Optimizing SAP Systems For Boosted Performance

Most organizations assume that their work is done once SAP is implemented. Consider this: Do you own a car you have never given for servicing? Or any piece of equipment that has never been serviced yet continues to work optimally? Absolutely not!

Likewise, the SAP system must be optimized regularly to ensure smooth organization functioning. Such optimization will enable the business to reap the real benefits of SAP investments. In this article, let us look at how you can optimize the SAP system for better business performance.

Why Optimize SAP?

According to Uptime’s 2022 survey, 80% of data center managers and operators have experienced some type of outage in the past three years. One in five organizations reported a server outage involving significant financial loss, reputational damage, compliance breach, and more.

Did you know? Over 60% of failures result in at least $100,000 in total losses.

Optimizing your SAP system is necessary to ensure your business runs as efficiently as possible. Whether you are a large business or a small business, proper optimization of your SAP system can make a big difference in terms of efficiency, agility, and, more importantly, security.

Read more: 8 Ways SAP ERP Software Benefits Your Business

Benefits Of Optimizing Your SAP System

From startups to global conglomerates, all businesses can leverage the SAP system. It is a proven game-changer for businesses looking for ways to stay competitive, as it can equip them with tools and functionalities to enhance their performance. It can help your business:

1. Avoid Reactive Firefighting

Reactive firefighting comes into play when you have to work towards solving a situation whose outcomes are out of control. SAP takes that out of the equation. Once the SAP system is optimized, it gets easier to thoroughly, carefully, and practically monitor the systems instead of reactive firefighting.

2. Prevent Potential Failures 

Optimizing your SAP system can enable quick and easy identification of potential problems within the SAP landscape. This prevents larger issues by enabling early detection of the issue even when their damage is minimal.

3. Reduce Noise

Nearly 40% of businesses suffered a major outage caused by human error, out of which 85% stem from staff failing to follow procedures or flaws in the processes.

Bombarding employees with notifications would lead to missing out on important information. SAP system optimization would reduce the unnecessary noise and the flooding of notifications that would otherwise occur. It could categorize the issue and help to focus on the matters that are actually important and may affect the bottom line.

4. Reduce Time-Consuming Processes

Time spent on tasks such as conducting daily performance and health checks, SLA, audit reports, and compliance reports adds up to quite a bit. This, in turn, can keep the team from focusing on fixing issues. SAP system optimization helps by enabling auto-scaling, which can detect types of applications, processes, and operating systems to deploy the right checks and limits.

It is important for every business to understand the benefits of optimizing its SAP system. But it is equally important to know the best practices. Before we consider that, let us consider common performance issues in the SAP system.

Common Performance Issues in SAP Systems 

Performance issues may affect the entire SAP system or certain functions or operations. Around 10% of small and medium businesses have revealed that their per-hour downtime is over $50,000.

Performance issues can be divided into four categories: SAP application server, Database, Network, and Hardware. Here is an overview:

1. Application Server: The SAP application server is a complex amalgam of ABAP and JAVA application servers, filled with potential issues. System-wide, single transaction, and background job problems are typical, and slow performance may be intermittent or continuous.

Quick fixes can usually handle single-transaction issues, while system-wide surges may require extensive troubleshooting. That’s not all. Ad hoc performance issues, such as when CPU or memory usage abruptly rises, can also be tricky to diagnose. Furthermore, the JAVA server may suffer from sluggish performance due to an individual application or the entire cluster, and long-running jobs are often a cause of concern.

2. Database: These issues could range from slow data retrieval to long procedures, or even administrative errors. When attempting to diagnose the issue, it’s important to first recognize the type of database you have.

You should also make sure to check for high CPU or memory usage in the server, as that can be a major cause of the problem. Additionally, remember to make sure network latency isn’t the culprit. After all, that can heavily impact database performance!

3. Network: The issue with the network would be latency in all queries and truncations. If your server hardware is insufficient and slowing down SAP transactions, you may have to determine how many resources you need to support current SAP operations.

4. Hardware: Hardware issues may include bottlenecks that occur at certain times or around the clock.

Best Practices for Optimizing Your SAP System

Optimizing your SAP system involves a number of carefully executed steps, including optimizing your data structure, optimizing the architecture of your SAP system, and optimizing your applications and processes.

1. Data structure optimization – This involves making sure your data is organized in a way that is efficient and easy to access. It also involves ensuring that your data is properly indexed, ensuring that the most frequently used data is readily available.

2. Architecture optimization – This includes ensuring that your hardware and software are configured correctly in order to maximize system performance. It also means they are up to date with the latest versions and that any patches or hotfixes have been applied.

3. Application optimization – This involves making sure that your applications are running efficiently and that any bottlenecks are removed.

Testing And Monitoring Your SAP System Performance

The SAP system can be a powerhouse, but if it isn’t running optimally, it can bring your entire business to a screeching halt. To keep it in top shape, regular system health checks and performance monitoring are key – no matter how large or small your enterprise is.

Unfortunately, SAP doesn’t provide a straightforward way to monitor performance, troubleshoot problems, and get back to operations quickly. Instead, users are left with the tedious labor of manually analyzing each system component to find the root of the issue, which can take days and hurt the bottom line.

To prevent this, Fingent can help take care of monitoring critical tasks, work processes, batch processes, database stats, and more.

Read More: Optimize Workforce Management with SAP SuccessFactors and Qualtrics

How Can Fingent Help?

Successful optimization of the SAP system is the road to increasing ROI for your organization. But managing complex IT landscapes, different business processes, and multiple tools can be intimidating for in-house teams.

That’s why we at Fingent top custom software development company, provide audit and optimization services to ensure your organization reaches its goals with SAP. Our frameworks and methodologies help identify bottlenecks and bring the best out of SAP systems, helping you save money and improve your processes. Reach out to speak to our SAP experts and find out how we can help.