Summary
This blog should address every Service Partner of SAP who is mainly engaged in the delivery of implementation or transformation projects of SAP solutions ( cloud or on premise).
I will give some guidance and hints how Partners can get more familiar with SAP Cloud ALM.
The following questions will be answered:
- What are the Application Lifecycle Management Best Practices from SAP for Partners
- Where can Partners start to get enabled for SAP Cloud ALM in understanding, using and extending it?
- How can Partners visualize their SAP Cloud ALM skills and commitment?
- How can you get part of the ALM Partner community or to collaborate with SAP Cloud ALM Product Management team in certain POC initiatives.
"The common goal of SAP and Partners shall be to improve partners implementation and adoption experience with SAP Cloud ALM to deliver best quality transformation projects with best practices and standardized implementation procedures and enable customers to operate their cloud solutions without interruptions."
Launch of first ALM Best Practice Document Ver 2023
There are numerous webinars and documents available on SAP's rollout platforms that explain SAP Cloud ALM and its process benefits in detail. Instead, the focus in this BP document is on the
role of the partner and the specific use cases they encounter while supporting the lifecycle of SAP Cloud ALM adoption, following the LACE methods:
- Land: Partners support customers in understanding the available use cases, the value, and the efforts associated with SAP Cloud ALM.
- Adopt: Partners assist customers and guide them through the subscription process and the initial setup of SAP Cloud ALM. They also provide consultation to leaders and train teams for optimized usage during and after the project.
- Consume: Partners actively participate in projects, working alongside project managers, test coordinators, process experts, and others. They serve as role models in tool usage and encourage customers to do the same. Consistently demonstrating the benefits in analytics and traceability convinces teams that maintaining data is worthwhile. Partners can also offer support for adjustments and enhancements, which may also be covered by System Integrators, as SAP Cloud ALM technically allows for it.
- Expand: The greatest potential for partners to generate additional revenue lies in expanding SAP Cloud ALM. This can be achieved by introducing their own content to projects, creating integrations with other preferred solutions of the customer, or developing solutions that address gaps that SAP Cloud ALM may still have."
Read the full document:
ALM Best practices for Partners - Whitepaper
Partner Enablement
There are plenty of sources for customers and partners to learn more about SAP Cloud ALM. SAP Community and the blogs within the tag “SAP Cloud ALM“ are certainly one of the best sources.
But there is also a new central landing page specifically for Partners to be found in the SAP Partner Portal ( Partner- User required!) .
It is the
SAP Partner Learning Journey :
SAP Cloud ALM enablement for Partner, launched in August 2023.
Partners can find all latest learning and enablement assets , based on roles and also in Top/Down approach, with basic (L1) information on top, which is relevant for every partner and role. It is followed by deeper learning assets ( L2) and services.
It is a strong recommendation from SAP to use these digital assets as first enablement before purchasing or requesting any individual services, so this page should be your first step.
SAP Cloud ALM Partner Adoption program
The
SAP Cloud ALM Adoption program , which is also accessible in the Learning Journey , can help Partners to get enabled based on the available assets and trainings which we currently recommend. But it also is the entry point in a SAP Cloud ALM Partner community. With a short web assessment at the end, every Partner consultant can prove to have the initial skills about SAP Cloud ALM to help our customers in the adoption of the tool. The badge is granted afterwards via Credly and can be shared in social media. But there is also a next step, which is joining a SAP Cloud ALM usage commitment community. Partners who want to declare their commitment to us SAP Cloud ALM in all applicable projects can do so and would join the
SAP Cloud ALM Partner Hub. There is just an Email to drop to
alm_partner@sap.com and the next steps will be guided. Finally, Partners are promoted on SAP´s ALM Partner Hub with either a Customer reference story, an SAP Cloud ALM extension product on SAP Store or with their usage commitment.
ALM Summit EMEA – All Downloads and recordings !
One last thing – is to mention the ALM Summit EMEA asset page which has been recently released (Nov ‘23). It includes all lectures and session from the 4 days ALM flagship event where all Product Owners introduced the latest features in their presentation and also sometimes gave a great outlook what is down the road. A very strong recommendation for everybody who wants to get deeper in SAP Cloud ALM and may have missed the event in October.
Find it here:
https://support.sap.com/en/alm/sap-almsummit/sap-alm-summit-emea-2023-materials.html
Last words:
Feel free to comment on this blog or raise your question. I´m driving the Go to Market of SAP Cloud ALM for all Partners, so let me know what you are missing.
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Yours
David Birkenbach
Partner GTM – SAP Cloud ALM