Customer Reviews

SAP Planning: Best Practices in Implementation

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When we started on my second SAP installation, one of my first moves was to do an Amazon search on "SAP". I suspected there would be quite a few titles and there are. So far I have read 14 of them including this one. My experience has been that almost everyone wants to write about some piece of the puzzle that they know a lot about. Not George. He tackles the entire process, including how to keep it running well once you are live.

To top it off, he is the only person I've met that is actually qualified to speak and write in such a broad manner.

This is the one book you need to get started with. It is also the book you need to go live with. At current consulting rates, you can pay for the advice in this book in about 15 minutes. This book really isn't so much about planning as it is surviving and thriving in the eye of the storm. It is by far the best of the 14 books that I have read.

I owe George big time for helping me launch a new career as an SAP Project Planner/coordinator/leader. Between this book and my experience writing software spec's to IEEE standards, I wrote a proposal that got me a 10 month gig planning and coordinating the SAP implementation for an existing client. The material on CD alone is worth 100 times the cost of the book - you get PowerPoint demos, spreadsheets, MS Project plans, and tons of documents that you can modify and present as your own work. Even with an inside edge I never would have been able to write such a credible proposal w/o this book.

What I especially like is the thoroughness of this book, it is technical and complete and well organized. George Anderson covers everything I believe is important: sizing, system management, training, high availability options and disaster recovery, testing - all technically descriptive but easy to read. And most sap products are covered (WebAS, EP, BW, PLM, CRM, etc). And I have used the book to help me solve questions with new systems we are putting in, especially chapter 5 on total cost of ownrship studies and how to stress test, and used the operations info in chapter 14 too. If your the guy adminsistering your current or new sap systems or a sap systems manager, you'll want this book.

Detailed enough to be worth the money, easy enough to read to make picking up the book worthwhile. I would have like to see more on daily administration, but chapter 14 does an excllent job getting you prepared for this. I especially like the fact that the author shared his checklists; yes, the CD is very good. Quality job all the way around, looking forward to George's next book covering stress testing and performance tuning.

My thanks to George for putting together a book that is both detailed and and sactually fun to read. I LOL in every chapter at his customer stories and still manage to learn something. Now if only SAP Press would follow the same approach!

This is one of the few books on SAP you may actually enjoy reading - it deals with real world scenarios and is told more like a narrative rather than a collection of technical information.

This is one of the best SAP implementation book if you are Basis person or Project lead with main responsibilities on how to install, support, etc. I highly recommend to read it to everyone involved into SAP practice one way or another.
The only drawback - if you are functional there is hardly anything for you here. I mean it's a great book, but for people doing functional consulting this book SHOULD be published in a "lighter" version with something like 300+ pages. Then it would be a must have for all.

I spent a year in the trenches, and learned a lot, but only wish that this book was available then. It would have opened my eyes to some of the pitfalls I ran into during our own implementation; before Go-Live, first day, first year...and would have undoubtedly proved valuable over and over again. In fact, I expect that much of the information and best practices found inside will still prove useful to me going forward, even nearly a year and a half after "Go Live". George Anderson's skill in presenting information, a lot of it quite complex, ranks as the best in the business. This, combined with his ability to present the facts logically and in an easy-to-read and comprehend manner - while keeping things interesting along the way - makes it a pleasure to add this book to my collection.

It's finally here! A complete guide on how to implement a mySAP solution from the technical side. From business buy-in to go-live, it provides a roadmap through the myriad of technical decisions and areas that must be addressed: networks, hardware, high availability, disaster recovery, total cost of ownership, and the SAP Architecture. Your biggest resource, people, is addressed during project startup, execution, and post go-live as well.

I am enjoying reading this and am happy to add it to my collection. I wish it explained netweaver and xapps better (maybe next edition?) but really like how thorough it is otherwise. Especially that the author doesnt just talk about the one way to do something, he covers many ways like different kinds of checklists, team building, management tools and so on. and he gives attention to the computer room people plus programmers and basis. I am enjoying the real-world stories also. I think thats some of the real strength in the book.