Taking part in the Enhancement Pack 1 for SAP CRM ...

gregorw · ‎01-09-2011

Update - other Blogs from this series:

On December, 20th 2010 SAP started the shipment of Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010 to ramp-up customers. Siteco takes part in the ramp-up and use it to upgrade it's CRM 5.0 to 7.0 EhP 1. I will try to keep you updated about the progress of our project on a regular basis.

Background

Siteco did the first CRM implementation with SAP CRM 4.0 in September 2004 using the PC-UI Technology. We went live in April 2005. In 2007 we did an upgrade to CRM 5.0 still using the PC-UI. The used functionalities are Account-, Opportunity-, Marketing- and Activity-Management. The CRM System is connected to our SAP ERP 6.0 EhP 4 System and the Accounts- and Contact Persons are synchronized using the CRM Middleware. For the Marketing Management we currently use the SAP GUI for Windows.

Preparation

End of 2009 we've decided to upgrade to CRM 7.0 but waiting for the Enhancement Pack 1. At this time the Ramp-Up for the Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010 was planned to start in July 2010 and should perhaps ended December 2010. That was right to fit into our planned Go-Live with CRM 7.0 EhP 1 in April 2011. That Go-Live date is needed because of the ending standard support for CRM 5.0 and to be prepared for the upcoming SAP Roll-Outs to our subsidiaries worldwide.

To be well prepared me and my colleague attended the SAP CRM Deep Dive Training offered by SAP Consulting in Walldorf. We attended the CRM7.0 Web Client UI Development training. We have to move our PC-UI customizing and development into the new CRM WebUI. In addition to that we setup a CRM 7.0 sandbox system. It was a copy of our productive system running CRM 5.0 and then upgraded to CRM 7.0. There we got our hands dirty and worked on the functional and technical requirements.

During my work on the CRM 6.0 IDES and CRM 7.0 sandbox I've filed 60 OSS Messages where 22 resulted into new SAP Notes or will be implemented in EhP1.

Ramp Up start

Right before the Ramp-Up start we received an E-Mail with a link to the so called "Customer Approval Letter" which had to be signed electronically using the SAP Service Marketplace account of a person with the necessary signature authorisation. The letter included also information how to get access to the Ramp-Up Knowledge Transfer. It is provided for 10 persons in our company.

On December 20th I've received an E-Mail providing the Links to the SAP Service Marketplace Software Distribution Center where we can download the installation and upgrade package for SAP CRM 7.0 EhP 1. I've forwarded them to my basis colleague who took care on getting all the required files.

I've started to work through the extensive Ramp-Up Knowledge transfer documentation and also try to read through the SAP CRM 7.0 EhP 1 Release notes. A 390 pages document.

Check back soon to read about our progress to upgrade the development system.