SAP Business One Support Checklist

If you are looking to implement SAP Business One or have been running an SAP Business One solution for many years you will no doubt want to know more about your SAP Business One support options. Your SAP Business One support partner will no doubt include a maintenance and support plan as part of your ongoing investment.

Now the question is – are all support plans the same? What’s included in my SAP Business One support and maintenance plan? Let’s consider a checklist of items to discuss with your SAP Business One Partner. A quick note – whether your SAP Business One solution is cloud-based or on-premise you should include similar items in your support checklist.

There will usually be two components to the annual support and maintenance investment associated with SAP Business One – a percentage is remitted to SAP for ongoing product development and support and a portion is kept by your SAP Business One Support Partner for the provision of support services. The inclusions with regards to support vary from partner to partner.

7 questions to ask your sap business one support partner

Questions to ask your SAP Business One Partner about support include:

Not all support and maintenance plans are the same – find out what is included and what’s not included in your support plan. If something is not covered by your support plan, ask how you will be notified and invoiced? You want to minimise the surprises. Make sure that your SAP partner has a process in place to notify you if something is not covered by support and will therefore be “chargeable”.

It is a lot easier for a local partner to provide your support infrastructure. At some point in time you will want on-site support and consultancy – a local partner will be required. Local partners also understand your specific requirements (legal and fiscal, localisations etc.).

This question is particularly relative when compared to the number of customers / support calls. Make sure that your support partner has “bandwidth” to deal with your support requirements.

It’s a good idea to review their CVs and experience. A more experienced team will be able to resolve issues quicker and will be able to draw on previous experience to help with your support and consultancy.

Ask your SAP Business One partner to give you a run down on the support escalation procedures. If you have a support issue (urgent or otherwise) how will the issue be escalated? What procedures are in place to make sure that you get the support you need, when you need it?

Make sure that the support being offered fits in with your requirements. For example, are you comfortable with the process that your SAP support partner is recommending for the logging of support calls, the process to get to resolution and the service level agreement being offered? Some support partners will want you to log a call before responding to your support query. As a customer, you might prefer to phone your support query into the support desk and get an immediate response, rather than logging a support ticket. Make sure that the suggested support process follows your preferred options.

A review of the partner support desk SLA (Service Level Agreement) will help identify the support desk hours – when is support available?
SAP Business One Partner Support Checklist

Upgrades – your checklist associated with upgrades will vary depending on whether you have a cloud or on-premise deployment of SAP Business One. Once again, you will want to check what’s included and not included in your annual maintenance and support plan. As part of your annual maintenance (or cloud fee), you will be eligible for new software versions. There is consultancy, training and testing required with each upgrade. It’s important to understand what, if any, of these consultancy tasks are included in your annual maintenance and support plan.

Consultancy – whilst not usually included in an annual maintenance and support plan it is still important to understand what the daily rate is for additional consultancy services. Another question you might ask of your SAP Business One partner is whether you get a discounted rate for pre-purchased / bulk hours of consultancy.

Account management – a good SAP partner will include an element of account management in your support schedule. Regular account management visits help keep you up to date with all things SAP Business One, technology and business. A great way to stay informed.

Content and education – regular newsletters and free, meaningful content is another important way of keeping you, the customer, informed. I am not talking about your SAP Business One partner selling you additional products and modules. I am referring to free blogs, whitepapers, e-books and newsletter content about business, technology, SAP Business One, CRM and more.

Training – Access to additional training is an important part of any SAP Business One support and maintenance schedule. Not all training will be included in your SAP support agreement (you will need to invest in some additional training courses). There are however several ways that your SAP Business One partner can make training courses available to you free of charge – online YouTube videos, WebEx training on popular support topics, and access to SAP portal training are a few examples.

There are several great SAP Business One Partners in Australia – I hope the Leverage Technologies checklist helps you choose the right partner for the support and maintenance of your SAP Business One solution.

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