The Benefits of Solution Accelerators for OpenText xECM for SAP
Choosing the right tools, systems, and applications to achieve your business challenge that is fraught with risk. Without effective implementation and integration, even the most thought-out decisions and best laid plans can become poor investments. No one wants to choose a new system, allocate budget, and navigate procurement just to see things go sideways during implementation. Unfortunately, the more complex your business is, the greater the chance of this happening. Analysis from Gartner and McKinsey reports that more than 70% of technology projects fail, and Clayton Christensen suggests that as many as 95% of innovation projects fail. That’s a lot of wasted time, effort, and money, and most likely impacts the careers of the project sponsors who worked hard to build consensus and support for the initiative.
Clearly that’s not the desired outcome. At Optima, we use a time-proven proprietary methodology to ensure project success for our clients. In fact, over 96% of our projects over the past 12 years have been successful. One of the contributors to our success is our deep knowledge of the tools and systems provided by best-in-class providers like SAP and OpenText.
One example is OpenText Extended ECM for SAP, a powerful content management solution that can be a game changer for organizations looking to leverage their content and assets. When properly integrated with SAP, Extended ECM provides an advanced capability to leverage your documents and content within the context of business processes to maximize their value. But as with any complex solution, realizing the full benefit of an Extended ECM investment takes a deep understanding of the company’s business goals, strategic workflows, and day-to-day processes and tasks. While some organizations choose to embark on the challenging and often destined-for-failure task of integrating Extended ECM and SAP from scratch, Optima often recommends taking advantage of OpenText’s industry proven and pre-configured Solution Accelerators.
What are Solution Accelerators?
Solutions Accelerators are organized, solution-specific packages provided by OpenText for users of Extended ECM. In the briefest terms, they provide out-of-the-box workspace scenarios connecting SAP business objects to streamline the process of installing and integrating a complete industry-specific solution. Solution Accelerators don’t just reduce the complexity of an Extended ECM integration with SAP, they aggregate the knowledge, experience, and best practices many companies’ years using the platform. Pre-configured Solution Accelerators also shorten implementation timeline, helping teams recognize the full utility and value of Extended ECM sooner, and realize a faster return on investment.
With proven scenarios, Solutions Accelerators help establish best practices from day one. Between pre-defined workspaces and sample configurations, Solutions Accelerators provide a solid foundation to build a successful project implementation.
What Solution Accelerators Are Available?
At present, more than 15 Solution Accelerators are available. From document management to procurement to resource management, OpenText’s offered resources help enterprises maximize the ROI of the Extended ECM platform and by extension, SAP. Depending on your use cases, here are many of the Solution Accelerators available today:
- SAP Procurement (ERP): For procure-to-pay processes, this accelerator gives your team access to unstructured content related to procurement within OpenText.
- SAP ERP Sales (SD): Ready to streamline your sales process? The SD accelerator takes unstructured content and documents and organizes them in an OpenText content server workspace.
- SAP S/4HANA Customer Vendor Integration: With this accelerator, Customers and Vendors are no longer independent business objects but roles. This gives you two Business Content windows for Customers and Vendors, which provides access to all related workspaces in one place.
- SAP Plant Maintenance (PM): This accelerator enhances SAP ECC by maintaining documents for main plant maintenance within OpenText.
- SAP Transport Management (TM): This accelerator saves time for logistic service providers. Simplify order management, transportation planning, and execution with an accelerator that connects all partners involved in the transportation process.
- SAP DMS (Document Management System): Enjoy better records management with this accelerator, which combines xECM with SAP DMS.
- SAP Real Estate Management (RE-FX): Do you need to access unstructured content related to REM in an OpenText workspace? Use this accelerator to implement business workspaces and attachments for your Real Estate Management objects.
- SAP Global Trade Services (GTS): Do you have non-SAP users in your business? The GTS accelerator makes SAP available to non-users in cross-application enterprises, bringing all relevant data together from two different systems.
- SAP Portfolio and Project Management (PPM): Simplify and speed up collaboration with the PPM accelerator. This tool keeps all analyses, presentations, specs, and technical documentation in one place for all stakeholders.
- SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Blend xECM with SAP CRM with this accelerator. With features like content filters, activity feeds, and full-text search, you’ll have complete control over your document lifecycle.
- SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Bidding Process: Blend SRM and xECM with this accelerator. It allows you to see all bids and relevant documents (including unstructured information) within one workspace.
- SAP Environment, Health & Safety Management (EHSM): The EHSM accelerator allows you to manage your content and documents for your EHSM in an OpenText content server. This leads to better document management, collaboration, and records management.
In addition to these and additional Solution Accelerators, OpenText also provides pre-configured Business Scenarios designed to address common business needs like projects, agreement management, and more.
Optima Offers Solutions to Complex Content Challenges
It is important to note that Solutions Accelerators are not available directly from OpenText as standalone offerings. A professional services provider like Optima can help both select and deploy Solutions Accelerators as part of an Extended ECM deployment that serves both your current needs and your future business goals. The fact is, content strategies and solutions will always be evolving, so it’s vital to have a clear content strategy that matches your business goals. Optima ECM Consulting is an industry leader in content management solutions that leverage today’s emerging channels and technology. With the powerful OpenText Extended ECM for SAP platform, you can maximize the value of your existing environment as you plan for future requirements and stay ahead of your competitors.
Optima recommends that companies take a departmentalized approach, implementing functionality for specific strategic teams first and then expanding those proven processes further into the company. This minimizes disruption during the project and distributes costs over a controlled timeframe.
Taking advantage of one of the above solution accelerators can be a great start. To begin your journey, we offer a variety of services to help you decide the best path to achieve your goals.
- Digital Content Services Health Check: Use this tool to analyze your current business processes and workflow-and identify the role your content plays. This blueprint allows us to identify content silos, compliance risks, and current content use. After our evaluation, we can offer our recommendations, give you industry best practices and trends, and then reimagine your content strategy to improve ROI.
- Roadmap Strategy Project: Without a roadmap, your strategy can get muddled and disorganized. Optima can help you develop a clear guide to get you from where you are now to where you would like to be to transform your business. We help you create operational policies and processes to keep your business on track to maintain your digital transformation strategy.
- SAP xECM Starter Package: Know what you’re doing and ready to get started? Our starter packages offer a proven set of critical services your business needs. This includes SAP xECM with options for additional solution packages specifically designed to solve critical issues not addressed in the core packages.
Contact Optima to get started today. Our business process experts are ready to help you plan a scalable content strategy and solution that delivers successful document process and workflow strategies, and will help you achieve your business goals.
