Our approach
A reference framework, adapted to your context.
SAP Activate is our reference framework for SAP transformations. We adapt it to your context, your transformation scenario and your governance. What does not vary: the decisions we secure, and the way we prepare them.
The principle
A stable framework, a tailored application.
Every company starts from its own landscape, culture and pace. SAP Activate structures our engagements — from conversion to greenfield, from national scope to group-wide program — and we adjust its pace, the depth of each phase and the governance to your scenario. This constancy gives you teams that are operational from day one, deliverables comparable from one phase to the next, and decisions on record that no one has to rediscover midway.
The engagement model
Three ways of working with us.
The question deserves a straight answer: integrator or client-side advisor? Both, depending on your setup, and the role is chosen at the first engagement, written into the contract, then never changes without your decision.
- As integrator: we deliver
Conversions and projects run under our own responsibility, end to end. A format sized for mid-market companies and for targeted scopes at large accounts, where the seniority of the team matters more than its size.
- As client-side advisor / program director
Facing a large integrator, we take our place on your side of the table: verifiable requirements, demanding acceptance testing, well-argued trade-offs. We defend your interests, exclusively.
- In co-delivery
Our experts slot into your setup, under your governance or your partner’s, on the workstreams where their expertise makes the difference.
The method
SAP Activate: five phases, one thread.
Discover
Set the strategy before setting up the system: analysis of the target, scoping, building the business case. At the end of this phase, leadership knows what the project must change, at what cost and for what value.
Prepare
Get the project ready to move: setup, mobilization of the teams (yours as well as ours), governance and planning. By the end, everyone knows their role and the schedule is committed.
Explore
Test the standard against your reality: fit-to-standard approach, business workshops, functional and technical design. Every deviation from the standard is examined, then settled with full knowledge of the facts.
Realize
Build and prove it: build, testing, data migration, integrated acceptance testing and UAT run by the business. The system is validated on your data and your volumes, in real conditions.
Deploy
Switch over and make it stick: go-live, user training, hypercare, then an organized handover to run. The engagement ends when your teams are operating on their own.
What makes the difference
The phases are well known. What counts is what we secure in them.
Eight disciplines, present on every one of our engagements, that separate a project that holds from one that drifts.
- Design Authority
A single body settles design and architecture questions. No one rediscovers a decision during the build phase.
- Decision governance
Every structuring decision is dated, justified, costed and attached to its body: steering committee, Design Authority or business workstream.
- Fit-to-standard
The SAP standard first, demonstrated on your business cases. The process adapts before the system bends.
- Deviation management
Every deviation from the standard is assessed with its build, operating and upgrade cost, then decided with full knowledge of the facts.
- Clean core
Extensions move out of the core, onto SAP BTP, to preserve your ability to keep up with updates and adopt the vendor’s innovations.
- Data readiness
Quality, cleansing, migration rules and test data sets prepared from the Explore phase onward: data is never the topic of the last week.
- Cutover
A cutover plan rehearsed in dry runs, timed to the minute, with entry, exit and rollback criteria. Go-live is decided on facts.
- Hypercare
The first weeks of operations with the project team at your side, then an organized handover to run and continuous improvement.
The decisions we secure
Seven decisions that commit you for ten years.
An SAP transformation is decided on a small number of irreversible decisions. We prepare them with you, alternatives and costs included, before they become constraints.
The S/4 scenario
Conversion, new implementation or selective transition; private cloud, public cloud or on-premise. Defensible for your context, not for a catalog.
The target architecture
S/4HANA core, BTP extensions, integrations, data, security: a target drawn before you buy, and governed throughout the project.
The scope
What goes into wave 1, what follows, what is left out. A scope that holds is the first protection for the schedule and the budget.
Standard or custom
Every deviation costed over its full life cycle. Clean core is not a dogma, it is an economic decision.
Data migration
What to carry over, how much history, with which quality rules — and who is accountable for it.
Integration
Patterns, platform, ownership of the flows: integration is designed as a product, not as a list of interfaces.
The operating model
Who runs the system after go-live, with which skills, which SLAs and which continuous improvement budget.
Governance
Who decides what, at each level.
Clear governance reassures as much as it protects: every topic has a body, every body has an explicit cadence and decision-making power.
Tooling & steering
An instrumented method, steering with no blind spots.
A method is only as good as the instruments that serve it. Our projects rely on reference tooling and contractual steering.
- LeanIX · IT landscape mapping
An up-to-date view of your application landscape: what exists, what depends on what, what the transformation touches. Architecture decisions are made on this map.
- Signavio · process mining
Your processes as they actually run, measured in the system rather than described in a workshop. Fit-to-standard starts from the facts.
- SAP Cloud ALM · Tricentis
Requirements, tests and deployments tracked in SAP tooling, complemented by automated, repeatable and traceable test campaigns.
- Reporting, milestones and SLAs
Structured weekly reporting, steering by milestones and quality indicators, contractual SLAs: you know every week where the project stands, and our commitments are in writing.
Our commitments
Three commitments, written into the contract.
Delivery
SAP Activate framework, milestones, weekly reporting, SLAs: everything this page describes is written into our contracts. The method is not a sales promise, it is a clause.
Quality
Consultants who combine client-side advisory and implementation skills, a continuous SAP certification policy on every scope, security clearances and signed confidentiality commitments, continuity of service assured over time.
Partnership
Multi-year relationships, independent advice, no extension of the engagement decided on your behalf. And full transparency, on risks as well as costs.
What sets us apart
Four verifiable differentiators.
- Seniority
Consultants who have already run projects comparable to yours, and who take charge from the first workshop. The team presented during pre-sales is the team that does the work.
- A partnership approach
Relationships that last, because commitments are kept and the conversation stays candid. Your autonomy is part of the deliverable.
- Industry specialization
Public sector, food & beverage, retail, energy, transport: we speak your sector’s language, its regulatory constraints and its critical processes, right from the scoping phase.
- Innovation, with proof in hand
A Document AI demonstrator built on SAP S/4HANA, a completed Odoo → S/4HANA migration, a working S/4HANA Cloud demonstration. Come and see for yourself.
The method, put to the test
Let’s test the method against your reality.
Thirty minutes with a senior expert are enough to map your current landscape, your upcoming decisions and how this framework would apply in your organization.
Talk to an SAP expert →