SAP Solution manager (SolMan) in nutshell
Many time end users, consultants, analysts and project members wonder what SAP solution manager is all about. Here I have tired to provide my understanding of solution manger in nutshell without any acronyms or buzzwords.
Why we use solution manager?
It’s mandatory requirement from SAP for Business suite 2005 and beyond customer. It also provides other functionality for managing SAP environments
What functionality solution manager provides?
Solution manager provides functionalities in main three levels. 1) Technical services linking with SAP 2) Change management control 3) Knowledge repository
Using solution manager is mandatory because it provides administration tools to monitor system performance and early warning system. It’s only way to implement support packs and install upgrade to existing systems. SolMan links to multi system landscapes including BI, Portal, ECC etc.
Apart from mandatory task as listed above, SolMan provide other functionalities. Various organizations use SolMan in various degrees for change management and as knowledge repository.
Change management controls all software and configuration changes of the ERP solution. This includes the request tracking, approval process, release management and finally deployment of changes. This increases transparency of changes and hence quality of the solution and enables traceability of all changes. Change manamgment managed transport request and it integrates well with standard system landscape of development, quality assurance and production. Workflow enabled change management control can also be implemented. Change management control can streamline change management process. Implementing change management control require system configuration. Support staff personnel needs to be trained in change management system. Solman’s change request management tool can be used as issue management system that is tightly integrated with SAP landscape.
Project teams often use SolMan as knowledge repository. This is basically like shared folder in SAP with many more SAP functionality and authorization controls. This knowledge repository is often used to store documents of project preparation, blue printing, implementation, configuration, training and testing documents. These documents can be used for knowledge transfer, project audit etc. Challenge is to keep these documents current and maintaining quality of repository during project. This may be become less relevant when project is moved to support mode and repository is not maintained.
In conclusion, SolMan is great tool for functional analysts and business process owners. It can be implemented with comparatively less effort and provides great benefit.
I welcome your comments.
