Service Desk: This is one of the most important SAP Solution Manager functionalities used within the Mind3 project. It is used in project-mode (by project team members) as well as in production-mode (by key-users) to report incidents or to address questions.
Some important advantages of this functionality are:
- First line support persons can work with a simple, and standardized process;
- When needed, there is a possibility to ask approval from theresponsible person;
- Incidents / questions can be easily forwarded to specialized teams ;
- Status of the incident / question can be monitored by everyone;
- Default reports are available – customer specific reports can be created rather simply.
Change Request Management (ChaRM): This functionality allows us to maintain changes to the SAP solutions in a controlled manner. Dependent of the statuses of the change documents in SAP Solution Manager, transports can be created, released and/or imported. ChaRM is completely integrated with Incident Management (Service Desk) and Problem Management. At the Belgian Railways, we are using it in project mode (Mind³ - all entities) as well as in production-mode (NMBS V0, Infrabel-SCM, Holding-WOX).
The usage of ChaRM has its enormous advantages:
- Transport Requests are created in an easy and controlled way with the necessary approvals
- By simple changing the status of the Change Document, transports are imported to the follow-up systems, including the production environment. This minimizes drastically the risk on errors during the import.
- Automatic checks are performed by Solution Manager and thus limiting the number of human errors
- Default reporting is available – customer-specific reporting can be created rather simply