SAP Upgrades Made Simple

SAP customers always fear software upgrades. This fear is usually unwarranted and based more on lack of understanding than anything else.

One fact which should put your mind at rest is that SAP actually intended the customer to perform the upgrade themselves. It is true that upgrading SAP modules and components is not as simple as running an upgrade.exe file to magically run the process automatically. But, it is not that complicated. The purpose of this article is to take the mystery out of upgrading your SAP ERP system.

Before discussing the upgrade, we should mention some key success factors. It is important to take a disciplined methodical approach is to the upgrade. Try not to deviate from the plan. The plan is your roadmap and will provide guidance throughout the process. Upgrading is a team effort and is important to define the roles and responsibilities before the upgrade begins. Key members of the team are technical staff (including specialised external consultants), business process staff and to the users.

During the upgrade you will need to reference documentation including the SAP upgrade roadmap, upgrade manuals, and of course the upgrade script.

You will also need to plan for system downtime. This is the time when your SAP is not available for use. It is best therefore to schedule an upgrade during a quiet period, possibly over a long weekend. Upgrades can take three or four days.

There are also some long lead items which need to be addressed prior to scheduling the upgrade. These items include the availability of key personnel, new hardware (if required), upgrading your database and upgrading the operating system.

Murphy's Law certainly applies to upgrades: If anything can go wrong it usually does! Hopefully your upgrade will proceed with out any major issue, but it is prudent to have a plan to follow if things do go wrong. This contingency plan should comprise of a series of go/no-go decision points. These are critical stages in the upgrade process and you need to be able to roll back to you all original configuration if a critical point is not negotiated successfully.

Finally, be aware that some third-party applications might be impacted as a result of the upgrade. These products include programs to copulate sales tax, credit card authorisation modules, job schedulers, system monitoring programs and print management systems.