Executive Summary
- This page describes the issues with SAP SNP support and how our SAP support offerings help.
- We offer support coverage that exceeds what is available from SAP or other providers.
Introduction
This is the SAP SNP Support page of LaunchPad SAP Support.
On this page, we cover the specifics of our SNP support. For explanations of the broader package related to our SNP support, which explains many essential topics about SAP support, see our main SAP Support Page.
Issues With SNP
After years of working in SNP improvement, we know very well that SNP is a high overhead application that usually overwhelms companies that have implemented SNP to maintain SNP appropriately. And SAP only provides minimal support but is extremely expensive, which consumes SAP customers’ resources to maintain SNP properly.
Most SNP companies cannot understand or tune the SNP optimizer; configure CTM to do more than the basics, nor can they make the adjustments they need to use SNP properly. The list of shortcomings is a long one. And this is not only mid-sized companies, but even the largest companies have problems maintaining SNP.
What This Means for Outcomes at SNP Customers
This places a significant emphasis on manual overrides to account for what SNP is not doing, which also undermines the credibility of SNP with users. SAP tries to make it seem that these shortcomings are only specific to each customer when, in fact, they are universal issues for companies that implemented SNP.
Improving SNP typically means bringing in a consultant or utilizing SAP’s exorbitantly priced Max Attention. Max Attention is really just a renamed type of consulting.
Right now, SAP customers around the world are sitting with the worst of both worlds. This means
- Consumed IT budgets by yearly SNP support costs, which provide close to no value to SAP customers.
- No hope for future improvements or future versions of SNP.
- Constant pressure from SNP to purchase IBP, which has not developed a good implementation history.
Getting Something Better
Imagine if you could radically improve SNP and cut costs at the same time. You can. But to do so, you will need to reject the advice from SAP and SAP consulting firms.
- APO is at the end of life, and there are zero reasons to continue to pay SAP support money for their evaporated support.
- Even if companies want to purchase IBP, many won’t, and SAP will sell IBP to SNP customers at any time in the future.
- Overall, there is no reason to accept a pivot from SAP sales reps to IBP and a complete diminution of the customer’s decade or more SNP investment.
What Do We Cover for SNP Support?
We cover the following for SNP in our support.
- Supply Network Planning with Optimizer
- CTM or Heuristics
- Deployment with Heuristics
- Addressing Deployment Optimizer Limitations
- All Upgrades (DS, LC, OS, Kernel, Security, Patches, Ehp)
- User Security Self Help Templates
- APO Security Patches
- APO Database Refresh
- Management Summaries of Supply Planning
- Master Data Maintenance and Reconciliation
- Mass Maintenance Boosters for Maintenance of Transportation Lanes, PDS, External Proc Relationship, Product-Location Master, Quotas, and Profiles
Notice that many of these items are not covered by SAP. However, we cover all of these and more.
We also offer Boosters to improve things like the MRP parameters, as we cover in Brightwork Explorer and Order Sizing Optimization. Without effective parameters, this massively increases the overhead of SNP.
This presentation illustrates the problems with SAP support and how Brightwork SAP Support addresses these shortcomings.
What Kind of Support is This?
If this does not sound like standard support, you are right. And that is the point.
We designed our support to help our customers get the most out of SAP, not maximize our margin or try to protect previous sales inaccuracies. We know how to get your SAP applications working better.
To see the broader information about our SAP support, see our main SAP Support Page.