connected to an SAP Solution Manager system.
Root cause analysis via SAP Solution Manager has been set up and is operational.
SAP EarlyWatch Alert reports are available to demonstrate that data transfers
have been executed through SAP Solution Manager.
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Customer On-boarding
Incident Management
Incident Receipt
Incident Acknowledgement
Incident Dispatch
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Incident Processing
Incident Forwarding
Incident Closure
Feedback
PREPARING AN INCIDENT
Even for the most mature organizations, incidents are not an unlikely event. Thus, it is expected that
customers are dutifully prepared to respond to such situations by appropriately compiling information
necessary to report the occurrence and justify expected outcomes.
Self-Service
Before an incident can be created for the VAR support organization, it is highly recommended that the
customer end user tries to resolve the
incident within their means. This could be
through the use of an available solution
database, help documentation, or training
materials. An end user could also refer the
incident to their own key users, business
process owners, or competence teams.
These individuals or units could perform
initial review of the incident and could
offer potential solutions.
Reporting incidents to a central
competence group within the customer
organization is also a good practice as this
helps to prevent end users from posting the
same incidents to the VAR especially in
cases when the incident occurs with
multiple users within the same period. This
also helps to ensure that expected
outcomes for an incident are correct.
Once the customer has decided that it could not resolve the incident, then it can refer to the VAR support
organization for handling.
Preparing an Incident
It is important for the support organization to have provided clear directions which methods are available
for logging of incidents. Equally important are the details required by a support organization to
immediately process an incident. Following should be
mandatory information for an incident to be processed.
Following are some of these relevant details (see also SAP
Note 16018).
System identification
This would include the system id, system type and
client number as basic information. For incidents
of a technical nature, information on lower-level
components such as the database and/or the
operating system information should be provided.
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Priority
Customers should be able to appropriate relay the urgency of the incident. The VAR should also
be clear about their priority definitions and properly educate customers which priority levels to
use.
Reporter Details
The customer should supply contact information of the person who can best discuss and
respond to the VAR support processors. For incidents reported with top priority, contact
information and personnel from the customer side should be available at all times.
Short Description
Most incident management systems provide a facility for describing the context of an incident in
a brief one-liner statement. This statement should be as descriptive as possible to indicate
transaction codes, error codes, report/program names or other reference terms where readers
could immediately discern or perceive the content of an incident.
Incident Details
Understandably that most reporters want to send an incident off as soon as possible, the speed
by which an incident was created and sent to the support organization would be fruitless if the
support organization only sends it back with request for additional information that shouldve
been included in the first place. Reports of an incident should meticulously prepare their incident
providing the relevant details to avoid further ping-pong situations between the customer and
the support team for incidents that have unclear or incomplete information. Following
information should be included in the incident description:
o
Steps performed prior to the incident. This should include field values in case such values
are significant.
o Expected result of the transaction and actual result. This helps the processor to understand
what the customer is attempting to perform and to immediately discern if the customer has
executed the appropriate steps to arrive at their expected outcome.
o Error details including logs, dumps and screen shots
o Situation with the system prior to the incident (Has there been a modification? Was there
a recent upgrade? Are there any identified changes/improvements on the system? Was
this the first time to execute the transaction?)
o Can the incident be reproduced?
o Is the incident happening with just one user or multiple users?
Impact
For issues that have serious business or financial impact, it is important for customers to inform
the support unit of the consequence(s) to the business so the incident can be appropriate
processed with urgency and attention.
REPORTING AN INCIDENT
Depending on the setup arranged with the VAR, an incident could be reported by any of the following
individuals:
End User: any end user from the customer could report an incident directly to the VAR
support organization.
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Key User: individuals within the customer organization who have in depth knowledge of the
transaction for which an incident is to be reported on.
Business Process Owner: an individual who has detailed knowledge of the business process
for which the incident is related to. This individual could also have been involved in the
implementation process and is aware of the activities, decisions, and execution of the
companys business process.
Competence Team: a group of individuals set up by the customer organization to function as
a support unit for its end users. The team is comprised with individuals experienced in the
implementation and execution of the companys business processes.
Either an individual or unit is responsible for posting an incident, the VAR Support organization should
generally be communicating with an individual which will be herein designated as a Reporter.
A customer would be provided methods and tools by which an incident can be reported to the VAR
support organization. The most popular communication media are either online, phone or email.
Depending on methods used, a customer should be dutifully prepared to provide all relevant details to the
VAR support organization.
RECEIVING AN INCIDENT
There are different methods by which a support organization could receive an
incident from its customer base. This depends greatly on the provided
communications infrastructure as well as the features available from the
incident management system. Information gathered from this process is
significant as it would direct the efficiency by which an incident can be
processed by the support organization.
Execution plans vary depending on the method by which an incident is logged
as discussed in the following topics.
Incident received online
Preferred method
Near real time receipt by the VAR support organization depending on
network traffic
Provision of forms for detailing relevant incident information
Depending on incident management system features, can immediately
dispatch an incident based on priority and/or component area to a
specific support unit or processor
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their acknowledgement.
