So you are planning or have already started your move to SAP S/4HANA. Congratulations! This is a big step and an exciting journey. You have probably also already been reading about SAP Activate Methodology. If you have not, you will soon! SAP Activate is the methodology used for all SAP S/4HANA implementations. Implementation partners will be familiar with it, and you should get familiar with it also before the project begins.

SAP Activate is divided into 6 phases. In this blog, we will be talking specifically about the Explore phase and what is arguably the most critical task in the entire project, the Fit-Gap Analysis. Mistakes in the Fit-Gap Analysis will have far reaching impacts across the entire project and can include missed deadlines, budget overruns, failed quality gates, and failed user acceptance tests. Additional blogs will follow in this series exploring other phases of SAP Activate.

What is the Fit-Gap Analysis? What happens during the Fit-Gap Analysis?

Depending on whether you are implementing Cloud or On-Premise, SAP has 2 different versions of SAP Activate and 2 different names for this activity. Don’t worry, the names are fairly similar as are the activities themselves.

1. Activate Methodology for S/4HANA Cloud (Public Cloud) refers to this activity as Fit-to-Standard Analysis.

“The purpose of this deliverable is to validate the predefined scenarios, processes and enhancements to customer requirements and identify delta requirements.”

2. Activate Methodology for S/4HANA On Premise refers to this activity as Fit-Gap Analysis 

“The purpose of solution validation / fit-gap analysis deliverable is to validate the predefined scenarios, processes and enhancements; identify potential gaps between delivered product and customer requirements.”

As you can see from the description, although the deliverable names are slightly different, the activities performed and the purpose of the activities are identical. 

Regardless of whether you are following Activate for Cloud or Activate for On-Premise, during a Fit-Gap Analysis, the project team reviews SAP standard processes as provided in the SAP Best Practices Explorer. The customer then evaluates whether the SAP Best Practices are a viable solution for their business needs as delivered. During this process, the team identifies gaps, notes any changes required from current processes, and compiles backlog development and configuration requirements.

Typically, an implementation partner will perform demo scripts in a sample SAP environment for the customer team during this activity. In this case, seeing really is believing. Reviewing processes on paper just doesn’t cut it. Even better would be if the customer could actually have hands on experience with these processes before making critical decisions about their future design. At this point in the project, however, there just isn’t time to train the entire project team on all the S/4HANA processes that need to be reviewed.

OnScreen Enables Customers during Fit-Gap Analysis

This is where OnScreen can help. OnScreen provides step-by-step, guided walkthroughs directly in the SAP Fiori application to help business users execute complex transactions. OnScreen also allows customers to create guides that are very specific to their own business process. But during the Fit-Gap Analysis, you will be working with SAP Best Practices. So, the great news here is that OnScreen already has standard content for SAP Best Practices. Your team can use these OnScreen guides out of the box during the Fit-Gap Analysis to help execute live transactions and truly understand the business value before making critical decisions.

After the Fit-Gap Analysis, OnScreen guides are easily modifiable by the customer or project team to fit your new, customer-specific business processes. These same guides can then be used during SME and End User Training. Finally, after go-live, the guides can be used for new user onboarding, cross-training, and live ongoing production assistance.

Contact OnScreen today to find out how you can get the most out of SAP Activate with Onscreen.

OnScreen is the agile digital adoption platform for SAP and web-based enterprise applications that boosts process efficiency and employee productivity by empowering any user to become a super user. Book a Demo to learn the other ways DAPs can save your enterprise money through successful digital adoption.