Assignment 1

1. What are the responsibilities of a functional consultant in an implementation project?

A Functional Consultant is a person who is involved in the planning, designing and oversight of a
software systems construction. They must thoroughly understand the requirements to which their design
must conform. A degree of knowledge is necessary so that the consultant will not omit any necessary
requirements, or produce improper, conflicting, ambiguous, or confusing solutions. Functional
Consultants must understand the various methods/solutions available to build the system for the client's
required structure, so that the consultant can negotiate with the client to produce the best possible
compromise of the results desired within explicit cost and time boundaries.
A Functional Consultant could be viewed in a broader sense, as noted above; to define as, Someone
who brings order to a built or non-built situation.
In practice, a Functional Consultant accepts a commission from a client (a board of directors, a
government agency or a corporation). This commission may involve the preparation of feasibility reports,
build audits, the design of a single solution, or the design of several solutions, with varying structures and
the process associated with them. Increasingly, the Functional Consultant participates in the
development of requirements the client wishes to have met in the solution. Throughout the project, from
planning to use, the Functional Consultant can assist the project manager in acting as the coordinator
of a team of specialists; business, technical as well as other specialists, who may have been retained by
the client. The Functional Consultant must ensure that the work of all these different areas is
coordinated and fits together in the overall design of the system.
The role of a functional consultant:
A functional consultant evaluates the demands in talking with the customer's representatives,
transforms the essence into an abstract and algorithmic business model. Hence, he identifies the
use cases and transforms them into logical and technical views.
Then the main task starts: customizing the respective business area and making sure the system
reacts in the manner according to the constraints of the requested use case.
The consultant documents the settings and prepares proper guidelines that allow other consultants
to do further changes or repairs with due efforts.
The consultant takes care that proper training is given to the users and that the system is usable,
performing appropriately and the business flow is complete and correct.
During go live he assists the technical staff by testing the behaviour of the system.
After go live he guarantees that the procedures remain usable and consistent in real live situation
and proposes enhancements.
The main duty of a consultant is to transfer external know-how to the client. It is not manpower
that counts but intelligence, understanding of processes, a feeling for defects and general a
common sense.
The responsibilities of a Functional Consultant in an Implementation
The functional consultant has to understand the modules they are implementing and the set up and
configuration options available, the key skill is being able to map the requirements of the customer to the
capabilities of the ERP system. A mistake often made is to try and configure or customize the ERP system
to match exactly an existing business process, rather than look to improve the processes.

A functional consultant is expected to generate knowledge about the current business process,
design current business flows, study current business processes and its complication - in all we can
say that this is getting through with the current business setup. Flow diagrams and Data Flow
Diagrams (DFDs) are prepared, all this forms the part of the AS IS document.
Everything configured has to be documented according to their categories in the form of predefined
templates; these then have to be approved by the team leads or whoever the consultant is
reporting to.
Mapping and GAP analysis is done for each module.
Before starting configuring future business processes in SAP, the DFDs/ERDs (Entity Relationship
Diagram) are prepared, this documentation is called TO BE, which can be also said as the result of
mapping and gap analysis.
A configuration document showing all the setting done by the consultant is also comes under the
area of role & responsibilities of consultant.
End user manual and user training is also expected from Functional Consultants.
There will also be interaction with other modules consultants.
Changing existing configuration whenever needed.
Setting up configuration for new enhancements.
Handling basic issues of MM module.
Updating of project status to Project Manager & other concerned persons.
Interaction with core team members, end users & other team members (consultants)
A Functional consultant has to be a good communicator he has to communicate with Customer ERP
core team, implementing team, Technical consultant and his project leader. Written communication
skill is to be demonstrate by a functional consultant to e-mail to different groups, documentation
about the ERP, reports generation. Verbal communication is to understand the requirement,
interact with customer, to explain and convince the customer.

2. Explain the terms "AS IS" and "FIT GAP ANALYSIS"?

Business blue print stage is called AS-IS" process. Fit gap means, before implementing the SAP all the
business data is in the form of documents, we cannot keep this data as is in the SAP. There should be a
gap. So by filling this gap, we make configuration with the help of these documents. This is called as fit
gap analysis. In this stage, we should analysis the gap between as is and is as process.

Any companies who are going to implement ERP should undergo GAP Analysis. You need to understand
two things here. AS IS and TO BE...

AS IS means the one which is being followed in your current legacy system.
TO BE means the one which you wish to implement an end of the implementation.

Fit GAP Analysis

Simply Gap Is Nothing but, Client Requirement Doesnt Meet With the SAP Application or the Distance
between Actual and Existing/Supporting,

3. What are the responsibilities of "CORE TEAM" and "FUNCTIONAL TEAM" in an
Implementation?

All implementation projects have the following phases:
Project preparation Scoping
Business blue prints (As is)
Fit gap analysis (Difference of As is- Is as)
Realization
Go-Live
Support

Core Team are the power users who are selected for the SAP implementation. The Functional Team
gather the initial implementation requirement from these core team users who will be the bridge between
the SAP Functional Team and their department users with the expert work knowledge.
Core Team Responsibilities:
1. Know the all the business process in your module.
2. SD, provide the pricing conditions, tax procedures, terms and condition and all details as per your
existing process (AS_IS).
3. Co-ordinate with consultant to get the existing business process in SAP.
4. Provide the master data like material master, vendor master, excise details etc.
5. You should also part to get BBP as per your company business process.
6. You need to test the all the testing cycles.
7. You can able to train your end users.
8. Get all reports as per your end user and management requirement.
9. You should act like shadow consultant through the project.

Functional Team Responsibilities:
1. To develop a planned approach to the changes in the organization.
2. To maximize the collective efforts of all people involved in the change
3. To minimize the risk of failure of implementing the changes related to the SAP implementation.
4. They also test the SAP business processes, by executing functional tests to ensure that business
processes work, integration tests to ensure that the organizations business processes work
together with other business processes and regression tests to prove that a specific set of data and
processes yield consistent and repeatable results.