Typically contains information in an unstructured format, often leading to
the support personnel having to get back to the incident reporter
Requires manual work from the VAR to post the emailed incident into the
incident management system
Depending on incident management system features, can immediately
dispatch an incident based on priority and/or component area to a
specific support unit or processor
Less possibility for confusion if incident reported can be summarily copied
into the incident management system
When a VAR has received the incident and has this subsequently posted in
their incident management system, this can then be reviewed by a support
staff. The support staff could check the following from an incident:
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ASSIGNING AN INCIDENT
Upon receipt and subsequent review, the support staff with the Dispatcher
role can then assign an incident to the relevant consultant. An incident is
dispatched based on the following criteria:
Component/product
Priority
Availability of consultant
During processing, a support employee may need to use several sources for
responding or verifying their responses to the Reporter. These could be any
of the following sources:
Training Materials
Help Documentation
SAP Service Marketplace
SAP Notes Database
Own Solution Database
Peer Networks
Product Forums
In some circumstances, it may also be necessary for a support employee to
simulate the incident through a test system with the standard SAP product
installed. Simulation is needed in the following cases:
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Verify if the steps performed by the end user is correct and conforms to
proper procedures
If errors are not received in the standard test system, it can be assumed
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CLOSING AN INCIDENT
An incident can be closed if the customer confirms that the solution proposed
by the VAR has resolved their incident. The VAR can consider the following
strategies for closure:
Allow the customer to close the incident on their own. This could lead to
situations when an incident could be left unclosed for a long time unless
the customer is constantly reminded to do so.
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and facilities. The following common strategies could be used for this purpose:
ON-CALL SUPPORT
For VARs who do neither use SAP Solution Manager Service Desk nor have a 7x24 fully staffed support
operation, incidents received after office hours could be routed to an on-duty support staff via its support
hotline. On-duty support staff could determine the urgency of the call and can determine whether further
expertise may be required within the support team or if the incident necessitates referral to SAP Support.
VARs often provide on-call support providing alternate phone numbers to customers that is most often
an individual mobile number of specific support staff. This is not encouraged as this does not allow
permanency and could change as many times as support staff changes. It is not recommended to
consider this strategy during an audit. It is more preferred to utilize the dedicated support hotline which
should automatically route to other numbers as an alternative rather than providing multiple numbers for
customers to remember.
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ESCALATIONS
Escalations would normally be viewed as either a functional escalation or a hierarchical escalation.
A functional escalation is generally executed
within the a normal incident handling process
where an incident could be forwarded
(escalated) to the next higher support level if
lower levels are unable to offer a satisfactory
solution.
A hierarchical escalation involves the elevation
of an incident not only through support levels
but also across management or different lines
of business. This involves situations when an
incident may require exceptional processing
and may deviate from the normal support
Escalation procedures are triggered by specifically
processing procedures. These situations have to
defined
events or situations that would normally merit
be properly identified and should have a defined
expedited processing due to business or financial risks.
action plan. Though this can occur in the middle
of incident processing, these can also be identified at the onset of incident receipt. Thus, escalations
could be identified through specific triggers such as:
Severe financial or business impact: This pertains to a significant loss of business or revenue
until an incident is resolved. This would normally merit attention from high-level management
and require immediate resolution and constant monitoring.
Production Down: Though it is not uncommon to have situations when an application goes
down, the situation becomes more critical if it has been clearly identified that the application
may not be brought up within a short period. For example, a customer experiences a hardware
crash and realize that they have no available backup from the past months. System could not be
restored immediately and without prolonged effort which could lead to potential business loss.
Service Level Exceeded: There could be financial aspects to missing service levels which could
necessitate extra attention and faster processing.
Go Live Endangered: Go live is a highly critical phase not only involving the customer, their
business, but other parties as well such as the implementation team. This has the potential to
affect both financial and business aspects, such as added consulting man days, re-adjustment of
resources, activities, and timelines. Thus, incidents contributing to a possible delay in go live
needs to be addressed expediently.
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Similar to complaints, escalations should have clear ownership for resolution, identified action plans, and
constant monitoring and communication until its resolution.
In cases when SAP becomes involved in an escalation situation, it is important to ensure that SAP has a
clearly identified contact from the VAR side as well as the customer to properly coordinate activities,
plans, and resources. For such situations, it is also a necessary requirement to have remote connectivity
available to ensure that assistance can be provided by the SAP Support network globally and around the
clock.
Description of competencies
and capabilities
Start the presentation with an
introduction of the support
organization, its structure,
goals, targets, and key
achievements. Capitalize on
resource competencies such as
certifications and experience.
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It is also relevant to showcase the growth of a support organization if it conveys the results of
continuous improvements, maturity, and experience of the organization as a whole. This helps to
advertise to customers/prospects that the organization shows and promotes growth that could
benefit them as well.
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Basic services that are required by the majority of your target customers. This also means you
dont have to negotiate what needs to be done to keep a customers solution running. For
example, software maintenance which provides for guaranteed response times 24 hours a day
as part of a service level agreement to investigate breakdown or critical faults. Remember,
many of your customers have periods when they are working outside normal hours. This is often
when they are busy and therefore these extra hours are the most critical.
Additional services that you can package as an insurance, such as disaster recovery for a
catastrophic incident, sure as a fire, where the servers are lost but a back up held offsite could be
reloaded to a spare server, getting the customer back live in a short period of time. These can be
charged and delivered at a premium, but it is important to ensure there are not too many
Premium Packaged offers, so that the customer does not constantly find they are not covered.
Ten years ago many insurance companies went down this route of offering a high degree of
choice in extras, but when customers always found the policy didnt cover the specific incident
they had encountered, they became dissatisfied and went in search of companies offering a
comprehensive base level, with a few, very specific, premium offers. The same is true with
support. 90% of what 90% of your customers want needs to be in the Base Level, with only
highly specific increments falling into the Premium category either because of their unusual
nature or very high cost to provide.
