SAP Functional Consultants
The SAP functional consultants are the central players in any SAP implementation. It is there people that co-ordinate the design with the client, customises the SAP package and specifies the applications to be developed by the technical consultants. On smaller projects the functional consultant can also act as the project manager.
It is a common misconception functional consultants spend all their time configuring the SAP system for the client. This attitude has resulted in large companies trying to outsource SAP development to low wage environments even though the protype built to verify the functional design is still built onsite and is effectively the same as the final configuration.
The truth is that the actual configuration of the SAP system takes less than 5% of a good consultants time. We estimate a funtional consultant on a typical development would spend their time 80% of their time on client facing tasks:
Contact Us
Please do not hesitate to contact us at info @ sapfisolutions.co.uk
Alternatively fill out the form below and we will contact you
Contact Form
| % | Task | |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | Requirements Gathering | Client facing |
| 10 | Prototyping | Client facing |
| 10 | Functional Specification | Stand alone |
| 10 | Review and Signoff | Client facing |
| 5 | Configuration | Stand alone |
| 5 | Unit Testing | Stand alone |
| 10 | User Acceptance Testing | Client facing |
| 10 | Training | Client facing |
| 10 | Manage Go-Live | Client facing |
| 10 | Support | Client facing |
1. Design
Functional design should optimise the user experience and automate repetitive tasks. Any new system should have greater functionality or a lower cost of ownership than the system it replaces. Good functional system design relies on techical capability to increase usability and deliver competitive advantage.
At SAP Financial Solutions we want to build a SAP system that the client can be proud of. Too many systems have been implemented poorly leaving users pining for their old systems and SAP's reputation battered. Other consultancies limit the effectiveness of their functional consultants be restricting their access to technical resources. This severely restricts their ability to change the standard package to fulfill the client's requirements.
We use the best people and a strong technical capability to develop world class solutions.
2. Customisation
SAP at its most basic is a flexible packaged solution. This is preferred by most companies as it includes all the common business processes and incorporates best practice into each solution. It also significantly reduced the risk, time and cost of development. The SAP implementation team has to customise each part of the standard package as per the clients requirements.
It is generally accepted that all implementations should base their model on SAP standard. The reasons include: best practice, ease of upgrade, ease of maintenance, quicker development and lower client specific training.
At SAP Financial Solutions we also advocate SAP standard as a base. We also see a lot of non optimised SAP instances which could benefit from a greater level of cutomisation. This is not acceptable to us, why should a user (or 1,000 users) have to complete a two page purchase order when it can easily be customised to one page.
3. Functional Specifications
Functional specifications are required for each bespoke development to be developed by the technical team. These commonly include reports, interfaces, extensions and forms. Where an extension could be an automated reconciliation process or electronic bank statement functionality and a form could be a purchase order or a bank payment file.
These can be provided by the client but are usually developed by the functional consultants in tandem with the client and the technical team. Once signed off these are handed over to the technical team to develop the technical specification. They must be approved by the functional consultant before development commences.