From the CEO

Good day and welcome to our 5th edition of the RSC SAP Change Control newsletter for 2008.

If your organization is under Sarbanes-Oxley, FDA or other compliance regime, you are sure to find the Textron Rev-Trac case study of interest. An introductory article can be found below.

Of course this is just one of a number of articles in this issue which you will find interesting, including the Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks and Rev-Trac Q&A sections.

If you missed any of the last series of RSC webinars, don’t forget to register for the upcoming series.

As always, we continue to lead innovation in SAP change control, developing software solutions to boost your competitive edge with SAP.

David Drake, CEO and Founder

Rev-Trac as a Valuable Change Control Compliance Technology

Due to the introduction of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002, IT system change control has become a regulated activity in many IT organizations, and others, who are not required to comply with the regulations, are managing change control with more stringent internal controls than ever before, largely for internal audit reasons.

The challenge with managing IT system changes with more stringent control is ensuring, among other things, appropriate change control processes are followed consistently, relevant documentation is produced and linked to the technical changes, and all approvals are obtained and recorded.

In 2003, Textron installed Rev-Trac as part of its SAP R/3 implementation strategy. We recently discussed the value of
Rev-Trac to the Textron SAP team, and thought you might be interested in hearing their comments – in particular those relating to audit and compliance issues.

Be sure to read the whole story, but the following comments are sure to spark interest.

“Auditors respect our ability to run histories and reports, and pull them up at any time. They love it that we can show compliance and prove visibility, that it’s a built-in part of our regular processes… and obviously, we love that too.”
–Todd Kackley, PMO Manager, Textron

“It’s so easy to stay ‘by the book,’ our people don’t even go looking for shortcuts anymore. Rev-Trac tracks and enforces approvals throughout the process, so there’s never any confusion. It eliminates chasing after people for signatures and we always have visibility and accountability.”
–Bhaskar Ramachandran, Manager, SAP Technology, Textron Global SAP CoE

[ Download Textron Customer Story >> ]

Why Your Organisation Should Be Using An SAP Change Control Technology

SAP mixed stack technology

SAP landscapes are becoming more complex as they develop and expand to support varying business requirements, including organisational flexibility and responsiveness to market changes.

With the introduction of mixed stack SAP solution applications such as XI and NetWeaver, and single stack SAP Java applications such as Enterprise Portal, SAP change occurs, in many cases, across applications and technologies.

Managing this change with existing manual processes is complicated and an eventual loss of control is almost inevitable. By utilizing a change control technology that can deploy dual stack ABAP and Java package transports or single stack Java package transports, organisations can ensure all transport movements are monitored and users can be certain of all locations of all transports at any time by system or by client.

[ More Reasons >> ]

Webinar Series:
Managing Change in Complex SAP Landscapes

Earlier this year, RSC ran a three part webinar series on "Managing Change in Complex SAP Landscapes". Due the overwhelming number of requests, this webinar series will run again for two time zones starting in September.

Registrations are now open for the United States series and the dates for the European series will be announced shortly.

[ Details and Registration >> ]

Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks

Migrate to multiple destinations on single approval

Rev-Trac determines the migration destination by the target group assigned to a migration status within a Project/Request type.

Configuration > Process > Assign Process

• Process Assignment
• Assignments per project/request type
• Migration method and target

The same target group can be assigned to many migration statuses on different strategies.

It is possible to define more than one destination system within a single target group.

Configuration > Process > Migration

• Target Groups

With a correctly configured target group, a single approval can therefore trigger the migration of transports to multiple destinations.

For more detail on this topic, see the Migration > Target Groups section in the current version of the Rev-Trac Administrator guide available for download from the support area of the RSC website.

Rev-Trac Q and A

How do I change the status of a request from complete back to operational?

The status of COMP (complete) is a hardcoded status, automatically approved once the last customer defined status within a strategy has been approved.

It is quite common for a Rev-Trac Administrator to define a strategy that does not include COMP as a status. If so, when a user attempts to manually change the status of the request while in a status of COMP, an error message is given:

Request has status “Complete” (COMP), no changes allowed

In order to allow the status of a request to be changed while in a status of COMP, the strategy will need to be configured to include the status COMP as the final status in the strategy.

Once the status of COMP has been defined in the strategy, the status will take on the normal hardcoded behaviour as well as the ability to manually change a request in and out of the status of COMP.

[ Ask a question >> ]