The final category of support service you need to be able to offer is Ad hoc. This usually is
charged to the customer as required but may involve a retainer, or a facility where the
customer can, for example, use 5 hours a month for free, but pay thereafter. Ad hoc support
may be used for such things as managing the back-up process when the IT manager is on
holiday, or optimizing the database remotely. Typically not part of a standard support pack, but
something the customer may want, and is best delivered using the support team.
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A support-specific presentation package should be prepared and actively used for both
prospects and customers. It should have comprehensive information on support
offerings, support processes, infrastructure, as well as contact methods.
Objective: The Partner Account Manager is tasked to develop and enable the
business of their assigned VARs and help them extend to their fullest
potential, applying mid-long term view. The Channel Manager will support and
drive development of new business areas for partners.
Tasks
Helps VARs to analyze and leverage business potential using available processes and best practices;
ensures partners become self-sufficient in this.
Creates, monitors, and reviews business and marketing plans together with the assigned partners
using standard tools and templates.
Responsible for partner pipeline management, coverage and reporting.
Monitors overall partner performance including partner satisfaction and develops action plans to
correct as necessary.
Communicates SAP support strategy to Partners to ensure Partners understand the services value
proposition as well as requirements and obligations.
Coordinates with Partner Services Delivery organization where appropriate.
Keeps SAP internal teams informed about partners service/support requirements,
recommendations, and other general service/support related feedback.
Tasks
Develops an ongoing enablement plan for partner organization based on individual targets and
requirements
Provides technical knowledge related to SAP product and solutions, new features, and
information on new releases
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Helps coordinate access to many of the benefits that the partner organization is entitled to
according to SAP PartnerEdge program level
Proactively informs partner organization of updates and rollout of SAP initiatives
Helps partner understand the program framework and requirements and identify opportunities
to maximize partner performance in the SAP PartnerEdge program
Connects partner with experts from various SAP organizations, particular with specialized
technical resources in industry business units, solution management, and so on
Acts as another feedback conduit into SAP
VARs should have regular communication with their Partner Account Manager and
Partner Services Advisor.
Preventive maintenance
processes and procedures
Identifies facilities, applications, activities, and services providing aid in ensuring stability and
continuous operation of the customer solution.
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VARs should review basic maintenance offerings from both the SAP Standard Support and SAP
Enterprise Support portfolio and strive to include elements from these offerings into their own basic
support services.
Section 4.1 of this chapter further explains the possibilities of having additional or packaged offerings as
well as ad hoc services that could be provided on top of a general basic offering. These could be
mentioned during the audit interview but are not subject to evaluation or review except in situations
where these are defined as inclusive amongst the SAP standard offers.
Content of maintenance agreements are reviewed with particular attention to the following risk areas:
States provision of services, facilities, or responsibilities that are deemed deliverable through
SAP but are not inclusive within SAPs maintenance offering
Are not aligned with committed deliverables by the VAR in comparison with current documents
or presentations made available to customers
Submitted template or scanned copy should not contain any price points. These could either be
removed or covered upon submission.
Between basic maintenance templates with SAP Standard Support and SAP Enterprise Support
scope, do submit the template / copy which includes the SAP Enterprise Support scope.
VARs should provide maintenance agreements for all customers that are in alignment
with their own offering and/or SAPs.
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Incident number
Uniquely identifies an incident when additional review may be needed.
Creation Date/Time
Actual date/time when the incident has been posted by the end customer. This is usually be
used to start calculation for initial response time.
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Incident number
Uniquely identifies an incident when additional review may be needed.
Creation Date/Time
Actual date/time when the incident has been posted by the end customer. This would usually be
used to start calculation for initial response time.
Status
This indicates the current progress of the incident.
Completed Date/Time
Indicates the date/time when an incident has been classified as closed by the support unit. This
may or may not necessarily indicate that the customer has confirmed that the incident could be
closed.
For VARs with committed service levels, additional data could be provided as with service level
reporting.
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TEAM/PROCESSOR REPORTING
Support staff should also monitor their own performance and this should be performed regularly
especially if this involves their individual KPIs. Depending
on performance targets for the support staff, there are
some key elements that should be available in either a
team or processor-specific reporting. Team/Processor
reporting is normally being used by support management
for regular evaluation or assessment of support staff.
For individual reporting, the following elements should be
considered and should be filtered either specific to team or
individual support processor:
Incident number
Uniquely identifies an incident when additional
review may be needed.
Creation Date/Time
Indicates the actual date/time when the incident
has been posted by the end customer. Would
generally have relevance to the report especially
when needed to assess processing time.
Status
This indicates the current progress of the incident.
Completed Date/Time
Indicates the date/time when an incident has been classified as closed by the support unit. This
may or may not necessarily indicate that the customer has confirmed that the incident could be
closed. This information is relevant in conjunction with the status of the incident as the
expectation should be that the incident is confirmed by the end customer. If this has not yet
been performed by the customer, then it would be good practice for the processor to check with
the customer if the incident can be closed or if they are satisfied with the solution.
Processing Time
Indicates the amount of time spent by the support team in processing the incident. For some
incident management systems, this could indicate total processing time by the support unit or
could be processing time per group/level within the support unit. This is relevant since it
indicates the effort utilized for resolving an incident. For team or individual statistics, it would
also be good to note if the Processor/Team has processed the incident efficiently or if the
Processor/Team requires additional training or expertise to resolve incidents faster.
