About Client
Afghanistan Holding Group has a team of 300 highly qualified Afghan professionals who provide turnkey business services to over 700 international clients. They provide services like accounting, audit, insurance, tax, consultancy and advisory.
- https://ahg.com.af/
- Location: Kabul, Afghanistan
Project Background- SAP Implementation for Enterprise
Afghanistan Holding Group was looking for SAP Implementation for Enterprise wide rollout.
Requirement was to optimize the internal processes for SAP core modules to be implemented and help manage the processes more effectively. They were further looking to transform their business models and operations with the help of SAP S/4 Implementation and be able to show more visibility to the stakeholders on the day to day operations.
Scope & Requirement
High level Project Requirement for SAP implementation for Enterprise wide roll out were as below
- To install, setup and implement SAP S4HANA for a small business of 300 employees that is currently using QuickBooks.
- On premise licenses already purchased and a module list with features was shared
- They mostly required everything set on standard forms, processes and reports. No custom forms, processes, reports will be needed.
- One SAP HANA certified server was already purchased and on premise, 4 virtual machines were to be setup.
Implementation
Technology and Architecture
Technology
- ERP implementation required
- SAP System S/4
- Database HANA
- Web App : Fiori
- Hosting : On premise
- Managing VM – Vmware, Suse Linux
Integrations
- For the initial implementation it was a standalone system
Security:
- User role group and custom authentication code assigned to the different users
- Admin users identified and assigned the right roles
- Roles assigned specific to department like sales, purchasing and Finance
Backup and Recovery
System was tested for snaphsots to be taken every weekend and at every end of day. DR and Backup testing was done as part of the handover.
Scalability
Relied on HANA native capability to sustain memory-intensive processing logic.
Cost Optimization
Not in scope as the customer had on-premise system and license was directly procured from SAP.
Code Management, Deployment
- NA as only standard functionality was used.
Features of SAP Implementation for enterprise
- SAP system was implemented which had comprehensive business processes mapped to the tool for Sales, Purchasing, Finance, core order-to-cash, procurement and a platform for integration at a later date when client was ready
- Improved and Faster analytics and reporting where the data being input was processed for multiple reports and made it easier to analyze performance, determine pain points, and initiate improvements
- Included SAP business Suite with embedded modules for ERP, CRM, SRM, SCM, PLM co-deployed in the single instance
Challenges
- Challenges faced in rollout for SAP implementation for Enterprise project
- This was a straightforward implementation where we were able to install the SAP system from the application file and database however in trying to do backup and DR testing we ran into space-related issues as the log and snapshots quickly filled up all the space available
- It was informed to the client and the hard disk space had to be monitored closely.
- To install the application at the right path and to create seperate client for Dev, QA and Prod we were not having enough disk space and we also informed client to have them on a seperate server
- It was decided to create a partition and do multipathing and logical volume grouping so the system can have different client versions.
- End users after implementing the S4 Hana system were not comfortable with the GUI based window and tcodes which had to be entered to navigate around in the system
- A few training plans were made to help them understand the SAP system, Also the option of moving away from Tcode based approach to the Fiori Tile-based model however this would have delayed the project Go live plan hence was parked for later. So the client, for now, continued to up skill the existing resources and Peritos assisted wherver any help was needed.
Support
- As part of the project implementation we provided 1 month of extended support. This includes any Major / Minor bug fixes. Questoions specific to the implementation and any system outages etc being faced
Next Phase – SAP Implementation For Enterprise
- Support for helping the end user to understand the SAP systems , adding documentation and mapping the sales , purchasing and finance processes in the system
- Helping some other customer of the client to upgrade SAP systems
- Client was keen to map thier processes to the SAP system and evaluate the option for Integration, reporting and Mapping the current business process to the new system. This was under discussion.
