Bringing a significantly modified, outdated SAP environment up to date, six weeks early and under budget, for a major financial institution

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Background

A large, very high-profile financial institution needed to bring its SAP environment up to date with the latest support packs.

They had a production system and four additional landscapes, two for development and two for quality assurance. Each environment consisted of the SAP ERP application and the SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse, Process Integration and Portal components.

These hadn’t been updated for some time because a significant amount of bespoke work had been carried out. Hence, the client issued a ‘Request for Quote’ (RFQ).

After careful consideration Pivot was chosen, even in preference to the rival consultancy, who had been providing the on-going support.


The Solution

In its response to the RFQ, Pivot set out a detailed and comprehensive project plan, with costings and timescales. A key part of this was patching the production environment over a weekend to ensure there was no disruption to day-to-day business, with a contingency option should things not go to plan. In the event, the contingency option wasn’t needed as the cutover went smoothly.

Pivot’s experienced technology consultants first undertook a proof of concept, creating a sixth landscape on which to update the database and apply the Support Stacks that were needed to bring the systems up to date. The benefit of doing this was that it gave Pivot’s staff experience of the organisation’s systems, allowed them to undertake some basic testing before working on the live landscapes and enabled them to time how long each activity took, which would be crucial for updating the production system.

Once everyone was satisfied with the proof of concept, the same processes were applied to the development landscapes.

On completion of the updates, unit testing was undertaken and one of Pivot’s specialist technical architects adapted the bespoke tables and programs to ensure they would still work with the updated SAP software.

Finally, the updated systems underwent user acceptance testing in the QA environment with support from Pivot. Throughout the project Pivot’s experts worked closely with the client’s staff and the third party support organisation.

When the project started there was already tremendous pressure to finish it on time. In the end, Pivot not only managed to bring the project in six weeks early, it also brought it in under budget.

“Pivot are building a cadre of the best consultants in the industry.”

Programme Director