For VAR Partners with service level adherence as a performance indicator, then it is important to include
some elements from the service level reporting within the processor/team reporting as well.
Within an audit exercise, it is expected that VAR Partners are able to demonstrate or produce reports
that are generated out of their primary incident management system.
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MANAGEMENT REPORTING
It is also a good practice to have consolidated and
statistical information for support management
or company management on a regular basis. Do
note that support should also be considered as an
avenue for additional business and services, thus,
reporting can also be reviewed or assessed for
indicators that would trigger these.
For management, it could be important to present
the following information in summary:
Resolution rate
Status reporting
Statistical inputs and/or trends analysis would also be welcomed for the following reporting information:
INTERNAL FEEDBACK
Within the support staff itself or within the company, providing avenues for staff to contribute their
experiences and lessons learned on-the-job is
a valuable forum for considering
improvements with support operations. Thus,
having regular meetings with support staff
and encouraging experience sharing as well as
fostering a culture where suggestions are
respected and considered should be available.
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towards improvements or changes if these have been discussed with staff that will be immediately
affected by these.
Have regular meetings with support staff to discuss experiences, issues, action items,
and on-going performance. All meetings should be properly documented and reviewed.
EXTERNAL FEEDBACK
Customers definitely have a stake in service improvements by the support organization. Thus, there
should be constant and regular communication with customers on improvement areas while also offering
a forum to get their overall experience. Though it is important to get individual feedback per incident, this
might become too redundant and some customer end users would tend to ignore this. However, a regular
survey session, such as one conducted annually for instance, might be more welcome.
For support-specific surveys, it is important to have a minimum amount of questions and to focus on
areas specific to support. These could be any of the following factors:
Response/resolution time
Solution quality
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There should be available avenues for process improvement that is regularly reviewed
and discussed with relevant parties. This should generally be spearheaded by Support
Management.
Prepare and validate infrastructure required on both parties to ensure seamless communication
and delivery of maintenance services.
Gather information from the customer to identify key contacts for both business and technical
aspects.
Communicate maintenance deliverables both by the VAR Partner and of SAP.
Discuss and clarify support procedures and processes.
Identify action plans for gaps identified where follow-up work needs to be addressed by either or
both parties.
It is expected that a support readiness activity should be completed for all customers, especially for
those under SAP Enterprise Support, at least prior to go live and to ensure a re-visit of this task on an
annual basis.
Within the PartnerEdge exhibit, a support readiness activity is also known as the Initial Assessment
service. This could be fulfilled with the execution of an SAP Enterprise Support Setup Service via SAP
Solution Manager. However, a VAR Partner can define its own activity to render the same content. As this
activity validates the preparedness of both the VAR Partner and the customer with respect to
maintenance delivery, this is a critical element for ensuring that both parties are aligned and informed.
A support readiness activity should be available and conducted for all customers to set
proper expectations with respect to maintenance deliverables and allow a
comprehensive review of support setup between both parties.
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Project Administration
Solution Documentation
Maintenance Optimizer
Maintenance Certificate
Technical Monitoring
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All maintenance customers should be identified in the SAP Solution Manager system of
the VAR Partner.
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After go live, the project documentation can then be transferred to a solution for maintenance activities
or technical and business process monitoring tasks.
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Validation of usage to identify modifications that have been unused for a significant period
and could increase maintenance cost and performance losses
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To learn more about solution documentation from SAP support standards, visit
https://service.sap.com/supportstandards. Learn more about SAP Solution Manager functionality
related to solution documentation at https://service.sap.com/alm Solution Documentation &
Implementation.
You can find detailed information on how you can document your customer solution including a helpful
step-by-step guideline at http://service.sap.com/alm Application Life-Cycle Management for VARs
Solution Documentation.
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For VAR Partners, it is highly recommended to use the SAP Solution Manager ITSM for handling the
incident management process. VAR Partners offering support for SAP Business All-In-One and SAP
HANA are mandated to have SAP Solution Manager Service Desk operational regardless of any third
party incident management system used. For SAP Solution Manager Service Desk, the Support Provider
scenario should be used as there are other scenarios available for other user types.
Provided that the SAP Solution Manager system has established an operational connection with the SAP
Support backbone and where appropriate customer authorization are available, VARs can download
information related to its customer systems as defined from the SAP Service Marketplace into their SAP
Solution Manager system. This helps to minimize manual creation and / or update of customer systems
by the VAR Support team.
Within SAP Solution Manager 7.1, VARs have the option to use either the work centers or the ITSM user
interface. SAP Work Centers have been widely used in the previous SAP Solution Manager 7.0 version
where SAP Solution Manager 7.1 offers a few changes which should barely affect customer users who
have been working with the work center interface since.
VAR Partners should ensure that all current maintenance customers are defined in the Service Desk
system. This should allow any customer user to log incidents with their support provider should this be
necessary and critically in urgent situations. SAP Auditors can validate the existence of all customers in
the Service Desk functionality where needed. Thus, completeness in this aspect of the Service Desk
functionality configuration should be ensured.
User Types
There are three user types that echo the authorization profiles that are created for the IT Service
Management in SAP Solution Manager. These are Key User, Processor, and Administrator.
Key Users pertain to customer users and are granted limited authorization to primarily post incidents,
reply to the support unit, and confirm incidents posted. Figure 6-8 shows the basic ITSM interface for a
key users Home screen. From this screen, customer users can report incidents to the VAR support
team, display all messages created by the user, and to also have a widget (Figure 6-10) that shows
incidents that requiring user action.
