Safeguarding: A Multifaceted Inspection of the Intelligent Enterprise Foundation

The foundational structure is, by far, the most essential part of a house. It's the one element that helps ensure that the building stands tall with a standard of stability that homeowners can trust. But when a home inspector spots a crack in the ceiling or a leaky pipe in the bathroom, the homeowner must immediately fix those problems before they impact the entire house.

Every homeowner knows that even the smallest holes and drips should never be ignored - and the same is the case when building and maintaining the digital infrastructure of an intelligent enterprise. Every aspect needs to be inspected thoroughly and continuously to gather the information necessary to resolve issues proactively and quickly.

This level of continuous inspection may seem daunting on paper, but our customers experience otherwise with our safeguarding services offered as part of the New SAP MaxAttention engagement model. I visited Andreas Krueckendorf, vice president and program owner of Support Delivery at SAP, for his insights on the transformational benefits of these services.

Q: What are the advantages of safeguarding practices?

A: The goal of safeguarding is to help customers run technically stable technology that performs reliably and exhibits no data issues. If you think about it, safeguarding is very similar to homeowner's insurance. Customers can enjoy peace of mind that the implementation will deliver the outcomes they expect and if it doesn't, the problem can be escalated and resolved with immediacy and certainty.

Safeguarding is not just a kind of methodology or support hotline. It's an end-to-end offering of technology and business process expertise, best practices, and risk mitigation services that are relevant from the very beginning of the implementation to the end of the final rollout. Plus, it's suitable for all deployment options - on-premise, in the cloud, and within a hybrid of the two environments - and installation projects - from new implementations and solution migrations to maintenance events and software upgrades.

Q: Many of our customers are learning that they benefit most from our safeguarding services before their solution investment goes live. Why?

A: In a perfect world, safeguarding should begin as early as possible. However, some companies wait so long that their implementation becomes a Goliath project. They figure out they want something, but it's rarely defined in detail. Eventually, the solution becomes highly configured to respond to business requests. However, this is done with little consideration about the bigger picture and the potential of a fit-to-standard implementation that allows the flexibility to build up digital capabilities in the future. Over time, excitement over the implementation degrades and everyone wonders why the project didn't successfully finish on time and meet their expectations.

By embracing safeguarding services from the beginning, our customers can make decisions based on a thorough understanding of risk factors that should be considered. Then together we determine, prioritize, and plan which topics should be addressed, the effort involved, the business needs and expectations, and the appropriate experts. More importantly, they gain the flexibility to address emerging changes and challenges along the way and take the time to make adjustments.

But don't be fooled. Once the implementation is live, SAP doesn't end the process of safeguarding. Instead, the New SAP MaxAttention program continues to help protect our customers' digital investments with end-to-end hybrid operations.

Q: Are you finding that our safeguarding services are helping put customers on a clear path to becoming intelligent enterprises?

A: Absolutely. Because our safeguarding services are designed for on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deployments, our customers gain a significant amount of awareness and knowledge about the risks, opportunities, and required efforts of their current and future implementations.

Our customers know that any addition or change to their IT systems and landscape can be a significant extension of new or existing digital capabilities. With our safeguarding services, they can rest assured that the technology and IT landscape they depend on are stable enough. They can mitigate the risk of business disruption and fully realize expected outcomes, such as undisrupted process innovation and decision-making based on real-time, predictive insights.

Over the next few weeks, we will offer a real-world view of focus topics that can help your business acquire the foundation and capabilities of an intelligent enterprise. Bookmark the series landing page and check it each week. In the meantime, read our overview of the New SAP MaxAttention program, 'Customer Success for the Intelligent Enterprise,' to discover the opportunities ahead for your business. And for more information, reach out via email at [e-mail].

Christian Leja is director of SAP MaxAttention Solution Marketing. Follow him on LinkedIn.
Andreas Krueckendorf is vice president and program owner of Support Delivery. Follow him on LinkedIn.