SAP Cutover Activities Management

A warm welcome to the SAP Cutover Activities Management course by Uplatz.

SAP Cutover Activities are the phase wise activities that need to be finished before the start of every phase of a project. Cutover activities are done in both implementation and roll-outs. These are performed during final preparation phase of a project as per ASAP implementation methodology.

In essence, you complete preparations including testing, end user training, system management etc. You also need to resolve all open issues in this phase. At this stage you need to ensure that all the prerequisites for your system to go live have been fulfilled. Some of the important activities done during SAP cutover are balance upload from legacy to sap system, sign off from end users for training completion, and the like.

In simple words, Cutover is the process of planning, managing, and executing all of the tasks and activities that allow the impacted business function to 'cutover' to the SAP system. The key components of the Cutover Plan include business preparation activities related to cutover and legacy integration/shutdown.

Cutover data includes data on financial and materials balances that SAP must carry forward, and also how to handle open transactions from the legacy system. Open transactions are those business transactions that are still under process when the company switches from the legacy system to the SAP system.

Uplatz provides this comprehensive training on SAP Cutover Management covering the full range of Cutover activities in any SAP project implementation, deployment, and migration that need to be performed for a successful project execution or change management.

This SAP Cutover Training will provide you a deep-dive into the key topics of SAP Cutover strategy:

• What is Cutover

• Introduction to Cutover

• Plan for the Plan

• Cutover Planning Process

• Cutover Plan vs. Business Readiness Plan

• Contingency Planning

• Must Get Right

SAP Cutover Activities course curriculum

Learn the process and steps to be aware of while creating the cutover plan and cutover activity sheets. The dedicated trainer will guide you through all the activities for this phase. As each activity is completed, the aforementioned Cutover Activity Sheet is signed by the executor of that activity and turned into the project management function before any dependant activity can be started.

Training into different Areas of the Cutover Phase Training covers

• Freezing and releasing of legacy data

• Exportation of legacy data into the conversion database input layer

• Understanding of Master and Transaction Data

• Writing the Data Migration Load programs through LSMW

• Transposition of legacy data into the conversion database

• Reconciliation of the production data to the Conversion Database

• Copy converted data to different SAP System Landscapes

• Manual conversion of non-converted accounts

Following is a practical scenario for SAP Cutover plan and management:

1. Preparation for Cutover

During the time of cutover and migration to SAP, system will not available for almost a week. It is essential from business point to inform all the business partners about the down time in advance. Therefore as a part of preparation it is recommended to send this information in advance to all the customers and vendors.

2. Prepare Production Environment

In this step production machine will be prepared and tested in advance for all the application components. Since production machine will be connected to client network it is necessary to test this connectivity in advance. In addition all printers will also be installed and checked in this step.

3. Setup Application

In this step SAP application will be setup on Production system, after taking all the transports to production SAP AG will verify the system is ready to go live.

4. Convert and Verify Data

In this step data will be downloaded from legacy system and converted into required format to upload into SAP. After verification data will be loaded into SAP.

5. Verify production readiness

This is the final step before Go Live, in this step final review for cutover will be done to make sure all activities related to Go Live have been performed and system is ready to go in Production.

6. Support after Go Live
To support the users after Go Live, helpdesk will be established. All the calls from users will be received by helpdesk and issues will be categorized into HIGH, MEDIUM or LOW. After creating the ticket support desk will assigned it to the respective team (FI, CO, MM, SD, BW) for the solution. Support team will then look into the issue based on priority.

SAP Cutover Planning and Execution activities are organized and managed under the below mentioned categories:

• System Build (technical and functional)

• Data Migration/Validation

• Business Preparation

• Legacy Integration/Shutdown

• Business Startup Activities

  
  

System Build

includes the following activities:

• Technical/Infrastructure Build

• Build Production Environment

• Connectivity to Middleware, Bolt-ons, Legacy environments

• Functional Build

• Apply all Transports (configuration, security, deployment)

• Perform manual steps

Data Migration & Validation

includes the following activities:

• Data accuracy testing

• Extract and Transform data

• Load master data into production with end user sign-off

• Load transaction data into production and reconcile with end user sign-off

Business Preparation

includes the following activities:

• Business activities and procedures in support of the Cutover process e.g.

  -- last processing of business transactions

  -- inventory procedures, etc.

Legacy Integration/Shutdown

includes the following activities:

• Legacy System freeze schedules

• Shutdown and decommissioning procedures

• Legacy Interface re-pointing

Business Startup Activities

includes the following activities:

• Restarting the business based on the new solution (processes, data, technology)

• Focused on key identified areas

What is meant by cut off date?

SAP system is configured as per the requirement of the client. The system is ready for the client to use. The client now needs to migrate from the Old system (Legacy system) to the new SAP system. The migration from the old system to the new system is known as cut off date. The old system is switched off and the new SAP system is switched on. The data will be migrated from the old system to SAP. The data will henceforth be entered in the new SAP system. To have a smooth switch over from the Legacy system to the new SAP systems are devised the cut off procedure.