For creating
incidents
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A Processor role is expected to be part of the VAR support unit and has required authorizations to view
customer messages for incident processing. Processors could create incidents on behalf of the
customer base, process them, assign incidents across the support organization, forward messages to
SAP as well as to respond to incidents sent to SAP.
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The Administrator is responsible for the maintenance of the IT Service Management functionality. This
could include creation and maintenance of users, configuration, customization and improvement of the
functionality, as well as providing support and resolution efforts for incidents related to the IT Service
Management. Thus, additional authorization is provided to this user for performing stated tasks on top of
those held by a Processor role.
Administrators would be relevant for instances when there are new customers and where these have to
be defined within ITSM along with respective user ids for new customer users.
VARs have to ensure security of its customer data by strictly utilizing the provided authorizations for
specific roles. Using full authorization or Processor authorization for customer users is strictly disallowed
and would result to an audit failure. These could be checked by SAP Auditors to ensure that customer
users have delimited authorizations which prohibit visibility of other customer systems, decrease
authorization to perform tasks that can affect the processing of incidents, and disallow forwarding of
incidents to SAP except for potential Very High priority incidents raised outside business hours.
Amongst the relevant features of the ITSM functionality that can be used are the following:
Service Level Agreements can be set up to trigger specific actions (i.e., sending emails to a
target group / individual) based on a defined set of conditions such as the customer priority,
category.
Knowledge Articles can be created by a VAR to document incidents and solutions that can be
referenced by other users or by the support staff itself. These articles can include keywords that
could be used when searching for potential solutions to incidents.
Time Recording is essential for situations when effort utilized requires documentation. This
could be for reporting purposes, or in some cases, for potential billing. Times recorded can be
further classified based on work or activity performed.
Access to the SAP Notes Database can be performed directly from ITSM where the user is
redirected to the SAP Service Marketplace where an SAP notes search can be performed. SAP
Notes can be attached to incidents for reference by customer users or other support staff.
Support Reporting has been significantly improved with the availability of either list reporting,
BW reporting, and some pre-defined BI Dashboard applications
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With the integration to the SAP Support backbone, incidents posted via the SAP Solution Manager can be
forwarded seamlessly to SAP Support without having to manually create a separate incident via the SAP
Service Marketplace. To cater for assisting VARs in providing 7x24 support, SAP Solution Manager can
automatically forward Very High incidents to SAP outside defined business hours by the VAR. For such
cases, SAP then relates directly to the customer without the necessity of having VAR support staff
available during those times.
Where VAR Partners offer after-office hours support through SAP via the SAP Solution Manager Service
Desk, an SAP Auditor can validate that business hours are appropriately maintained per customer.
Where this has not been set up for some customers, after-office hours support will not work and, hence,
incidents on Very High that are posted beyond business hours will remain at the VAR Partners SAP
Solution Manager system until its next business day / hour. Insufficient setup on this aspect could result
in an audit failure. Thus, this has to be ensured for each customer and any new customer, thereafter.
As an advantage of integration, ITSM can receive incidents from other inbound channels such as
projects, solutions, technical and business process monitoring applications and other functionalities
running within SAP Solution Manager that can either manually or automatically trigger creation of
incidents.
Knowledge Base and Services Information
To find setup and usage information on the Service Desk functionality, do visit the VAR-specific partner
pages on SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/var-partner . Here you will find information
on e-learning materials, training roadmaps, configuration and setup information, usage information, and
various white papers on the incident management and application life-cycle management topic.
For guided configuration assistance, SAP offers channel partners the Expert Guided Implementation
Session for Incident, Problem, and Request Management (ITSM) for VARs. This is an efficient and
interactive possibility to set up SAP Solution Manager Service Desk in a defined period of time. This
service is designed for VARs to support them during setup and configuration of Service Desk. For
available schedules within your region, please check http://service.sap.com/solutionmanager
Services Expert Guided Implementation Expert Guided Implementation Calendar
The SAP Solution Manager Service Desk functionality is the recommended incident
management system platform for all VARs. It is mandatory for VAR Partners supporting
both SAP Business All-In-One and SAP HANA to maintain all customers in the service
desk functionality to ensure that incidents can be forwarded to SAP through this
medium.
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Figure 6-13. Maintenance Optimizer interaction with the SAP Global Support Backbone
It is mandatory for all customers supporting SAP Business All-In-One to ensure that the
Maintenance Optimizer functionality is operational at all times.
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Maintenance Optimizer was integrated with software lifecycle manager service to further automate the
download of support packages and SAP enhancement packages as well as the deployment of the
packages to satellite systems connected to SAP Solution Manager. The integration with SAPs
Figure 6-15. Automatic Distribution of the Maintenance Certificate for Customers supported by
a VARs SAP Solution Manager system
transport management system makes the management of all software and configuration changes
consistent.
Another improvement was the introduction of a maintenance certificate. The certificate enables software
logistics tools to identify your customers system and the exact scope of your customers corresponding
SAP maintenance agreement. This will also improve the quality of your customers SAP solution by
preventing patches from being deployed to the wrong system accidentally.
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System Monitoring
Visualize metrics and events including thresholds and current rating / value
Reduce the TCO by providing one central entry point combining monitors for PI overall status
with drill-down options
Reduce time for regular as system health checks and hand-over procedures as well as from
incident detection to root cause analysis
End User Experience Monitoring
Automated execution of recorded end user scenarios
Measurement of availability and response times from
end user point of view
Client performance data is correlated with server side
performance data
Direct access from monitoring to Root Cause Analysis
(End-to-End Trace Analysis)
Deep integration in End-to-End Monitoring and Alerting
Infrastructure
Support of Metric Reporting, SLA Reporting and
Management Dashboards
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Central status overview for connections between SAP systems based on pre-selected RFC
destination definitions
Support of peer-to-peer connections (two managed systems involved) and scenario specific
connections (more than two managed systems involved)
Provides customers with transparency regarding technical interface landscape covering RFC
calls, Web Service calls as well as PI message handling
Allows mapping from technical interface information to human understandable entities by usage
of Interface Channels with appropriate attributes
Delivers an unified approach to visualize the different interface types including sufficient
monitoring and alerting for performance, usage, availability and exceptions
All customers with productive installations should be defined in the SAP Solution
Manager system, particularly, the Technical Monitoring work center.
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These procedures describe what proactive monitoring activities have to be executed to detect businesscritical exception situations and what corrective actions are required in the given context. The
procedures also describe who is responsible for certain activities in the business process operations
team or the business unit. The execution of these procedures can be supported by monitoring and
alerting tools within the business process and interface monitoring concept.
After the exception handling model has been defined, the business process and interface monitoring
standard supports the monitoring of the mission critical business processes, enabling customers to
identify problems long before typical IT alerts would be triggered.
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The Business Process Monitoring functionality within the SAP Solution Manager system offers the
following features:
Business Process Orientation. All alerts are (uniquely) assigned to specific business process
steps and/or to specific interfaces. Subsequent business process steps that might be affected
are immediately visible.
Proactive Alert Monitoring. Early warning of
(technical) incidents before end users report it.
Alert History. Storage of historic alerts, logging
of alert confirmations, comments for problem
resolution.
Auto-reaction Methods. Emails and SMS
messages can be sent to appropriate support or
business employee. Provision of pre-filled alert
information/context.
Service Desk Integration. Service desk
messages can be opened in dialog or background.
Service desk messages can be automatically filled
with meaningful alert information. Messages can
be tracked.
Central Documentation. Facility for central
documentation of business processes, error
handling procedures and escalation paths,
monitoring responsibilities.
Customer-specific Monitoring. Easy integration
Figure 6-19. Business Process
of customer-specific monitors via customer
Status Indicators
rd
3 Party Tool Integration. Alert from other
monitoring tools can be brought in business process context via CCMS integration.
Service Level Reporting Integration. Offers pre-configured SL reporting, trend analysis for job
runtimes, trend analysis for throughput & backlog integrators.
BI Integration. Flexible ad-hoc reporting with business process relations, pre-configured web
templates, trend analysis for job runtimes, trend analysis for throughput & backlog indicators
Cross-Application Monitoring
Interface Monitoring
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The Root Cause Analysis functionality should be operational and actively monitoring an
SAP HANA Test System for VAR Partners supporting the SAP HANA product family.
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The Judging Committee is comprised of senior support employees at SAP Active Global Support with
expert knowledge on PCOE operations. They review audit reports to cross-check compliance areas and
can add improvement suggestions where necessary. In conjunction with the findings from the PCA as
documented in the audit report, an audit result is decided by the Judging Committee which is later
handed over by the PCA to the VAR Partner as either a pass or fail rating.
Incident Management system with SAP Solution Manager Service Desk being mandatory for
VAR Partners supporting SAP Business All-In-One and/or SAP HANA. Auditors will require a full
demonstration of end-to-end incident handling processes.
Remote connection infrastructure strategies
Full time support staff with required support consultant certification
Test Systems for products supported
SAP Solution Manager functionality knowledge
Support introduction or presentation materials for understanding the VAR Partners
maintenance offer.
Customer maintenance agreement
Knowledge of SAP maintenance provisions for both the VAR Partner and indirect customers
Support processes and procedures including documentation available. This includes all key
processes for incident handling, escalation/complaint handling, support readiness activities,
support reporting and feedback gathering.
PCOE requirements may change over time and, thus, it is always a good exercise for the VAR Partner to
have active communication with their Partner Services Advisor and Partner Account Manager for any
new developments on support authorization requirements.
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Where a VAR Partner completes the readiness audit successfully, support authorization is granted for a
12 month period commencing from the audit interview date. This allows the VAR Partner time to acquire
customers and implement solutions to yield productive systems.
VALIDATION CHECK
Before the 12 month period allotted for VAR Partners who has successfully achieved support
authorization via the Readiness Audit, a validation check should be conducted. This should be requested
explicitly via a support message (see Section 7.3) with short text Request for Partner COE: Validation
Check. The expectation at this stage is that the VAR Partner has acquired a customer and was able to
bring their customer systems into productive operation. Thus, SAP can conduct a short validation
exercise with respect to the integration of customers into the VAR Partners execution of its support
services and operations.
Once completed successfully, the support authorization of the VAR Partner is further extended for
another 12 months.
RE-CERTIFICATION
VAR Partners who has achieved support authorization through either a validation check (starting from
February 2014), via a certification exercise (before February 2014) or via a re-certification exercise are
required to re-certify their Partner COE support infrastructure and operations at least three (3) months
before their current support authorization expires.
A Partner COE re-certification activity re-evaluates the VAR Partners performance against SAPs quality
matrix which includes continued maintenance of mission critical elements such as remote connectivity to
SAP and SAP EarlyWatch Alert data transfers (where applicable), low customer maintenance
termination ratio, low billable messages count, absence of customer complaints, SAP Solution Manager
adoption and usage, as examples. An audit interview may also be conducted where necessary to clarify
support concepts.
A successful re-certification grants the VAR Partner a further two-year extension of their support
authorization.
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Confirmation: This requires a valid signatory of the company attesting to the correctness of all
responses provided in the checklist. Where English is not used for either the checklist responses
or submitted documents, the VAR Partner has to provide confirmation that SAP Auditors may
use translation tools and services (private or public) to convert data and information into
English.
Supported Products: the VAR Partner needs to confirm products that will be supported by their
Partner COE. It is expected that all products with status Authorized shall also be supported by
the VAR Partner unless the corresponding support dimension for the product have been
maintained as Opted Out.
Current Support Performance Data: Chapter 4 focuses on performance figures as may be
gathered through SAP internal systems and the VAR Partners own. This helps SAP to
understand the VAR Partners continued commitment for SAP standards by maintaining high
compliance rates and satisfaction levels.
Partner Center of Operations Structure: Chapter 5 requires information pertaining to the
physical elements of a Partner COE setup. This includes support staffing, incident management
system used, remote connectivity strategy, test system availability, systems and database used.
SAP Solution Manager: Requires details of the SAP Solution Manager installation and
functionality usage where applicable. This section also clearly discusses the remote connection
requirements and necessary authorizations to be provided for an SAP Auditor to validate usage
and set up of the SAP Solution Manager system.
Support Processes: Chapter 7 requests for information pertaining to support procedures and
respective documentation.
Continuous Improvement: Requests information pertaining to support-specific reporting and
satisfaction surveys used.
Combined Certification: Chapter 9 of the checklist should only be answered if the audit request
is by more than one VAR. Further, the VARs involved should be PartnerEdge VARs opting for
VAR-Delivered Support and are related to each other; i.e. subsidiaries.
VARs should endeavour to provide answers to all questions from the checklist and to provide supporting
documents where additional information may be necessary. Documentation submitted should have the
following attributes:
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Once a Solution has been identified, this has to be explicitly registered with SAP. To do so, from the SAP
Solution Manager system, access the Solution Manager Administration work center and select
Solutions. Solutions created in your system will be displayed in a table. Verify that the solution for your
2.
3.
4.
5.
Maintain the secure login details of the SAP Solution Manager system (if used) in the SAP
Service Marketplace.
It is preferred that default user id SAPSUPPORT is used for the SAP Solution Manager
login.
Please reference the table below for the required authorizations for the user.
Open the connection types R/3 Support, HTTP Connect or SAPGUI+Browser for the next
seven (7) days.
Create an SAP Support message under component SV-BO-REQ following short text template
below specific to the audit type requested:
Readiness Audit : Request for Partner COE certification: Readiness Audit
Validation Check
: Request for Partner COE certification: Validation Check
Re-Certification : Request for Partner COE certification: Re-certification
If SAP Solution Manager is used as the primary incident management system, do provide a
template or reference user id example for a customer user.
Except Validation Check requests, the SAP Support message should contain the following
attachments:
Fully completed and signed Partner COE Checklist
Supporting Documents
If preferred, the VAR may request for container where all documents can be compiled and sent
to SAP.
As the SAP Auditor can directly validate the set up of the SAP Solution Manager for VAR Partner usage,
the following authorization roles should be available for the user id provided to ensure that the necessary
checks can be performed.
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User ID
Authorization Role
SAPSUPPORT
Work Centers:
SAP_SMWORK_IMPL
SAP_SMWORK_TECH_MON
SAP_SMWORK_SYS_MON
SAP_SMWORK_DIAG
SAP_SMWORK_BASIC_SM
SAP_SMWORK_BASIC_INCIDENT
SAP_SMWORK_INCIDENT_MAN_SPC
SAP_SMWORK_BPM
Individual Roles:
SAP_SOLAR_RO
SAP_SM_SOLUTION_DIS
SAP_SV_SOLUTION_MANAGER_DISP
SAP_BI_E2E
SAP_DBA_DISP
SAP_EM_DISPLAY
SAP_RCA_DISP
SAP_RCA_SAP_DISP
SAP_BC_SEC_USER_DISPLAY
Composite Roles
-
SAP_SM_L2_COMP
SAP_SUPPDESK_SP_ADMIN_COMP
Stated roles above primarily allow only DISPLAY ONLY privileges to validate the usage of specific
functionalities in the SAP Solution Manager. Provision of SAP_ALL authorization is at the discretion of
the VAR.
The VAR Partner can also opt to request for remote view (such as via SAPConnect) in lieu of actual login
by the SAP Auditor. This can be used for issues with respect to remote connection or authorizations. This
can be requested by the SAP Auditor where delays are incurred due to remote connectivity issues.
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management system from creation to closure. Within this section, knowledge of SAP Solution
Manager functionality should also be demonstrated, where applicable.
Remote connectivity is a critical aspect for provision of maintenance services. VARs will also be asked
to show that they are able to access customer systems (only in cases where partner has existing
maintenance customers), test systems, and their own support systems (especially if support systems
are not locally-based) to verify availability, accessibility, and performance.
Random Interviews: the audit also consists of interviews conducted with different support roles to
determine knowledge and consistency of processes and procedures.
In general, within the audit session the following tasks should be performed and completed by the SAP
Auditor:
Validate the completeness of the submitted Partner COE checklist including submitted documents.
Documents submitted can be opened and read. This requires that documents can be opened by
commonly used tools and applications and are generally in English.
If SAP Solution Manager is used, conduct a remote login to the system to check for functionalities
used.
If SAP Solution Manager Service Desk is used as an incident management system, validate customer
user authorizations.
Trigger test calls within and outside business hours for the identified support hotline number(s).
Where necessary, an audit interview and/or demonstration of systems used can be scheduled to
clarify and understand support operations.
The audit is usually completed within 5-6 hours. The discussions assist the SAP Auditor to determine
actual support provision and capabilities of the Partner as well as confirm the availability of the Partners
support infrastructure and operations.
After the audit session, the SAP Auditor creates a certification report containing findings from the audit
session as well as the VARs documents. SAP Auditor recommendations for potential improvement is
also documented in the report.
The audit report is submitted within a few days to a judging panel with the Auditors own recommendation
for either a pass or fail rating.
Where support authorization has been granted from a successful readiness audit exercise, the VAR
Partner has to trigger the validation check to be performed at least two (2) months before expiry.
A validation check offers the shortest audit effort and primarily checks those elements that could not be
assessed during the readiness audit in the absence of a productive customer. These audit activities could
include the following:
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performance checks that were not included from the readiness audit exercise.
For re-certification requests, an SAP Auditor will perform tasks both from the readiness audit and
validation check. In addition, a review of the previous reports recommendations and its application will
be reviewed. Therefore, a VAR should ensure that it has read the recommendations as provided from its
previous audit report and ensured that suggestions for improvement have been performed and are
visible during the re-certification effort. During the re-certification audit, the Auditor will reference the
VARs previous audit report and shall check and assess the VARs improvement against previous
recommendations.
Do note that a re-certification has more stringent standards with respect to execution of support services
as it is expected that VARs had utilized the two-year duration to improve its support offering and
operations. SAP Auditors would be geared towards direct checks into systems and infrastructure rather
than requiring VARs for demonstrations. Therefore, it is not expected that previous recommendations
are ignored and no improvement is determined within a re-certification exercise.
A VAR should also ensure that they are familiar with current requirements for Partner Center of Expertise
in the event that existing requirements and standards have been changed. Thus, it is encouraged to liaise
with your Partner Account Manager and Partner Services Advisor on a regular basis to ensure that your
Partner Center of Expertise is continuously operating on SAP recommended infrastructure and
processes.
Apart from reviewing improvements from the previous audit report, the SAP Auditor shall also reevaluate the VARs compliance against any additional requirements at the time of audit. Therefore, it is
expected that the VAR continues to operate its support functions in congruence with SAP standards.
Though the checks performed may be longer in a re-certification effort, this could be minimized with the
absence of an interview session should it be deemed that this task is no longer needed
Where no delays are incurred, an audit exercise can normally be completed within 3-5 days. The following
situations may contribute to delays in audit completion:
An audit report is generated for both the readiness audit and re-certification following the activities
mentioned above. The audit report documents relevant findings and compiles recommendations for
improvement. Based on the SAP Auditors evaluation of compliance data, an audit result is determined.
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Deals sold thereafter shall only be under the SAP-Delivered Support model
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For a Readiness Audit, the audit date represents the date of the audit interview session. For other audit
types and if there is no audit interview conducted, the audit date reflects the certification report creation
date.
Chapter 9 of the Partner Center of Expertise Checklist should be completed where the
relationship between participating VARs should be clarified.
The PCOE questionnaire should also include localized information such as support hotlines,
support representatives, localized materials, statistics, where applicable.
A minimal audit interview could be required for random subsidiaries of the SAP Auditors
choosing. Therefore, the audit phase could be longer than that of an individual scope.
Identification of the leading support unit representing all other participants in common aspects
or components.
In some cases, support staff may be located in different VAR subsidiaries. Do consider the following
guidelines:
The VAR Partner should ensure that all support locations fulfil the support consultant
requirement which mandates that at least two support staff achieve Q_SUPP certification per
support location.
For each product family supported per support location, the product-specific certification
should be achieved by at least two (2) individuals.
It should also be further noted that there is no guarantee that all VARs participating in this joint exercise
shall have the same results as the execution of support deliverables and compliance elements shall still
be evaluated on a per VAR Partner basis.
Is it expected that VARs who initially certified under a combined scope should also do so upon recertification?
No. The audit effort and strategy is dependent on the VAR situation and preference at the time of recertification. Therefore, the VAR is free to have the same entities participate in a re-certification effort, to
add more or reduce participants, or to revert to individual audits.
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There are no differences in the audit process delivered for a VAR that is involved within a Global VAR
(gVAR) agreement. As such, a gVAR subsidiary can choose to certify on their own (individually) or to
participate in a combined audit scope as discussed in Section 7.3 of this chapter.
It is advisable for Global VARs to look into the following steps to formalize a Partner Center of Expertise
certification strategy:
a. Identify all subsidiaries that have signed the Country Specific Participation Agreement (CSPA).
Further determine the solution areas supported by each subsidiary and the support model (VARDelivered Support or SAP-Delivered Support) chosen moving forward.
b. Considering all identified subsidiaries, check for similarities in support execution. These could include
the following areas or criteria; geographic location (region), solution areas they support,
infrastructure usage, support model chosen). Thereafter, these common areas should then define
the different variants by which certification can be planned.
c. Determine the certification route for each variant; Individual or Combined.
Further consider timelines for certification and continuous review sessions for additional and/or new
subsidiaries.
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